Fishing for Funds
Brigham next worked with a grants writer to secure funding for the project. As luck would have it, said writer was also a fishing fan. Accordingly, their empassioned proposal (which they called "Go Fish") earned a $50,000 grant to launch the program in the eleven school districts.

The funds now enable the districts to send two-teacher teams through four days of staff development. In addition, each of the teams will take home a 55-gallon aquarium, stand, and filter, as well as a Dell laptop loaded with the Microsoft Office Suite. Rounding out the bundles will be the LabPro Water Quality Package, which includes sensors, electrodes, a 4-wavelength colorimeter, and the LabPro handheld interface.

From Teachers to Students
By the start of the 2004 school year, all of the teacher teams will complete their training on the new technology tools. At "Camp WYSIWYG," a series of staff development sessions staged each summer by Brigham and his team, teachers from the local districts will learn to connect the Vernier probes to their laptops to monitor dissolved oxygen, pH levels, turbidity of the waters, nitrate and nitrite concentration, ammonia levels, and more.

Next, the educators will use the data they collect to populate Excel spreadsheets, creating colorful charts and graphs to track the changes in water conditions and quality over time. Subsequently, the data will enable teachers (and later, their students) to observe how conditions in an aquarium differ from those in streams, what the implications might be for the fish, and so on.

"We're striving to provide students with an opportunity to gather data on those fresh-water indices most critical for trout survival," notes Brigham. "The students will be using Vernier probes in the aquarium water, where the trout will hatch and grow. Afterwards, they'll compare the tank water with local stream samples. During the course of the next school year each district will then forward their best lessons with supporting documentation to us, so we can share all of the findings."