GIS in School Curricula

In the struggle to help students of all ages find their way in life, teachers use many tools.
Some help students think, some help them acquire knowledge, some help them feel, some help
them express their understandings in ways that others can follow. No one tool can ever
accomplish all things for all students. But every now and then, a new tool appears which can
change the course of education for many students, of all ages, by introducing new ways of
thinking and seeing and working. A geographic information system (GIS) is such a tool.

Many teachers have asked for "the curriculum" to use with GIS. The answer is like a Zen
koan. The curriculum is all things, and nothing, because GIS is just a tool. It encourages both
individual exploration and long range collaborative efforts. It fosters integration of broad types
and volumes of information, yet feeds on detailed data of particular subjects or regions. The heart
of the system is robust hardware, powerful software, and special data, but the most important
element by far is the mind of the user, and his or her ability to think creatively, query intuitively,
and work iteratively. It can help make plain the answers to urgent and powerful questions, but the
tool itself contains not a single answer.

Because of these incongruities, it is often difficult for teachers to grasp how the tool can or
should be used. What follows is a list of scenarios for thinking about incorporating the tool
within one's classroom.

ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

In the elementary classroom, teachers can make very effective use of GIS. Although such
powerful technology can seem too rich for younger students, it should not be restricted solely to
the upper grades. Teachers who are not fully comfortable with GIS can still use it to great
advantage by engaging just a few capacities and exploring the local area. Much helpful
introductory work can be done even with no computer at all.

Primary teachers could help students start to learn the critical concepts of scale and
perspective through drawing the classroom by hand on paper. Once the classroom is understood
as a space, area, or region, teachers or students can draw the room within ArcView, perhaps as a
group project. When complete, students can zoom in and out at will, seeing greater or lesser
detail or clarity. Classes can add more rooms on subsequent days, and over time even construct
an entire community with different layers. Even though this may not be exactly registered to the
surface of the earth by latitude and longitude, the data will be correct internally, positioned in the
correct relative location.

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 With a scanner, teachers can put an existing city map or highway map, or even a hand-drawn
neighborhood version, into the computer as a plain image. Once inside, this map can be richly
annotated with new points, lines, and areas, each of which can also carry information about the
nature of the feature. That is, on a local map, this is the spot where Tony lives. Tony plays
soccer, likes to swim, and goes to religion class on Thursday. Where are other students with
whom Tony could go to these events? And, if the base image was geographically registered,
these new points, lines, and areas will be geographically correct as well.

Registering an image is often a very simple mathematical process. Images need simply to be
accompanied by a small file indicating one control point, how much the picture is skewed, and
how many units of real space are represented by each pixel. The process of determining these six
numbers is often very straightforward, a good "real world" test for math students.

Young students can even practice the advanced skill of transformation. Given a piece of
paper with a simple 1x1-inch line drawing of a face, can they make a 2x2-inch reproduction of
it? It may help to draw a 1/2-inch grid on the face and a 1-inch grid on the target paper, in order
to provide control points. Once they have transformed a simple face, they can practice on a more
complex outline, such as a car. When that is satisfactorily done, they can move to a larger
expansion of a simple map. In later years, students might be expected to use this same skill in
collaborating on a complex wall sized mural, a community map, or a world map.

With an already existing data network of local streets, students or teachers can create a
simple data file of street addresses and use the power of GIS to match the addresses to the map.
The computer can pinpoint the positions of student homes, special community features, even
everyday items such as trees or trash bins or light poles with burned out bulbs.

All these geographic explorations will help them learn the "where" of geography: identifying
where things are in relation to other places. Such explorations are unlimited in scope. Students
can catalog their community by residents, businesses, facilities, or features. But they can also
explore richness surrounding them in the "what": what are particular places like?

Even young students can build, maintain, and explore legitimate databases. The location of
particular items in the school building, the counties and states identified in car license plates seen
at various spots, the home towns, states, or countries of professional athletes ... all these and
infinitely many more data sets are waiting for students to construct them. The more rich the data,
the more elaborate the explorations can grow.

MIDDLE SCHOOL

In the middle grades, students can add in the technologies of global positioning systems and
remote sensing. Understanding satellites and the gathering of general or detailed data, they can
begin exploring the rich galaxies of information now being accumulated. They can practice
triangulation within the classroom, perhaps leading classmates to mini-treasures at 3-D
coordinates through the use of latitude, longitude, and elevation. They can create mosaic images

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by generalizing commercial maps or air photos upward in tiny squares, identifying and coloring
according to land use or elevation or vegetation.

Through telecommunication, students can share data with others around the world and
explore infinitely many subjects. They can track the migration of butterflies, the impact of
storms, the foods and politics and children's issues in distant lands. They can conduct localized
water quality experiments and share the data with schools upstream and down. They can match
earthquake epicenters and fault lines and mountain ranges and cities.

With so much data available, the opportunities abound for exercising various intelligences.
Students can explore data by mapping, or tinkering with tables, or bringing data into a chart, or
all three at once. They can incorporate multimedia elements in creating their vision of a local
problem, a regional happening, or a global condition. They can craft papers which document the
evolution of a study, richly illustrated with maps, tables, charts, and pictures.

HIGH SCHOOL

In high school, the sky is the limit for uses of GIS. Students could explore topics in physical,
natural, or social sciences constantly, becoming very skilled in advanced instances of what the
younger students do. Mathematical issues could be represented visually, with tables and charts of
endless variety and content. English and language classes could explore characteristics of a place
that might influence authors to write in particular ways. Art classes could explore the varied ways
in which visual symbols are interpreted.

Outside of class, students may find valuable employment or internships with organizations
exploring social, economic, or development conditions. Very often, the adults in such
organizations lack the time or technical skills to conduct focused geographic analyses, but have a
clear vision of what they want, which opens the door for long-term relationships with students.

High school is often marked by community service projects, which provide additional venues
for GIS. Helping a library develop resources for use by the public, helping a city plan new bike
paths or explore potential environmental issues, or doing independent research into the changing
character and needs of the community ... these are all worthwhile options.

ALL LEVELS

The ideal in all grade levels, of course, is for instruction style not to be constrained by limited
access to tools. However, in reality, many teachers and schools do not yet have hardware
sufficient to provide students with unlimited access. Computers may be insufficiently powerful,
or only in a lab, or only on a handful of carts that roll in to serve 30 students, or only as a single
robust machine, perhaps even just the one that the teacher has at home. So, how do teachers take
advantage of the technology when handcuffed by limited access?

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 In each case, there are strategies for using the tool to enhance the curriculum. The key is to
identify modes that might allow the strength of the tool to demonstrate its value. Some teachers
use color printers to prepare hard copy displays. Others create digital pictures with which to
populate a lab of low-powered machines. Others use existing low-powered machines to create
tabular data which can be engaged in the GIS station. Others use large display devices to engage
the entire class in group exercises all at once. Others cycle students or groups through various
classroom stations including one using GIS.

Whatever the method, the principle remains the same. Teachers who use GIS most effectively
are ones who offer students the chance to work on open-ended questions, explorations, and
projects to meet their curricular goals.

The question for many teachers has been "How do I teach about GIS?" Perhaps a more
appropriate question might be "How do I teach with GIS?" There is a substantial challenge in
engaging GIS. What may once have been a predictable course of study when led in lockstep by a
teacher can develop and evolve instead in any number of directions when students are given the
chance to explore. What was once a predictable outcome may no longer be possible. Or it may be
powerfully reinforced through parallel channels not previously followed

The challenge, thus, is for teachers to support students in their learning, to guide and mentor,
but to permit the students to construct their own knowledge. Teachers can still deliver
information using GIS, but once students get involved in a hands-on fashion and can follow their
own questions, the technology opens doors for diverse pathways and discoveries.

But it is in precisely this situation where teachers may perform the ultimate service. When a
teacher models the "lifelong learner" for his or her students, s/he teaches a most valuable lesson.
When a teacher permits students to define their own channels of exploration, the students may
see that learning never stops, as the teacher learns new information and see new relationships
right alongside the student. Demonstrating this over and over again, the teacher may create in the
students a disposition for learning. This mindset is of inestimable value.

Of all the important things that a student may learn when engaging GIS ... beyond even the
disposition to see with a spatial perspective ... the lifelong joy of learning, the practice of iterative
questioning, and the skill of critical thinking may be the most valuable.

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