Book Description

Making Community Connections: The Orton Family Foundation Community Mapping Program is designed to bring teams of teachers and their students together with community members to study a problem, a resource, a condition -- any matter of interest and importance to the community. The school work includes gathering and examining existing information, discovering new facts through field investigation, and mapping the resource using GIS/GPS tools. Not only do the students meet and work with community mentors and experts who participate in the classroom and help with the field studies, they also typically hold public forums to gather input on the resource and their work. At the end of the semester or project the students hold a public forum to present their work in a variety of forms (including video conferences, speeches and presentations, reading of narratives, display of hand-drawn maps, GIS maps, etc.), providing a body of research to the community, which can be used to address immediate concerns and help plan for the future. The use of the word "mapping" in the name of the program indicates the importance of, and the commitment to, the use of GIS/GPS mapping technology. The Orton Family Foundation Community Mapping Program has found that the use of technology, and particularly this mapping technology, excites students and provides a powerful incentive to participate. However, the program, this book, and place-based education in general call for more than just the mapping of resources; they entail a more inclusive and integrative look at the world we all live in. Invariably, the Community Mapping Program makes more clearly visible the connections of the many and varied factors influencing or affecting the particular object of study. Concepts of sustainability, responsibility, integration, and the larger picture find their way into classroom discussions and are then mapped in a variety of ways. The materials in Making Community Connections have been constructed to provide a solid foundation and flexible framework for original projects created and developed by students, their teachers, and their communities, allowing explorations and investigations of places and problems of interest and concern to them. Book jacket.