Introduction to GIS in schools

by George Dailey, ESRI

GIS in German Schools – Lessons Learned: Past Experiences and Future Outlooks (43)

The German educational system is organized by the federal states individually, each with their own terms regarding curriculum content, duration of school attendance and design of the school system. Although there have been efforts to harmonize the diverse system, major differences are still apparent.
GIS has been successfully introduced in German K-12 education in most of the German states at various speeds with different approaches. What do the different approaches look like and what are the factors surrounding – and sometimes hindering - the introduction of GIS in general-education in Germany? Examples from different German states will be presented.

Daniel Schober, ESRI Geoinformatik GmbH

read paper id 63

GIS Portal

Using GIS across different disciplines in Danish gymnasiums (High School) (63)

Torben Jensen

GIS portal

Peter Brøgger, EduGIS/Geografforlaget

Education Mission and Community Partnerships (37)

GIS Success: Education Mission and Community Partnerships (37) this paper will explore the experiences of bringing GIS to Bishop Dunne Catholic School in Dallas, Texas, USA. Of prime focus will be how GIS fits within the educational mission of the school and four central educational pillars: academic rigor, community service and social justice, geography and spatial literacy, and technology literacy. The presentation also will highlight several key projects and the importance of community partnerships.

Kate Dailey, Bishop Dunne Catholic School

read paper id 46

Article

Proposed Methodology for introducing Remote Sensing in Education for Teachers (46)

George Karoullas

GIS Crossing National Boarders - GIS A2E; A European Union Corporate GIS Training Program (42)

Since October 2002 a project, under the Leonardo Programme, is producing a comprehensive GIS training material for use within the entire EU community. The project organisation includes 9 bodies from France, Spain, Belgium, Sweden (ESRI Sweden and MS GIS & Mapping), Latvia and the Czech Republic.

The aim is to provide GIS training material available on internet, both for traditional education methods and for distant learning training sessions. It should also cover all aspects of GIS, from strategic considerations, the descision process and GIS strategies to the plain technical level. The project concludes in October 2004.

This presentation will include history, background, project purposes, project performance, planned use of the training material and an overview of the contents of the three main blocks "Strategy and GIS project leading", "GIS concepts and methods" and "Related technologies".

The block "Strategy and GIS project leading" includes topics as
- Strategies in organisation
- GIS project management
- GIS studies leading.

The block "GIS concepts and methods" includes topics as
- fundamentals in GI
- Handling standard GIS features
- Visualisation
- Technical support

The block "Related technologies" includes topics as
- GPS
- Image processing and remote sensing
- digital elevation models
- GIS and Internet
- Spatial statistics

The presentation will include a sample of the training material, how to get access to the material and some ideas of how to customize the material for a specific organisation. Finally important references for the future will be given.

Mats Söderberg

read paper id 9

Article

G.I.S.A.S.: GIS applications in seven European Upper Secondary Schools:
a Socrates Minerva project (9)

The G.I.S.A.S. project is a European Minerva pilot project whose main objectives are to develop ways and methods and to create a model on how to incorporate GIS in education and into both pre- and in-service teacher training in secondary schools in Europe.
This innovative project will not only focus on geography and environmental Education, but also try to introduce GIS in other subjects. The project partners will learn to co-operate with BSCW groupware, to use existing GIS software and to develop an integrated web-based GIS application to collect, visualize, manage and share local GIS data on water and river basins.

The digitally produced educational materials, maps and locally collected GIS data form the bases of the web-based learning environment created for the project. This learning environment is composed of the data from seven different partner schools in seven European countries and focuses on the educational needs of secondary school teachers and their students, the target groups of our project. The web-based GIS learning environment, printed publications, digital maps and the integrated web-based GIS application form the main outputs of this project, which is co-ordinated by the University of Helsinki, Finland.

The University of Helsinki will develop, test and use these outputs in real classroom situations with the Josef Stefan

Institute in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The National Board of Education in Finland will disseminate the results and products using GIS technology, so that they will be introduced into the curriculum and used in secondary schools and teacher training in Europe.

Lecturers: T. Larsson, Geography teacher (Sweden) and D. Lavollée, German teacher, Research in Sciences of Education (France)

read paper id 18

Article

WebGIS - A methodical Tool for the introduction of GIS in Schools and Universities (18)

Geographic information systems (GIS) have become an important part of daily life in Germany. However, their significance in schools remains weak but in the last 5 years remarkable progress has taken place in schools. The biggest barriers to the introduction of GIS in schools remain their cost, the necessary hardware and data. Besides, it takes a long time to learn GIS.

Therefore, WebGIS can be used as a methodical tool for the introduction of GIS. It provides a simple, straightforward and very cost-effective introduction; the use of this GIS technology is free. Besides, WebGIS can be used all over the world: only a computer with Internet access is needed – no additional (GIS-)software has to be installed.

The Department of Geography of Mainz University and the St. Katharinen High School in Oppenheim have developed various Map-Services (http://www.webgis-schule.de), which can be used for a didactically appropriate introduction of GIS in schools and in Universities. WebGIS can be used for the introduction of GIS and the use as an information tool. Three Internet-Services are online and can be used free of any charge (Rheinland-Pfalz, The Climate of Germany, World Climate).

All WebGIS services are based on ESRI ArcIMS-technology (4.X), running on a Windows-machine with an Apache Web-Server. The system was developed in close cooperation between the University and the School in order to arrange a collection of didactically conceived data components that can be directly used in classes following the general requirements of the curriculum. The applications provide the usual GIS tools (zoom, pan, identify, hyperlinks, buffer, measure, find) and even allows the user to query the database. WebGIS is a good approach to introduce the use of GIS in schools and Universities. In Germany, almost every school has access to internet and they can use the Map-Services provided by WebGIS for free. The Map-Services can be used for a didactically appropriate introduction of GIS at schools and Universities.

Dirk Schaefer, Department of Geography, Mainz University

read paper id 62

Article

Teaching GIScience based on the principle of exemplary education (62)

The teaching at Roskilde University has since the founding of the university in 1972 been heavily influenced by the didactic concept of “education based on the principle of exemplarity” or just “exemplary education”. The term “exemplary education” (originally German “exemplarischen lernen”) was coined be the German scientist Martin Wagenschein, in the 1950’s as a method to increase efficiency in the teaching of natural science. The key aspect of exemplary education is that the pupil by investigating an example is able to enter an understanding of the general complex from which the example is taken. The principle of exemplary education has at Roskilde University primarily resulted in a relatively large proportion of project work, which constitutes approximately 50 % of the student’s time, the principle can, however also be applied to course teaching. This presentation illustrates how the principle of exemplary education is applied to courses in GIScience, not only in how the courses are taught, but also in which courses are offered. A systematic presentation of the main experiences from more than five years of teaching GIScience courses is given. Finally the interplay between courses based learning and project based learning is investigated within the context of a new line of educations, focusing on geoinformatics offered at Roskilde University.

Esbern Holmes, Roskilde University

Location-allocation for predicting patient flows from the closure of the obstetrics and neonatal inpatient services (35)

The purpose of this project is to predict the impacts on patient flows resulting from the closure of an inpatient obstetric and neonatal service in Merseyside, England, using a GIS.

The closure will take place at Aintree Centre for Women's Health and four community health centres have been proposed to open. The second aim investigates whether this closure is the best option for change regarding the modernisation of women's and maternity services. The method employed is location-allocation analysis where the present situation is modelled before modelling what will happen to patient flows once the closure takes place. Models are then run to search for the optimal solution for women's and maternity services in Merseyside. Assumptions that are incorporated into the research are that women will travel to obstetric and neonatal services via private transport and will also travel to their closest facility. Distance and time are the two accessibility measurements that are investigated in the research.

This paper originates from the undergraduate dissertation of the second author for a BSc degree in Geography, under the supervision of the first author.-

Dr Seraphim Alvanides and Mr William Gilmore (University of Newcastle upon Tyne)

Different GIS Tasks for different educational levels - keynote speakers and paper presentations:

Keynote speaker: Matilde Lissau:
Experiences from implementing GIS in Danish primary schools.
read paper / Additional Notes

Keynote speaker: Karl-Erik Christensen:
GIS experiences in Danish secondary schools.
read paper

Keynote speakers: Thomas Balstrøm and Mikkel W. Toft
To which extent should students learn, understand and work with GIS in public schools, high schools and universities? (Debate paper)
read paper

read paper id 19

read paper id 19 - article

Traineeship Geo-information Analyst, experiences of two trainees (19)

The Van Hall Instituut is experimenting with a new type of Geo Information education: a mix of formal education and paid practical work. This so called traineeship Geo-information Analyst is also remarkable, because the content of the 2 year course is defined by the existing knowledge and skills of the trainee at the beginning, an investigation in the needed competencies and as a result an individual learning program. Some results and experiences will be presented.

Marinus de Bakker, Van Hall Instituut

GIS in the Geography Classroom - Methods, Benefits and Limitations (14)

More and more schools try to implement GIS technology but all in all the number of schools is relatively small. As striking reasons for the slow proliferation teachers mention the complexity of the software, missing time and lacking support by external experts. As an institution involved in the education of Geography teachers, one of our main fields is teaching teachers and students GIS enabling them to use the technology in their Geography lessons. Therefore we have a number of partner schools and several running GIS classroom projects. During the last three years different Geography

A-level courses working with the technology were observed. Our desire to improve the employment of GIS led to numerous methodolocial conclusions an further practical teaching attempts. Students, teachers and scientists have described positive and negative aspects of teaching with GIS. Some of the methods and experiences collected during the last years will be discussed in the presentation.

Dr. Gregor C. Falk
Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Geographisches Institut

Problems Based Learning, e-learning and GIS teaching (48)

The Geographical Information Systems (GIS) are tools used by a broad number of professionals. The GIS courses will be designed and developed using new tools to make them motivate to learn, with flexible schedule and opened to all the potential students joining techniques and tools like: Problems Based Learning, e-learning and self learning. We can design it with a group of professors and students like before, but now the difference is that they can live any place….all over the world!.

Miguel Calvo, HERODOTE

Workshop: “Presenting and analyzing data with ArcGIS Desktop” by Informi GIS staff.

This workshop will focus on some of the options in ArcView 8 and 9 that users might not be so familiar with. We’ll begin presenting some short demos including symbology, overlay analysis, 3D data and visualisation. The 3D Analyst and Spatial Analyst extensions will be included.

After the demos focus will be on hands-on exercises where you work with tutorial data under our supervision. Users are encouraged to bring some of their own experiences from their work with ArcView.