The Environmental Science Information Technology Activities (ESITA) youth-based project provides opportunities for students in grades 9 and 10 from disadvantaged backgrounds to learn about and use IT. During each of three years, 48 students will acquire and employ IT skills as they conduct air and water quality research in their communities and research attitudes toward, and feelings about, IT among their peers.

This comprehensive project for 45 middle and high school teachers (who will pass along their learning to 4,500 students) uses inquiry-based education developed from research projects at Moss Landing Marine Labs to teach biotechnology and IT skills. Participants learn how biotechnology is used to address scientific questions and how resulting data is analyzed, manipulated, displayed, and shared.

With primary project activities completed in August, 2006, Ocean Explorers was a three-year project funded by the Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers program at the National Science Foundation (NSF) and implemented by the Center for Image Processing in Education (CIPE). The project employed GIS, digital image analysis, and ocean science as ways of incorporating information technology (IT) into science and mathematics education in California.

OMSI’s Salmon Camp Research Team is a youth-based advanced technology and natural science career exposure and training program offered in a year-round, multi-year format. It annually serves 180 reservation, rural, and urban secondary school students with Native American community affiliations and very low representation in IT-related career fields. The students work with researchers on computer modeling of complex ecological, hydrological, and geological problems.

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).

California State University San Marcos, Rochester Institute of Technology, San Diego County Office of Education, San Diego Science Alliance, K-12 High Speed Network, California State Parks, and nine southern California middle schools are collaborating to develop, implement, and evaluate teacher professional development and student learning experiences to enhance science and information and communication technologies (ICT) learning among underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students (primarily Hispanic and Native American) in grades 7 and 8.

The Bay Area Video Coalition's (BAVC) proposed Advanced Digital Pathways (ADP) project provides 150 underserved low-income 9-12 grade youths with 180 contact hours of activities in information technology (IT) to better prepare them to pursue careers in IT and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) related fields. ADP offers two full years of activities for youths from the San Francisco Bay Area to participate in the digital media technology segment of the IT field.

The Design Loft STEM Learning Program is introducing 400 underserved middle school students in California to engineering careers. The goal of the program is to develop students' ability to define and create solutions for real world problems by using "design thinking." The program's learning activities expose students to design thinking tasks that produce low-cost engineering solutions to improve the lives of poor people around the world. Students are designing cost-effective ways of increasing impoverished people's access to water, shelter, and energy.

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 Barcode of Life Initiative (BOLI) is an international biodiversity collaboration that creates a genetic encyclopedia of Earth's plants and animals using short DNA sequences that uniquely identify species groups. The goal of this strategies project is to interest students in STEM careers by engaging them in an international project to provide identification of biological species.