TUCSON K12 GIS EDUCATION PROJECTS
TUCSON K12 GIS EDUCATION PROJECTS (#5097) Robert MacArthur – University of Arizona Matt Rahr – University of Arizona
1. Abstract Over the last year, a GIS education project that began with a summer class for middle school youth, has migrated to several other schools in Tucson. This class has grown from a 4-week after school program to a for-credit class that satisfies several of the Arizona Academic Standards. The class is currently designed to take advantage of ESRI’s Mapping Our World curriculum for the first two parts, teaching students how to use GIS for global and regional planning. In the last part of the class, the students collect their own field data and integrate it with local government data to build neighborhood planning models.
2. Tucson Community Technology Education Network The Tucson Community Technology Education Network (TCTEN) grew from a GIS cooperative between the city, the county, the university, and several local groups and organizations in Tucson to share GIS data, technology, and applications. Target audiences are youth, neighborhoods and small businesses. There are over 100 participating individuals and groups in TCTEN. Their participation is voluntary. Over 600 layers are available through Pima County, orthophotos of the whole Tucson basin, and infrared imagery of much of the area.
TCTEN Homepage
Data Layers Available to TCTEN
3. Learning Theory and Initial Projects
Since one of the primary audiences of TCTEN’s efforts is youth, much of TCTEN’s work has been focused on education. As we have said, TCTEN is about extending an understanding and appreciation for GIS, and GIS related subjects such as GPS, aerial photography and the like, to the Tucson public. But we do not offer courses in GIS. Technical training can be very dull and incomprehensible to some. We try to encase the technology in real-world applications that otherwise capture the interest of the student, using these principles: •
Use local data and get the audience involved in local applications with real-world outcomes • Use domain experts extensively • Build interactive learning that can be done off-line through the Web, and allow students to learn with and from each other • Involve parents and the community in the learning The first TCTEN educational project was presented in an ESRI Educator’s conference in 2002. It put kids in a summer after-school public arts program to work on an urban renewal project – redesigning parts of downtown Tucson with trees, water fountains, benches and lighting (see http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/cte/tpac/.) The students collected data, and used it to make up plans for what should happen with a downtown thoroughfare that is to be converted into an urban walkway. They were given a budget and had to work under constraints just as in any real world application. Planners, tree experts, transportation department employees and others were guests in the class. The class last 4 weeks, and at the end of it the youths (ages 9 to 13) presented to city planners, their parents, and to the media. It was hugely successful.
Monday
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
Introduction/overview(8:30 – 9:30) Week Walk Scott Street (9:30 – 1 11) Explore on line city data (11:00 - 12:30)
Collect vegetation data (8:30 - 10:30)
Week 2 Introduction to habitat
mapping (10:30 - 12:30)
Collect building data (8:30 10:30)
Collect building data (8:30 - 10:30)
Integrate data into GIS
Stitch panoramas (10:30 Stitch panoramas Work on reports - 12:30) (10:30 - 12:30) Collect vegetation data (8:30 Collect vegetation data 10:30) (8:30 - 10:30)
Integrate data into GIS
Continue habitat Guest speakers, work on Work on reports mapping (10:30 - reports (10:30 - 12:30) 12:30)
Week Collect cultural data (8:30 Collect cultural data (8:30 3 - 10:30) 10:30)
Take Interviews (8:30 10:30)
Integrate data into GIS
Guest speakers
Work on reports
Work on reports Work on reports – last
Week minute field work 4
Visits by professionals
Portfolio presentations Career opportunities
Fourth of July -- No Class
Field trip to Pima County GIS Public Arts Class – Summer, 2002 In the fall, TCTEN began another after school GIS education project at Rogers Elementary, with kids in grades 1 through 5. This project was funded by Arizona Game and Fish to build bird habitats, particularly raptors, in the area surrounding the school. This school had no GIS software. Students worked through an ArcIMS set, that was served from the University. Students were issued orthophotos of their neighborhoods, and together with their teachers and parents, walked the neighborhood and mapped their vegetation. Domain experts – bird and tree specialists – accompanied them to help do identification, and to draw speculations on where birds might be nesting.
Rogers After-School Bird Habitat Mapping
Students, Parents and Experts on a Bird Walk
4. Follow-On Projects Encouraged by the success of the after school projects, TCTEN began looking for ways to get GIS education into formal instruction and into public school classrooms. Migrating instruction from after-school to K12 education presents many new issues. Here are a few: • • • •
teachers are busy and disinclined to try new things that will take up any more of their time the instruction needs to meet state standards many schools are not equipped to handle the technology there are rules governing students leaving school grounds to collect data
TCTEN did find a venue that satisfied some of these criteria. Project More, a school that serve Tucson’s learning-challenged high schoolers, was equipped with a computer class room that can handle GIS software. The Mapping Our World text from ESRI comes with a one-year ArcView license and canned lesson plans. But while this arrangement took care of some of the issues with formal education, it failed to satisfy our own TCTEN educational criteria – working with local data to address real-world applications. So we broke the course into two parts. In the first part, using the Mapping Our World modules, the students learned how to use GIS for global and regional planning. In the last part of the class, the students collected their own field data and integrated it with local government data to build neighborhood planning models. In particular, they worked with a wash east of the school that is a restoration target.
Project More on the Left Side of the Photo, the Wash to the Right
5. District-Wide Projects Again, encouraged by this project, TCTEN is now working on a generalized learning module that can be deployed through-out the school district, and can therefore be used in regional local applications. Such is the vegetation mapping project. This project equips a life sciences class in a high school with GPS units, aerial photographs, digital cameras, clinometers, and digital microscopes. Students go into their neighborhoods, map the vegetation and also capture attribute data – how tall, what kind of condition, etc. If they have questions, they can consult online plant identification tools at the University, or snap a picture or a microscopic image and send these to an on-line expert. For now the students are mapping the vegetation with orthophotos and GPS units. We plan to have them enter data in the future through an interactive “pin map” – using ArcIMS. Mock-ups of the sites for several of the schools involved can be found at http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/cte/vegmap.html.
Digital Microscope – Cost Around $30
This project has many appealing features. First, it can be handed down from class to class, and as the vegetation changes, the students can measure a continuity with former students. Other groups in the community, who are interested in regional data, can take advantage of this project and help support it. For example, the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, a 10-years-in-the-making regional plan to govern development in the Tucson basin is a very interested partner. This project began with workshop with several life sciences teachers. Over the summer they will build tree mapping modules into their life sciences curriculum. Once they have those modules on line, they can move into off-spring applications, such as pollen counts, sustainability modeling, and habitat mapping. Some classes will also map fruit trees and build an on-line fruit exchange, or help collect donated crops for the local food coop. Models to do help with these applications are being developed by the USDA Forest Service’s Urban Forestry program at UC Davis.
Conclusion TCTEN has had real successes extending GIS education and appreciation into the community by tying GIS education to real-world applications. Students and their parents and peers get more involved when they can see meaningful outcomes to their lessons. In this case, what they do in the class can have an immediate impact on the local ecosystem and economy. The students also benefited greatly by being put in contact with domain experts, and by sharing their learning experience with others in their neighborhood, and their parents. The modules we designed have all been relatively inexpensive, and easy to implement. There also seems to be a ready pool of domain experts, technical help and other volunteers to pitch in.
From these learning projects, TCTEN concludes that making GIS learning real and interactive greatly enhances its appeal. We encourage other communities to consider and benefit from our own experience.
Robert MacArthur – Director Network and Data Services, College of Agriculture, University of Arizona, 222 Forbes, 85721, 520-621-2489, fax - 520-626-8688, [email protected] Matt Rahr – Systems Analyst, College of Agriculture, University of Arizona, 222 Forbes, 85721, 520-621-2489, fax - 520-626-8688, [email protected]
1. Abstract Over the last year, a GIS education project that began with a summer class for middle school youth, has migrated to several other schools in Tucson. This class has grown from a 4-week after school program to a for-credit class that satisfies several of the Arizona Academic Standards. The class is currently designed to take advantage of ESRI’s Mapping Our World curriculum for the first two parts, teaching students how to use GIS for global and regional planning. In the last part of the class, the students collect their own field data and integrate it with local government data to build neighborhood planning models.
2. Tucson Community Technology Education Network The Tucson Community Technology Education Network (TCTEN) grew from a GIS cooperative between the city, the county, the university, and several local groups and organizations in Tucson to share GIS data, technology, and applications. Target audiences are youth, neighborhoods and small businesses. There are over 100 participating individuals and groups in TCTEN. Their participation is voluntary. Over 600 layers are available through Pima County, orthophotos of the whole Tucson basin, and infrared imagery of much of the area.
TCTEN Homepage
Data Layers Available to TCTEN
3. Learning Theory and Initial Projects
Since one of the primary audiences of TCTEN’s efforts is youth, much of TCTEN’s work has been focused on education. As we have said, TCTEN is about extending an understanding and appreciation for GIS, and GIS related subjects such as GPS, aerial photography and the like, to the Tucson public. But we do not offer courses in GIS. Technical training can be very dull and incomprehensible to some. We try to encase the technology in real-world applications that otherwise capture the interest of the student, using these principles: •
Use local data and get the audience involved in local applications with real-world outcomes • Use domain experts extensively • Build interactive learning that can be done off-line through the Web, and allow students to learn with and from each other • Involve parents and the community in the learning The first TCTEN educational project was presented in an ESRI Educator’s conference in 2002. It put kids in a summer after-school public arts program to work on an urban renewal project – redesigning parts of downtown Tucson with trees, water fountains, benches and lighting (see http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/cte/tpac/.) The students collected data, and used it to make up plans for what should happen with a downtown thoroughfare that is to be converted into an urban walkway. They were given a budget and had to work under constraints just as in any real world application. Planners, tree experts, transportation department employees and others were guests in the class. The class last 4 weeks, and at the end of it the youths (ages 9 to 13) presented to city planners, their parents, and to the media. It was hugely successful.
Monday
Tuesday Wednesday Thursday
Introduction/overview(8:30 – 9:30) Week Walk Scott Street (9:30 – 1 11) Explore on line city data (11:00 - 12:30)
Collect vegetation data (8:30 - 10:30)
Week 2 Introduction to habitat
mapping (10:30 - 12:30)
Collect building data (8:30 10:30)
Collect building data (8:30 - 10:30)
Integrate data into GIS
Stitch panoramas (10:30 Stitch panoramas Work on reports - 12:30) (10:30 - 12:30) Collect vegetation data (8:30 Collect vegetation data 10:30) (8:30 - 10:30)
Integrate data into GIS
Continue habitat Guest speakers, work on Work on reports mapping (10:30 - reports (10:30 - 12:30) 12:30)
Week Collect cultural data (8:30 Collect cultural data (8:30 3 - 10:30) 10:30)
Take Interviews (8:30 10:30)
Integrate data into GIS
Guest speakers
Work on reports
Work on reports Work on reports – last
Week minute field work 4
Visits by professionals
Portfolio presentations Career opportunities
Fourth of July -- No Class
Field trip to Pima County GIS Public Arts Class – Summer, 2002 In the fall, TCTEN began another after school GIS education project at Rogers Elementary, with kids in grades 1 through 5. This project was funded by Arizona Game and Fish to build bird habitats, particularly raptors, in the area surrounding the school. This school had no GIS software. Students worked through an ArcIMS set, that was served from the University. Students were issued orthophotos of their neighborhoods, and together with their teachers and parents, walked the neighborhood and mapped their vegetation. Domain experts – bird and tree specialists – accompanied them to help do identification, and to draw speculations on where birds might be nesting.
Rogers After-School Bird Habitat Mapping
Students, Parents and Experts on a Bird Walk
4. Follow-On Projects Encouraged by the success of the after school projects, TCTEN began looking for ways to get GIS education into formal instruction and into public school classrooms. Migrating instruction from after-school to K12 education presents many new issues. Here are a few: • • • •
teachers are busy and disinclined to try new things that will take up any more of their time the instruction needs to meet state standards many schools are not equipped to handle the technology there are rules governing students leaving school grounds to collect data
TCTEN did find a venue that satisfied some of these criteria. Project More, a school that serve Tucson’s learning-challenged high schoolers, was equipped with a computer class room that can handle GIS software. The Mapping Our World text from ESRI comes with a one-year ArcView license and canned lesson plans. But while this arrangement took care of some of the issues with formal education, it failed to satisfy our own TCTEN educational criteria – working with local data to address real-world applications. So we broke the course into two parts. In the first part, using the Mapping Our World modules, the students learned how to use GIS for global and regional planning. In the last part of the class, the students collected their own field data and integrated it with local government data to build neighborhood planning models. In particular, they worked with a wash east of the school that is a restoration target.
Project More on the Left Side of the Photo, the Wash to the Right
5. District-Wide Projects Again, encouraged by this project, TCTEN is now working on a generalized learning module that can be deployed through-out the school district, and can therefore be used in regional local applications. Such is the vegetation mapping project. This project equips a life sciences class in a high school with GPS units, aerial photographs, digital cameras, clinometers, and digital microscopes. Students go into their neighborhoods, map the vegetation and also capture attribute data – how tall, what kind of condition, etc. If they have questions, they can consult online plant identification tools at the University, or snap a picture or a microscopic image and send these to an on-line expert. For now the students are mapping the vegetation with orthophotos and GPS units. We plan to have them enter data in the future through an interactive “pin map” – using ArcIMS. Mock-ups of the sites for several of the schools involved can be found at http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/cte/vegmap.html.
Digital Microscope – Cost Around $30
This project has many appealing features. First, it can be handed down from class to class, and as the vegetation changes, the students can measure a continuity with former students. Other groups in the community, who are interested in regional data, can take advantage of this project and help support it. For example, the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan, a 10-years-in-the-making regional plan to govern development in the Tucson basin is a very interested partner. This project began with workshop with several life sciences teachers. Over the summer they will build tree mapping modules into their life sciences curriculum. Once they have those modules on line, they can move into off-spring applications, such as pollen counts, sustainability modeling, and habitat mapping. Some classes will also map fruit trees and build an on-line fruit exchange, or help collect donated crops for the local food coop. Models to do help with these applications are being developed by the USDA Forest Service’s Urban Forestry program at UC Davis.
Conclusion TCTEN has had real successes extending GIS education and appreciation into the community by tying GIS education to real-world applications. Students and their parents and peers get more involved when they can see meaningful outcomes to their lessons. In this case, what they do in the class can have an immediate impact on the local ecosystem and economy. The students also benefited greatly by being put in contact with domain experts, and by sharing their learning experience with others in their neighborhood, and their parents. The modules we designed have all been relatively inexpensive, and easy to implement. There also seems to be a ready pool of domain experts, technical help and other volunteers to pitch in.
From these learning projects, TCTEN concludes that making GIS learning real and interactive greatly enhances its appeal. We encourage other communities to consider and benefit from our own experience.
Robert MacArthur – Director Network and Data Services, College of Agriculture, University of Arizona, 222 Forbes, 85721, 520-621-2489, fax - 520-626-8688, [email protected] Matt Rahr – Systems Analyst, College of Agriculture, University of Arizona, 222 Forbes, 85721, 520-621-2489, fax - 520-626-8688, [email protected]
