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Students Using Laptops to Fight Invasive Species

December 07, 2009 - PORTLAND -- The laptop computers that have been issued to Maine's middle schoolers have a new application – protecting the state from invasive species such as milfoil and Asian shore crabs.

Hundreds of students and their teachers are monitoring streams, ponds and forests, and using their computers to tell scientists where the species are showing up and where they're not.

State officials are welcoming the help. But it's the students who should benefit most from the new program, according to its creators and fans.

"Most importantly, it's giving these kids a hands-on experience with science," said former Gov. Angus King, who championed the state program that equips Maine's seventh- and eighth-graders with laptops. "I believe there are incredible levels of opportunities that this opens up."

The effort, called Vital Signs, was developed years ago by the Portland-based Gulf of Maine Research Institute.

It was formally relaunched by King and others Thursday with a new Web site designed for, and with help from, middle schoolers. The site is at www.vitalsignsme.org.

"We want to cultivate a scientifically literate public," said Alan Lishness, chief innovation officer for the institute. And with every seventh- and eighth-grader in Maine who got a laptop, he said, "that job got a whole lot easier."

The institute has already trained more than 30 middle school teachers around the state, and their students are monitoring natural areas near their schools for plants and animals that don't belong there.

The students collect field data, including temperature, weather conditions, and acidity levels in ponds and streams. They also take photos of any suspicious plants or animals, and draw diagrams to show where they found them.

Then they use the laptops to post the data and photos so scientists can check the findings and ask questions.

"We get to see the other kids' data, too," said Diana Allen, a seventh-grade science teacher at Sanford Junior High School. "We (monitor) a pond. The guys in Kennebunk do a river."

The site is open to other users, who can register and monitor their own backyards.

Invasive species, such as weeds that foul lakes and beetles that kill trees, are considered a top threat to Maine's natural resources. It's almost always ordinary citizens who first report new infestations, said Andy Fisk, director of the Bureau of Land and Water Quality in the Maine Department of Environmental Protection.

Fisk called Vital Signs a "quantum leap" in the fight against invasive species. "We need everybody to start working on this issue," he said.

"We'll actually be the beneficiaries of their work," said Paul Gregory, an invasive-species specialist with the DEP. But, he said, the data the students collect is just the start. The experience will turn the students into scientists, and stewards.

"These kids are never going to look at that water body the same way again for the rest of their lives," Gregory said.

Some of Allen's students in Sanford helped design the Web site during a pilot phase in the last school year. Two of them, Brandon Sherman and Kayla Bragdon, now eighth-graders, helped celebrate the launch Thursday in Portland.

They're good examples of how the laptop-based science program is having a big impact on students, Allen said.

Bragdon said she always liked science, but now she's hooked after studying the pond and helping the professional scientists.

"Last year was a boost for me," Bragdon said. "The laptops are a big help."

By JOHN RICHARDSON, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, December 4, 2009


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