Publicly funded multisite evaluations should help bring safe, effective interventions to the mental health and substance abuse treatment fields. Two principles, science-based practice and stakeholder participation, drive multisite evaluations of behavioral interventions. We examine the roles of these principles in the five programs described in this volume and draw lessons for future studies.
The ITEST Learning Resource Center at EDC developed an online database of instruments developed by ITEST project evaluators and researchers from 2003 to 2007. This 2007 article details the purpose and development of that database and highlights three instruments from it that represent the kind of evaluation tools archived there. While the database is no longer available, the three instruments described in the article provide useful examples of project-developed evaluation tools. More information about the database and the instruments can be obtained by emailing stelar@edc.org.
Geospatial technologies have emerged over the last 15 years as one of the key tools used by environmental scientists (NRC 2006). In fact, educators have recognized that coupling geospatial technologies with environmental science topics and scientific datasets opens the door to local and regional scientific investigations (McInerney 2006). Over the last three years, we have been working to provide tools, curriculum, and resources that allow students to learn science through authentic inquiries using their own scientific data. In this article, we describe the use of geographic information system
Spatial literacy is a new frontier in K-12 education. This article describes a place-based introductory GIS/GPS middle school curriculum unit in which students used measuring tools, GPS units, and My World GIS software to collect physical and spatial data of trees to create a schoolyard tree inventory. Maine students completed "memory maps" of their schoolyards as a pre/post exercise assessment. A statistically significant increase in students' spatial awareness was documented. A technology-based curriculum can significantly increase students' spatial awareness especially in a place and