High school students in three rural Eastern Washington school districts will have the opportunity this summer to be modern-day explorers. Using electronic units to track water resources and other environmental features in their community, they will discover how to create maps and images of the information by combining it with other data from satellites and regional resource data banks using the latest computer mapping technology.

Students near Republic, Newport, and Colville High Schools can attend a one week science camp this August where they will be introduced to Global Positioning Systems (GPS), learning to locate slopes, streams, and other factors that effect water flow in their own communities, and how to map the data using a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) mapping program.

Science teachers from these schools spent two weeks this summer at a training workshop in Spokane, learning how to use the GPS units and GIS mapping software. Each teacher will return to school early to conduct the one-week science and computer camp, as well as implement an after-school club during the school year. The long-term goal of the project, which is funded by a grant to TINCAN (The Inland Northwest Community Access Network) by the National Science Foundation, is for teachers to introduce these new technologies into their regular science curriculum.

The Rural Schools Science and Information Technology project is a three-year program in which teachers learn a new technology each year and use it to engage students in looking at scientific data gathered in their community. After gathering geographic data this year, the teachers and students will use next summer to model the data and simulate an event, such as a flood. In the final year, they will create action computer games made more real by the use of community data.

The camps are free, include lunch and snacks, and are open to area high school students, including incoming 9^th graders and home school students. Advance registration is required. Students interested in attending the camps should contact the high school or school district directly to register by August 1.

Colville High School - August 8-12 – 9am – 4pm Call 509-684-7800 or 509-684-7850

Newport High School - August 8-12 – 8am – 3pm Call 509-447-3167

Republic High School - August 22-26 - 8am – 3pm Call 509-775-3171

An introduction to these skills could give high school students an advantage in the job market, as more and more industries use these technologies known in the field as GPS and GIS. High school and college students with these skills will be better prepared to assist professionals in rural summer jobs with the forest service, timber industry, agriculture, surveyors, or utility companies, just to name a few. Urban uses are also more and more common, such as in the fields of emergency response, city planning, and transportation. College graduates with developed skills are in demand, and will find many good job opportunities across the country.