Esri Press has announced the publication of Making Community Connections: The Orton Family Foundation's Community Mapping Program by Connie L. Knapp, the latest of several recently published books that Esri Press is aiming at K-12 students. Making Community Connections 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 that can be studied from a geographic and mapping point of view. The schoolwork 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, 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, hand-drawn maps, GIS maps, etc.) that provide a body of research to the community, which can be used to address both immediate concerns and help plan for the future.

The materials presented by The Orton Family Foundation (an Esri Business Partner) in Making Community Connections 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.

Making Community Connections (ISBN: 1-58948-071-6) is for active and curious citizens who want to learn about the world by taking it on, one community and one issue at a time. The 164-page book retails for $19.95 and is available for purchase at www.esri.com/esripress or www.esri.com/shop or by calling 1-800-447-9778 to place an order.