Maine is a rural state with unequal access to computers and information technology. To remedy this, the Maine laptop program supplies iBooks to every seventh and eighth grade student in the state. The goal of EcoScienceWorks is to build on this program and develop, test and disseminate a middle school curriculum featuring computer modeling, simple programming and analysis of GIS data coupled with hands-on field experiences in ecology.

This is a proposal for a 3 year project to be conducted as a collaboration among 8 higher education institutions and several school systems across the country, with Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia, PA serving as the lead institution (other collaborators are from Colorado School of Mines, Ithaca College, Santa Clara University, Duke University, the University of Mississippi, Columbia College, the University of Charleston and the Virginia Beach School System).

Community for Rural Education, Stewardship and Technology (CREST), a comprehensive project for students and teachers, currently networks the Island Institute, the University of Maine at Machias, Bowdoin College, and Maine’s island and coastal schools to form a learning community of 55 students, 44 teachers, community stakeholders, and Information Technology (IT) professionals. Within the 11 CREST schools, an additional 1,700 students and teachers are impacted by the use of CREST’s focus technologies across curricular areas.

This is a project to engage students and teachers with the rapidly expanding science content available using information technology and through the cyberinfrastructure. Learners seldom have an opportunity to also be contributors, and underserved and disadvantaged students are most often bypassed for such opportunities. The project uses methods that the PI believes inspire student involvement and learning, engage teachers, and meet district/state/national standards.

The New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) is working with faculty, students and staff in four high-minority urban school districts in New Jersey to integrate robotics programming, engineering design and information technology into existing curricula for grades 7-12. The goal of the project is to enlarge the number of students from underrepresented groups who are interested in pursuing IT and STEM careers by engaging secondary students in ten robotics activities that involve computer programming to solve grade-appropriate biomedical engineering problems.

The Paleo Exploration Project has provided training in paleontology and geospatial analysis to 52 K-12 math, science, and technology teachers and over 80 middle school students from rural eastern Montana, an area that includes five of the state’s seven Indian reservations. Through a series of two-day weekend workshops, participating teachers learned about Montana's geologic history and fossil record, and were trained in the use sophisticated geospatial technologies to plan and conduct field-based geological investigations.

The goal of this three-year, comprehensive ITEST project is to prepare diverse middle- and high-school students for careers in information technologies (IT) by engaging them in designing inquiry-based science activities that use computational models and real-time data acquisition and analysis. The project provides 126 hours of lab-based, credit-bearing activities for 90 teachers and support for classroom implementation. Participants meet for two weeks in the summer of 2007, twice face-to-face plus online during the academic year, and again the following summer for one week.

“TechMath: Real World Math, Technology, and Business Connections” is a three-year program linking businesses, teachers, students, and higher education to enhance rural, underserved student career potential in northeastern North Carolina (NC). TechMath addresses the current educational gap between real-world business and secondary education by arranging partnerships between local business and high school mathematics and science teachers. The tangible products of these partnerships are instructional modules incorporating local, real-world business problems into mathematics instruction.

This project targets approximately 75 STEM teachers (one cohort of 25 teachers each year) and 150 grade 7-12 students over three years, focusing on the Squeak media authoring tool as a modeling environment to infuse IT skills into the core STEM curriculum. Using Squeak allows STEM teachers to create 'virtual laboratories' in which to engage students in inquiry-based learning. The project is proposed as collaboration with New Hanover, Pender, and Brunswick County Schools -- all Southeastern North Carolina (SENC) school systems heavily populated by rural, underserved students.

By employing a design challenge to program an underwater vehicle to perform tasks, this project seeks to teach students about information technology, science and problem solving. Students and teachers involved in the project have face-to-face interaction with Stevens' women and underrepresented minority faculty, researchers and undergraduate students who help them design and test underwater robotic vehicles. Teachers, guidance counselors, and parents are provided with information about career options in information technology.