GIS for Schools

GIS Kids Camp is a great way to prepare future GIS professionals. ESRI K-12 staff and educators from around the world offer special hands-on sessions with kids of all ages. Children have an opportunity to work through general computer skills, see an overview of GIS, and do specific projects with ESRI software.

Charlie Fitzpatrick, ESRI K-12 Education Manager, shares an activity he developed during the ESRI 2006 Kids Camp and his insights on the capacity of our young people to accept the challenge of manipulating GIS information.

* * *

This year I wanted to have the youth tackle a more elaborate activity, an intellectually aggressive challenge, involving simultaneous operation in multiple software packages, decision-making, data creation, 2-D and 3-D visualization, and presentation generation. It was the first time we had tried this activity in this configuration, so it involved a bit of guesswork as to timing. Some preceding activities leaked into the time allocated for this event, and we had some glitches that caused some computers to freeze during the process, requiring some random re-starts. These hiccups, and an absolute deadline for ending the session, caused us to stop before we wanted. The team that was farthest along was about 90% complete when we halted.

I lobbied for such an aggressive activity because I've been convinced that typical high school students are capable of quite substantial work. In 9-12 KidsCamp, the youth come in with highly variable backgrounds -- boys and girls, ages 13-18, from around the world, ranging from computer wizards to computer phobes. In years past, they have demonstrated that they can solve "geospatial puzzles" with adroitness after only a minimal introduction to the technology. I wanted this year to push the envelope, and see just how far they could get in an extreme challenge.

The overall task was this: Identify a series of sites to visit in a round-the-world tour, starting and ending in San Diego (the event location), and generate a video of no more than 60 seconds showing the route. Sites had to meet various criteria, and students needed to make increasingly customized choices. We introduced the steps in large group format with the briefest of instruction, and provided written pages and template files, but they had to do some careful reading and thinking and a lot of work.

They needed to use ArcMap to determine their 15 selected locations, identify the latitude and longitude, enter that info into a spreadsheet (in either decimal degree or degrees-minutes-seconds format), save thespreadsheet in two different file formats in a specific location, import the spreadsheet into ArcMap as a table, convert the table into a shapefile, convert the shapefile into a geodatabase layer, generate labels for the sites, convert the labels into an annotation layer in the geodatabase, open ArcGlobe and import the annotation layer, and generate a movie by setting keyframes and optimizing the route.

The group that got the farthest stopped before they could optimize their route. When it became clear that our time would be too short, I made the decision to move people along at whatever point they had reached in their data creation stage. Everyone was able to get some data into the geodatabase and labels on the map, but operating system hiccups interfered with several as we shifted to annotations and ArcGlobe.

Despite not completing the activity in the allotted time, the students all seemed to enjoy themselves, and everyone was able to comprehend each individual step. The task called for students to flip back and forth between applications constantly, and they had no trouble doing this.

Other than the computer hiccups, the biggest issue students had was in actually selecting sites and identifying their latitude and longitude. They demonstrated a "typical" level of geographic knowledge (or lack thereof) in this activity. I feel quite certain that students in a high school (and even middle school) classroom who had received proper instruction over time in latitude and longitude, the nature and location of prominent geographic features, and the operation of each software package could have accomplished the task quite comfortably in the allotted time.

Kids demonstrate over and over that they are able to handle GIS just fine, and understand what to do and why, when it is presented in a conscientious fashion. They demonstrate that they are capable of powerful analysis, tempted by the endless possibility for exploration, and aware of both patterns and differences in data.

It's our firm conviction that giving kids the opportunity to engage such tools will help them understand the world more fully, think more critically, and be more open to investigating and learning endlessly. Following this course with a technology that also involves substantial vocational opportunity seems a rational approach to addressing some of the challenges that face educators today.

GIS for Schools

Contact Information

Charlie Fitzpatrick
ESRI K-12 Education Manager
880 Blue Gentian Rd, Suite 200
St. Paul, MN 55121-1596

Phone: 651-994-0823 x.8349
Fax: 651-454-0705
Email: cfitzpatrick[at]esri.com