Finding Their Way with GIS
geospatial information technologies (GIT) and products,
such as Google Earth, global
positioning systems (GPS), and geographic information systems (GIS),
have a wide range of uses, from city
infrastructure planning to monitoring animal migration patterns. These
tools are now integrated into cell
phones and automobile navigation
features, and interactive maps using
these technologies appear on nightly
news broadcasts and are featured in
news articles. So it’s rapidly becoming
critical for students to learn how to
use these tools for visualizing, mapping, and analyzing multiple layers of
georeferenced data.
But there are challenges to using
geospatial technologies in school, including a lack of classroom curriculum
materials. To address this problem, we
established a partnership involving two
teacher-educator/researchers and two
seventh grade technology classroom
teachers in an urban mid-Atlantic
middle school to collaboratively design
and develop an inquiry-driven instructional unit that focused on promoting
spatial-thinking skills.
About Our School
Our school enrolls students from
diverse ethnic backgrounds, and it
has a large transient population, with
20% of the students transferring to the
school during the academic year. All
students in the seventh grade rotate
through a technology class consisting
of 30 instructional days. Technology
class students are heterogeneously
grouped and include students of all
ability levels, including students with
disabilities. English language learners
make up about 20% of the class.
Many of our students are geographically unaware. At the start of the unit,
less than one-third of the students
were able to articulate the correct
direction they face when they walk
out of the main entrance of the school
building.
In addition to developing their technology skills, students learned geography content and skills in the context
of real-world applications and experiences. The resulting unit addresses
both the NETS•S and the National
Geography Standards.
GIS Storm Sewers Unit
We used the Understanding by Design framework to create a 16-day
GIS storm sewers unit. The unit was
taught in the three trimesters of the
2007–2008 school year. The teacher-educator/researchers established a
regular presence in the classrooms
to support the use of geospatial technologies and worked as essential
partners to promote effective learning
By Alec M. Bodzin, Thomas C. Hammond, Jane Carr, and Serena Calario
strategies. After each trimester, we
made revisions to the curriculum and
assessments to enhance the learning
activities and to modify the instructional supports.
In this unit, students used handheld
GPS devices as well as Google Earth
and the GIS application ArcExplorer
(Java Edition for Education), both of
which can be downloaded from the
Internet for free. These tools provide
a variety of methods for analyzing
spatial patterns within and among layers of georeferenced data. These particular applications have a relatively
simple interface, so they are easier
to learn than their more robust GIS
counterparts.
The unit began by presenting students with the following challenge:
Our community has a horrible flooding problem. When it rains, the water
flows like crazy and becomes inches
deep on the streets. On rainy days, kids
walk into the video store with wet socks
and shoes to get their video games.
Huge puddles form in front of the ice
cream shop, and nobody wants to walk
