Egyptian teachers learn about the many competing demands among water users.

How much of the body is water? This teacher is learning how best to explain the concept to kids.

In the "Blue Planet" activity, participants learn about how much of the surface of the Earth is water.

Project WET is on the forefront of digital learning with DiscoverWater.org, a free, innovative way to teach and learn about our most precious natural resource, water.

DiscoverWater.org offers:

• Fun interactive activities
• Online quizzes to check for understanding
• The opportunity to Take Action in your own community to conserve and protect water
• Printable Science Notebook pages
• Complete Educator Resources for classroom lesson planning

According to the Digital Learning Day website, digital learning is:

"...Any instructional practice that is effectively using technology to strengthen the student learning experience. Digital learning encompasses a wide spectrum of tools and practices, including using online and formative assessment, increasing focus and quality of teaching resources and time, online content and courses, applications of technology in the classroom and school building, adaptive software for students with special needs, learning platforms, participating in professional communities of practice, providing access to high-level and challenging content and instruction, and many other advancements technology provides to teaching and learning. In particular, blended learning is any time a student learns, at least in part, at a supervised brick-and-mortar location away from home and, at least in part, through online delivery with some element of student control over time, place, path, and/or pace."

Celebrate Digital Learning Day with a visit to DiscoverWater.org!

You can celebrate and learn about wetlands--without disturbing any ducks or plants--by visiting Investigate Fresh Water at DiscoverWater.org! At the Investigate Fresh Water page, you can:

• Explore fresh water and terrestrial environments, including wetlands and learn about the animals that call them home.
• Watch a video about macroinvertebrates.
• Create a personalized Take Action Poster as a reminder about how you can help protect wetlands.
• Print out and complete a My Science Notebook page.
• Check out the complete Educator Resources, including activities, assessments, extensions and standard correlations.

World Wetlands Day is a great way to bring wetlands into your classroom or home!

1. The Blue Planet (water on earth)
2. The Incredible Journey (water cycle)
3. A Drop in the Bucket (available drinking water)
4. Aqua Bodies (water in our bodies)
5. No Bellyachers (water and disease)
6. Sum of the Parts (water use and contamination)
7. Water Meter (conservation and water use)
8. Seeing Watersheds (watersheds)
9. 8-4-1, one for all (water use)

Check out the new books in Spanish or Portuguese on the Project WET Store.

The new year got off to a great start for all of us at the Project WET Foundation with a wonderful article about and interview with Project WET USA's Executive Director, Laurina Isabella Lyle, PhD. Published in BALANCE, a monthly publication of the Bozeman Daily Chronicle, the profile of Laurina highlighted some of the work she does and a lot of the work that we do:

Laurina Lyle has always been interested in the environment. From her studies in school, to her current position as executive director and national network coordinator of Project WET U.S.A., Lyle said she has always strived to remain environmentally active. Lyle, however, never imagined that she would end up directing her environmental interests toward water...

Click here to read the rest of the article.

As WSP says,"Living without access to clean water or sanitation is no joke, but humor can also touch on complex and often sensitive issues." Produced since 2002, the annual Cartoon Calendar raises awareness around WASH issues and is widely distributed in the WASH community. The 2012 theme was Gender in Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, so the contest asked people to consider water and sanitation challenges from a gender perspective to call attention to some of the inequalities that cause women and girls to be disproportionately affected by failures in water and sanitation services.

Enthusiastic about the topic, LAC Project Manager Julia Nelson, International Projects Assistant Morgan Perlson and Communication Specialist Nicole Rosenleaf Ritter sat down to brainstorm ways to make a serious point about water and gender in a humorous way. Ultimately we settled on the idea of a "Water School for Men," submitting the following short description to WSP as our contest entry:

Since women are disproportionately burdened with the task of procuring water, our idea is to depict a classroom in which eager men take "lessons" from women about water: how to carry water without spilling it, how to teach themselves to read while they are walking to find water, how to carry water and a child at the same time, how to avoid being attacked while they fetch water, etc. The role reversal would highlight a few of the many problems that women face due to the cultural expectation that they will find and fetch water for their families.

To our delight, we received word yesterday that our "Water School for Men" idea was one of three chosen for inclusion in the 2012 calendar, occupying the February spot:

"Our" cartoon was developed by Frank Odoi, an award-winning cartoon artist living in Kenya. Mr. Odoi's work is currently being published in Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and the United Kingdom, and he was Kenya's Cartoonist of the Year in 1985, 1986, 2004 and Best strip Cartoonist in 2008 as well as the 2005 Cartoonist of the Year in Ghana.

Thanks to WSP for producing this excellent and fun resource.

Here's what kept us busy in 2011:

• The Sustaining the Blue Planet: Global Water Education Conference attracted more than 200 people from 40 countries to discuss how to discuss how water education can lead to sustainable solutions for global water issues .

• The Project WET Curriculum and Activity Guide 2.0 was completed and published in time for distribution and launch at the Sustaining the Blue Planet conference.

• With support from Nestlé Waters North America, Project WET developed, designed and launched DiscoverWater.org, a free, interactive web experience for children to learn about the importance of water.

• In preparation for the DiscoverWater.org launch in late September, Project WET staff hosted 10 webinars to introduce educators to the site.

• Project WET welcomed 12 new Project WET USA host institutions and 12 new international host institutions.

• On World Water Day, Project WET was involved in festivities in as many as 110 countries through our work with the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-HABITAT), World Water Monitoring Day and Nestlé Waters.

• The Project WET Foundation signed a partnership agreement with the U.S. National Park Service to launch Discover the Waters of America's National Parks, a project focused on educating people about the special water places that belong to all U.S. citizens.

• Through our longstanding relationship with conservationist Valerie Gates, Project WET facilitated the long-term loan of the educational sculpture "One World One Water" to the city of Bozeman and hosted a series of lectures around the topic of water.

• In cooperation with UN-HABITAT, the Project WET Foundation completed Spanish-language customizations of Project WET's water, sanitation and hygiene education materials for five countries in Latin America and conducted writing and training workshops in the pilot countries.

• Project WET launched a WASH pilot project in Mangalore, India; also in cooperation with UN-HABITAT.

• Project WET President and CEO Dennis Nelson was featured as one of 60 water sector thought leaders worldwide in the Future of Water virtual conference.

• Project WET's Water Education blog was named one of the Top 25 Water Conservation Blogs and was featured in DefeatDD's end-of-the-year newsletter as one of the five most popular blog entries of 2011.

• Project WET joined 19 other water, sanitation and hygiene organizations to endorse and launch the WASH Sustainability Charter.

• Two new members joined the Project WET Foundation Board of Directors: NASA Astronaut Richard Arnold and USAID Senior Education Advisor Joe Kitts.

• In both April and September, Project WET brought Educator Astronaut Ricky Arnold to Bozeman for public and school lectures about his time in space and his unique view of Earth as the Blue Planet.

• The Project WET Water Education Portal went live, offering a virtual meeting place for educators to discuss, collaborate and share resources around water education.

We look forward to another busy year in 2012. Happy holidays to all our readers!

With the full Conference Proceedings now available, we wanted to share some of what we have heard from participants in September's Sustaining the Blue Planet conference. In both formal surveys and informal follow-up conversations, participants in the Sustaining the Blue Planet conference have been overwhelmingly positive about their experiences at the event:

• 92 percent of survey respondents said they would want to attend another Sustaining the Blue Planet conference in Bozeman in two years.
• 93 percent said they were satisfied or highly satisfied with the organization of the conference.
• 92 percent said that the sessions they attended were either good or excellent.
• 96 percent were satisfied or highly satisfied with the conference General Sessions/Plenaries.

Here are some of their comments:

"All the sessions that I attended were excellent; the speakers were well prepared and willing to share freely with the audience."

"This was a true 'fields of fields' conference, bringing in every aspect of water: technology, health, education, access and more!"

"It's hard to pick out just one session or event [as my favorite]. It was wonderful to have so many opportunities to meet and talk about what others are doing across the globe to provide clean water, and to facilitate water education."

"I would estimate that I have been to more than 500 conferences of all types in the past 37 years of working in the international water sector. The Sustaining the Blue Planet conference was without doubt one of the best. When I say ‘best' I mean productive. Not only was it the right size of gathering, but it also involved the ‘right' people. A conference of this size is small enough to permit one-on-one interactions as well as the chance to get to the nitty-gritty of what is on people's minds, and large enough that the most pressing questions affecting water education are going to be on somebody's agenda.

"I REALLY enjoyed interacting with so many committed and pro-active people."

"Thanks for inviting us to the terrific conference in Bozeman. It was very impressive...and I mean more than the competence/professionalism. The passion of the participants was overwhelming!"

"I've been to conferences all over the world, and this is the most perfect one I've ever attended."

The full Conference Proceedings from the Sustaining the Blue Planet: Global Water Education Conference are now online, with all of the furnished presentations gathered in one place, along with links to the conference photos and videos. We hope the Proceedings will be a tremendous resource for you and that you will consider sharing them with friends and colleagues who were not able to join us in Bozeman.

The Project WET Portal—a dynamic online destination where Project WET users around the world can meet and collaborate—is now live at portal.projectwet.org. There are two levels of membership: General and Guide.

General Membership is free and open to anyone who is interested in Project WET. General members do not need to have taken a workshop or have an access code, and they won't be able to see or access all parts of the Portal. They can participate in discussion groups for the Project WET Curriculum and Activity Guide 2.0 and Discover Water as well as some other areas of the Portal. General members can upgrade for free to a Guide Membership by taking a Guide 2.0 workshop through a local Project WET Host Institution.

Guide Membership is one of the "perks" of participating in a Guide 2.0 workshop. Using the code on the back of the new Guide, Guide members can log in, complete a profile and have access to all materials on the Portal.

To learn more, visit the Portal or contact Project WET USA's Theresa Schrum.