GIS in School Geography

[KarlD]

What sort of GIS should all pupils leaving school have done?

What dsort of spatial awareness and spatial literacy is needed in
geographical studies?

What competences will teachers need to meet these needs?

Make comments on the dcuments provided.

[jkerski]

Karl:

In my view of the ideal educational world, all students leaving
secondary school or university, for that matter, should have grappled
with a real issue using real-world data, and used spatial thinking in
the process. I am much more concerned about doing spatial analysis
with GIS and relevant issues--whether they be urban sprawl, coastal
erosion, typhoons, habitats, watersheds, climate change, energy,
population and migration--and I am less concerned about specific GIS
software skills. The software and tools change over time, and they
can always pick up more on the job. But if we can foster the "big
picture" critical thinking, geographic thinking, while they are still
in school, I think we will have done a great service, and they will be
well equipped to use whatever software they have in the future. I
would also like them to grapple with a local or regional issue, and
with a global issue, using GIS.

Those other questions you pose are important as well and I will hold
off for now to hear what others have to say about the above and about
the other questions. Thanks for posting these questions!

Joseph Kerski

[Dr. Gadget]

Dr. Kerski makes perhaps the most important point that needs to be
discussed. He correctly points out that to "do" GIS you must first
"know" geography. Geography is the "G" in GIS as Dr. Jerry Dobson has
pointed out in his columns of the same name. Without a fundamental
ability to first perceive, then acknowledge the spatial nature of
problems, the GIS is are rather ineffective tool. As Dr. Kerski
points out there are any number of potential real-world problems that
can be analyzed with GIS, or without it for that matter. I've always
been a strong believer in project based learning because it gives
incentives for the process itself. What we need then is a set of
geographic concepts that we hope to achieve from these activities.

After having taught GIS and GIS related courses since 1983 I find that
the primary difficulties in learning the technology revolve around a
lack of problem identification and problem solving skills (whether
spatial or aspatial for that matter), and a lack of incentive to learn
those skills. Dr. Kerski's idea of providing regional, and/or global
problems gets at the heart of this.

A quick response also to the question of what competencies do the
teachers need is warranted. In many cases, at least here in the
United States, the (k-12) teachers are burdened with a host of
activities not related to teaching. Additionally, they are forced,
through the "no child left behind" law to teach to the test. Asking
them to learn more technology is probably not going to be as
successful as one might hope. They are often willing but simply don't
have the time to learn these or the technology to implement them.
Having said that, it would certainly be possible to provide
opportunities for them to learn the basic skills necessary to be
successful at GIS. As a former secondary school teacher what I always
looked for was examples that I could modify. The examples could be a
wonderful resource for the teacher to adapt to their own situation.

Thank you for posing these questions and for allowing us to
contribute.

Mike DeMers

[KarlD]

We are reminded of the National Geography Standards published by
National Geographic back in 1994.

http://www.ncge.org/publications/tutorial/standards/