On a beautiful day in July after a long stretch of rain, 55 middle and high school students and teachers forfeited all of the tempting opportunities for outdoor recreation and, instead, gathered at the Darling Marine Center to work. They were there for a week-long training program that would help them understand GPS (global positioning systems) and GIS (geographic information systems), digital camcorders, web design and the process of producing a mini-ethnographic film which incorporates aspects of those technological skills. After participating in classroom exercises and fieldwork for five days, the groups ended this stage of their training with presentations of their mini films and explanation of plans for a school/community project in the coming year.
The teachers and students are part of a three-year program funded by a $1.2 million grant awarded to the Island Institute by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The project, named CREST (Community for Rural Education Stewardship and Technology) is part of NSF’s program, ITEST (Information Technology Experiences for Students and Teachers).
CREST is designed to encourage Maine students to use technology to find creative solutions to community challenges, such as how to create eco-tourism attractions or how to increase waterfront access for working and recreational uses, and to promote students’ awareness of (and interest in) technology-related careers they might pursue in Maine.
Rob Snyder, vice-president for programs at Island Institute, says he believes the Institute was awarded the grant, one of only seven nationwide, because it proposed to merge the new technology with ethnographic skills, which are used to describe a culture or community based on firsthand accounts and observation.
In the past, ethnographers have used tape recorders, still photographs, movies and video cameras for their projects. Professionals have moved forward with advancing technology, and now, with CREST, 11 Maine schools will have the same opportunity. The CREST project will use the new technologies of GPS, GIS and digital camcorders to explore the strong connections Maine coastal communities have to place. “I have a strong feeling,” says Snyder, “that in the future people will use these new technologies not as much for programming as to tell stories. They will help people find out what has been and what is current, and aid them in finding the vision to project what is needed next.”
For example, if a school decided to consider waterfront access, participants might begin by interviewing older community residents to document their stories about traditional access, and then use GPS and GIS to map these places and indicate which have been lost. They could also interview town officials, the working waterfront community and recreational boaters and fishermen to identify and map possible places to regain or create new access and record the challenges involved.
The only other project chosen by the NIS that combines ethnography with technology, Snyder said, is located in Alaska, where, like Maine, cultural roots that have been so strong are becoming increasingly fragile.
During the July week-long institute at the Darling Center (one-half of the participants attended then, the other half would come in August) classroom workshops introduced students and teachers to a mass of terminology and new skills. There were types of interview questions such as the “grand tour question” and “the Native language question;” video terms like “high and low angle,” “walk and talk,” and “insert shots;” GIS-lingo like “metadata,” “orthophoto” and “raster;” web design terms like “tags,” “ordered and unordered lists,” and “line formatting” – all from specialized vocabularies many of the participants had never heard of.
Students and teachers also separated into groups to work on their mini-ethnographic projects. Each group chose one member as the subject for their film — in one group a student who dives for scallops, in another a teacher who has led a salmon restoration project at his school. After an indoor crash course in interviewing and video techniques with Mike Kimball, assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Maine at Machias and Doug Campbell, an anthropology graduate student and independent filmmaker from York University in Toronto, groups filmed their subjects during outdoor interviews. Campbell visited each group, urging them to try varied shots and to film extra footage and background material that could later be cut in.
After their outdoor sessions on Tuesday, groups entered the computer lab for a heavy dose of new experience. At one session, they transferred GPS data collected on the Darling campus the day before onto a computer generated GIS map of Bristol. At another, they learned the intricacies of the HTML text behind a Web page, because, explained their teacher, Kristin Collins of the Island Institute, “if something breaks on your Web page, you need to know how to fix it.” Most of the participants plugged along through exercises and kept up with Collins, but occasionally someone, like a student in the Web Design class, would wail, “I’m lost!” or “Mine is still purple!” (when it was supposed to be black) and get help from Collins or another student.
At a later indoor session with Ruth Kermish-Allen of the Institute and Julie Bartsch from the Rural School and Community Trust, students and teachers learned about several community projects and viewed a movie about Cabot Dairy made by students in Cabot, Vermont, who had chosen their subject because they thought it revealed a unique aspect of their community. Then, groups gathered outdoors to brainstorm what they believe are the important and unique issues that interest them in their communities and to list and prioritize possible projects for their schools.
Student group lists included how to attract businesses into town, town history, recreational options, lobstering past and present, getting the information out to tourists, forest conservation, the lack of a youth center, mapping and maintaining town hiking. biking and ATV trails, and interviewing descendents of members of a community who participated in the America’s Cup Races between 1895 and 1903. By the end of the week, students and teachers from each school had discussed their ideas and chosen one that would be the school’s focus for the next three years.
A total of 100 teachers and students from 11 coastal and island schools are participating in this pilot CREST program. They have made a three-year commitment to the program (but not necessarily the same people) and have agreed to create a Web page that will explain and document their school’s CREST project. Bowdoin College and the University of Maine at Machias are partners in the grant. Students who participate will have the opportunity to attend career fairs and visit college campuses. Students and teachers from each school are committed to convene during the summer again during 2007 and 2008 to further hone their skills and take back what they learn to share with other members of their school community as they compile information on their chosen topic.
Participating teachers receive a stipend, and their schools are given a bundle of technical equipment and materials: four GPS units, 1 digital camcorder, a laptop computer with software for GIS, Web Share Ware, iMovie and other programs. They also receive a flash drive, tripod, fire wire cable, external microphones for the digital recorders, cassettes, extra batteries, carrying cases, textbooks, “Web Design for Teens,” a GIS text and material from the National Folk Life Center on how to conduct, record, photograph and document personal interviews.
The Island Institute’s Technical Education Specialist, Hope Rowan, will serve as tech support person for all the schools. Three teacher advisors have also been appointed: Torri Robbins of Deer Island-Stonington Elementary School as ethnographic specialist, Vicki Conover of Islesboro Central School for GIS and Louis Carrier from North Haven Community School as Web advisor.
“We hope the participants will use all the material, the equipment and their training in the summer institute to address a priority in their community,” Snyder says. He adds that the people who designed CREST believe it can serve two larger purposes: it can provide a way to build a larger community along the coast of Maine, where residents will see each other as a resource and stay in touch by e-mail or telephone, and it can help Maine coastal and island communities remain vibrant by making available training in up-to-date technological skills.