Community for Rural Education, Stewardship and Technology (CREST), a comprehensive project for students and teachers, currently networks the Island Institute, University of Maine-Machias, Bowdoin College, and 11 island and coastal schools in a learning community that directly impacts 55 students and 44 teachers, and indirectly impacts 1,700 additional students. CREST focuses on delivering database development, GIS mapping, web design and ethnographic research skills to students and teachers in Maine's most remote locations. This interdisciplinary, standards-based approach is reconnecting students to their communities and providing insight into applicable IT and STEM careers through local service-learning projects based in the surrounding Gulf of Maine ecosystem. The two-year renewal of CREST, with technology as a tool and place-based education as a vehicle, will expand to 16 schools with168 participants and a new regional collegiate partner, continuing to demonstrate more ways in which IT and STEM studies and careers can diversify and support natural resource-based communities and economies.
