This project has been an overwhelming success for the Hanford Reach National Monument and for the students of Sara McReynolds? Multimedia class. For the past three years, Kennewick High School Multimedia students in Richland, Washington have worked with Monument staff to create interactive websites hosted by the non-profit organization ?Hands on the Land? (http://www.handsontheland.org/home.cfm). The goal of Hands on the Land is to provide a national network of field classrooms to enhance learning of K-12 students. The organization links high school technology classes with federal agencies; students then interview agency representatives and develop websites for them. For this particular project, the Monument staff provided guidance on website content and hosted fall and spring field trips to the Monument for the students. The students website creations are also linked to the Hanford Reach National Monument website (http://hanfordreach.fws.gov).

The project has benefited both the students and the Monument. The students had the opportunity to be outdoors and experience various aspects of the Monument. They learned about wildlife, the shrub/steppe ecosystem, and the history of the Hanford site ? information that they wouldn?t have learned in the classroom. Further, because this isn?t a science or biology course, this creative project provides an opportunity to a group of students who wouldn?t ordinarily be exposed to the outdoors, or have a chance to experience and appreciate the natural world. For many of the students, it is their first trip to a unit of the National Wildlife Refuge System. It is also their first exposure to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Service's mission to conserve and protect wildlife and habitat.

The Kennewick High School Multilingual Media students worked closely with Monument staff to create three websites. To join the class, students had to be bilingual and bi-literate, and able to communicate fluently in at least two languages. Every media product they created was produced in at least two languages.

The first product was a website describing Mammal species of the Hanford Reach National Monument. During this first year of the project, students were able to learn about the ecology of their assigned species, and also were able to develop a professional product for a real client. The students were motivated to use technology to display a variety of information, make the information accessible, and use care to respect copyrights. Students drew their own depictions of the animals they profiled, and combined scientific information with original stories, animations or poetry for the site. This first product, created from scratch, became the model for subsequent years and themes for additional websites.

The second year, a website describing common bird species seen around the Monument was created. Birds are conspicuous and visible, therefore, the field trips were very successful in connecting the students with their subject and inspiring them to create accurate and informative website profiles of the species featured. During this season, even bird sounds were captured with digital recording equipment and added as an extra feature to the website. In addition to Spanish, this site also had Bosnian translation, and animations in Russian.

The third year, fish of the Hanford Reach were featured for the project. During the fall field trip, Monument staff partnered with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW) so that students could tour the WDFW Ringold and Meesburg fish hatchery facilities. Students were able to see adult Salmon returning to the hatchery, and viewed many warm water species being raised in hatchery facilities. Many donned waders and manned dip nets while attempting to capture smaller fish in sloughs of the Hanford Reach. During spring, the students were able to look for Salmon smolts on their out-migration to the ocean. This class was a much smaller class than previous years and students did an excellent job building their website although they were at a disadvantage because of their smaller class size.

One of the most valuable life-lessons students learned from this experience was that their work had to be constantly revised and edited until they produced a high-quality product that met the needs of their client. Further, assignments in this class provided students with marketable skills, and critical exposure to emerging technologies (digital cameras, digital recording, computer software and hardware, etc.) that they would not have necessarily received in a standard English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) course format. The instructor, Sara (Sarita) McReynolds deserves recognition for her efforts in continuing to interface with Hands-on-the-Land, her efforts to assist the students with the integration of their website, and the posting of the website on the Internet. Sarita was tireless in trying to work out technological problems associated with the type of project the students were producing.

For the Monument, the sites created by the multilingual class are currently the only pages of the Monument website that are in languages other than English. This gives the Monument a source for outreach to non-English speaking populations.

The Monument was planning to continue this project into the future, perhaps highlighting native plants, invertebrates, or reptiles/amphibians of the Monument. Unfortunately, however, Ms. McReynolds is leaving her position as KHS and the Multimedia class, with the multi-lingual components, will no longer be offered. The Monument does hope to perhaps continue with Hands-on-the-Land in some other capacity, or to eventually develop a similar mutually beneficial outreach program with area schools."