At first when I saw this issue, I thought of community partnerships, in which students work with organizations outside of school. But I realized by reading the articles, that the activities and resources also apply to the communities of learners within our own classrooms and to projects that bring people together to learn.
The article Making Science Relevant describes how students can contribute to their communities by working together on water-monitoring programs. A quick search in SciLinks using keywords such as watershed or invertebrates brings up several related websites:

• I personally cringe when someone uses words such as wacky, crazy, yucky, or creepy when describing living things, but the Wonderful, Wacky Water Critters site is actually good, despite the name. It’s written more for younger students, but if you have secondary students who struggle with reading, this may be just right for them. Among the resources for students of any age is a nice poster of aquatic invertebrates and an online dichotomous key to help students identify and become more familiar with these indicator species.
• Many sites refer back to The Stream Study. This comprehensive resource from the Izaak Walton League can get you started on doing your own investigation of water quality. I wish I would have had this when I was doing stream studies with my students and at summer science camps. It would have saved me a lot of time making up data sheets and guides!

This article is followed by How Accurate are Student-Collected Data? Recreating this study with your own students could be a neat way to investigate the concepts of reliability and instrumentation. The SciLinks code mentioned in this article TST040802 has a variety of sites, ranging from examples of data sets, online calculators, and one of my favorites Create a Graph to help students organize and display their data.
TYPO ALERT! In the article Cougars and Community, the SciLinks code is incorrect! To get to sites related to “Tracking Animals by Satellite,” use the code TST040801 OK, so there are no lions in your neck of the woods, but the article outlines an action plan for combining student investigations with community action that could apply to a variety of situations.
A decade ago, I had a conversation with a school board member, who believed it was the job of the schools to prepare students for specific jobs. I mentioned that in the area of technology, we would somehow have to prepare students for jobs that didn’t exist yet. This issue’s “Career of the Month,” Graphic Infomation Systems (GIS) Specialist, is an example of such a career. What a fascinating way to combine geography, technology, and data analysis! To find more information on careers, go to SciLinks and use the keyword careers.

Well, this conference is history, and I’m exhausted in a good way— both physically and mentally. From talks by astronaut Barbara Morgan, Rodger Bybee, and Bill Nye the Science Guy to the awesome resources in the exhibit area to the sessions in which educators so generously shared their experiences and expertise, it was a great event. Thanks to all who planned this! Of course there were a few glitches (such as a shuttle bus driver new to Boston who unexpectedly gave us a roundabout tour of the city), and the sheer size of the conference center and the surrounding hotel area was daunting, but I’m sure that all of the more than 15,000 (so I’m told) attendees found new ideas and resources for their classes and schools. I hope that they found time to soak up a little Boston history and culture, too.
Next year, the conference is scheduled for New Orleans. See you there! Until then, as they say in Louisiana, “Laissez les bon temps rouler!”

So, you’re a presenter and your time slot is the last one of the conference, and your room is the farthest from the lobby. Will anyone come? In the case of Sami Kahn’s presentation on Wikis in the elementary classroom, she didn’t have to worry! Those of us who attended (and there were quite a few) were treated to some excellent modeling (or should I say Moodle-ing) of how these tools can be used by actual 4th-graders. A lot of teachers are not keen on their students using Wikipedia as their main source of information. But Sami described a project in which her students at the Collegiate School in New York City create their own Wiki related to their annual “invention convention” showcase. The Wiki is limited to her students, and she is notified whenever any changes are made. She showed us some entries that were created while she was here at the conference. Her younger students are creating their own wiki on ocean animals, using a forum in Moodle to discuss what animals to include.

Sunday morning is a tough time for a presenter. Early departures, church services, brunch dates, or too much Saturday evening make it difficult for some to attend sessions at this time. I’m sure that Michael Barnett from Boston College was pleased to see a nice crowd at his session on “Using GIS to Model Urban Street Value.” He demonstrated a program that starts with a satellite image of an area. The students add the location of trees, buildings, parking lots, and grassy areas. He provided us with laptops to see the actual maps created by the students and then we ran an analysis program that calculated a summary of the economic benefit of the trees. But the really cool part was that the model could be modified to answer questions such as What happens if we plant more trees? Are some species of trees more beneficial than others? What happens if we pave over a grassy area to make a parking lot? Check out the Urban Ecology website for more information, including a nice tree identification resource.

Some presenters had basic lectures with PowerPoints, some provided “think-pair-share” opportunities for participants, some had laptops for participants and guided us through simulations or software tools (an advantage to sitting up front), and others had the participants actually do the hands-on activities. Most had handouts, although I was glad to see that many had just a basic one-pager outline and then gave us the URL of their website to download a variety of resources—less to carry and a lot greener!