All rights to the Community Mapping Program (now called CMaP) have been legally assigned to the Institute for Technology Development. Please see the "about the author" section at the bottom of the page for more information on this exciting change.

This book is designed to bring teams of teachers and their students together with community members to study a problem, a resource, a condition—any matter of interest and importance to the community. The school work includes gathering and examining existing information, discovering new facts through field investigation, and mapping the resource using GIS/GPS tools. Not only do the students meet and work with community mentors and experts who participate in the classroom and help with the field studies, they also typically hold public forums to gather input on the resource and their work. At the end of the semester or project the students hold a public forum to present their work in a variety of forms including video conferences, speeches and presentations, reading of narratives, display of hand-drawn maps, GIS maps, etc. thus providing a body of research to the community which can be used to address immediate concerns and help plan for the future.

The use of the word “mapping” in the name of the program indicates the importance of, and the commitment to, the use of GIS/GPS mapping technology. The Orton Family Foundation Community Mapping Program has found that the use of technology, and particularly this mapping technology, excites students and provides a powerful incentive to participate. However, the program, this book, and place-based education in general call for more than just the mapping of resources; they entail a more inclusive and integrative look at the world we all live in. Invariably, the Community Mapping Program makes more clearly visible the connections of the many and varied factors influencing or affecting the particular object of study. Concepts of sustainability, responsibility, integration, and the larger picture, find their way into classroom discussions and are then mapped in a variety of ways.

The materials in Making Community Connections have been constructed to provide a solid foundation and flexible framework for original projects created and developed by students, their teachers, and their communities, allowing explorations and investigations of places and problems of interest and concern to them.

About the author:

The Orton Family Foundation is very pleased to announce, as the culmination of a six-year “seed and launch” strategy, that the Foundation's award-winning Community Mapping Program has moved to the Institute for Technology Development (ITD), a Mississippi-based nonprofit research institute affiliated with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Building on the Foundation's work to design and implement this place-based youth education program - newly renamed CMaP - ITD will apply its background in technology and product development to dramatically expand the program's reach to youth and communities across the country.

Dr. George May, ITD's President and CEO, sees CMaP as a proven vehicle for inspiring in young people an appreciation for the transformative power of technology. “Through CMaP, students not only learn about technologies like GIS and remote sensing, but they learn how to apply them for the betterment of their communities and the society as a whole.”