Our volunteer photographer, Pete Callaway, spent countless hours driving the six neighboring watersheds to add photographs to the new stories on those watersheds. Our writer/editor, Marideth Sisco, selected just four or five photos out of the 20-30 shots he provided for each story. Pete also compiled the basic data for the stories. 

Our goal for the minigrant was to add eight new content pages to the Atlas; the actual page count is sixteen, counting the karst movie and map slide show as only one page each. 

A total of 150 students completed this lesson. The children were excited to locate their school and homes in the different watersheds. However, we learned from the pilot that more time was needed to cover the material. Along with other revisions suggested by Mary and the teachers, the lesson plan is now divided into two sessions. 

What to Do about NPS includes multiple links to information and examples of Best Management Practices. Pete added a dramatic story when he photographed silting from a recently cleared pasture on a rainy day.

Interestingly, in January our webkeeper reported that the What to Do About NPS article has been linked to a page called What is a watershed? on a site currently under construction by the Prince William Environmental Network (Prince William County, Virginia). 

We anticipated creating twelve printable pages of lesson plans; the total is actually twenty-one. Teachers' responses to all the lessons were very positive. Every teacher stated her intention to use the lessons again next year in this same Earth Science unit. They liked the interactive components, and how engaged the students were by them. They commented on the motivation provided by the local content. Most of all they valued the time Mary spent with them to demonstrate the lessons. 

1. Teacher work overload. 
2. Lack of actual practice using hardware--computers and digital projection equipment. 
3. Lack of practice using Internet browsers and online resources. 
4. Assumptions that online resources are not standards-relevant.

We created lively and interesting material about familiar local places.

We built lesson plans that are standards-aligned and curriculum relevant. 

We sent resource people into classrooms to work directly with teachers and students. 

In a preliminary visit, Susie noted that the Flash plug-in necessary to watch the movie was not installed on the computers. When she found that the computer support person was unfamiliar with the Flash plug-in, Susie completed the installations herself. The value of the initial hands-on aid Mary and Susie provided cannot be underestimated. 

For many of the students and teachers this was the first time they had used the lab this school year. About 25% of the students said they had not visited a website before that day. Several of the teachers were won over by the experience, and new relationships were built with the computer resource teacher. The pilot effort in December was directly associated with an upsurge in website page hits of more than of more than 47,000, to a total of 111,332. Since then, Ava Middle School students have continued to use the lab, visiting the Atlas one or two hours a week. Led by Ava, local school districts accounted for 30% of all hits in January without the presence of Project consultants. This is an increase of more than 25% over the first quarter of last year. 

This project was a fertile field for BWP. We introduced a new level of interactive technology to the Atlas. We succeeded in designing a sequence of marketing and demonstration that produced a significant change in the participating teachers. We are pleased to meet and exceed so many of our goals and to learn from the challenges that came up. Our young people, and our creeks, are the genuine beneficiaries.