“GIS and its Applications in Education"
John Schmitz
& Carolyn White
University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign
ABSTRACT
Our goal is to help
faculty exploit GIS technologies in their teaching. In the first part
of the session we introduce GIS-based instruction and then explain and
justify its uses in teaching. The role of GIS as a scientific
visualization technique is highlighted. Recent developments, policy
issues and challenges related to GIS are covered. Practical ideas and
tips for designing GIS-based instruction are provided. The second part
of the session provides a hands-on introduction to GIS system via a
system called RMMS. It continues with a hands-on introduction to
ArcView 8.3.
GIS IN EDUCATION (J. SCHMITZ)
What is GIS?
Human vision and cognition is powerful but our powers to understand complex phenomena quickly reach limits. Scientific visualization technologies augment our innate capabilities to help us see and understand what we could not before.
GIS (Geographic
Information Systems) is a kind of scientific visualization. It
allows users to select, query, overlay and analyze physical and social
features of our world in an integrated display. It offers capability similar to modeling:
The power to identify and manipulate elements of complex systems. As
such, teaching with GIS provides a major bonus: teaching scientific
method as well as disciplinary knowledge.
GIS systems as digital libraries
Digital libraries are
online repositories of content stored in multiple formats. The glue
that creates a collection of disparate kinds of 'objects' is the
ability to transparently search it. The strongest systems provide
search via well-defined, comprehensively implemented meta-data: Every
object in the collection has a digital library card. Even parts of an
object can be described for direct access. The best systems also
provide tools to use content as well as to discover it.
GIS systems are strong examples of digital libraries: They
aggregate many kinds of data and formats and provide a range of tools
to explore and work the data.
Why is scientific visualization important in teaching?
For the same reasons
that it is important as a research tool: To help us see and understand
what we could not before (or could not easily). While computers
are essentially devices that augment our minds, visualization (and GIS)
offer us
especially strong support.
Visualization is not
only an aid to science education, but to scientific thinking
too. We
use visualization to study the complex systems also use it to teach
methods and results.
Teaching with visualization helps you teach thinking skills that apply to your discipline and ideally transfers to others too. In particular, your skills, understanding, methods and heuristics. Students are your “cognitive apprentices” who absorb the knowledge and skills that you model to them. The argument here is that like any visuals you use—graphs, photos, other media—visualizations provide a ‘thousand words’, a common ground of understanding between you and your students, creating the teachable moments where you can best display your knowledge and methods.
Cognitive psychology of
visualization
In the
beginning there was vision. Scientific
visualization taps human’s powerful innate capability for visual
thinking. Our capability for verbal thinking is our hallmark, but
visual information processing is unmatched for speed and power. Think
of our ability to recognize faces or landscapes at a glance, totally
automatically. Visual thinking is the fastest and widest pipeline to
comprehension. Of course the interplay and synergies between visual and
verbal thinking are complex and powerful.
Psychology casts humans as information processors whose powers are limited by the same kinds of factors that limit a computer: Speeds of processing, capacity of information channels, and working memory. Take this with a grain of salt; the metaphor is useful but only goes so far. For example, computers multi-task much better. Other abilities don’t even begin to map over, from selective attention to intuition and creative thinking, to normative and aesthetic thinking.
Still, the metaphor is useful for understanding why visualization is so important. Information overload can result from many sources--visual data as well as text--but visual thinking is arguably a method to avoid it. Another way to put the point is that complex systems and problems exhibit high information density, tons of things to potentially attend to and process. The quantity and complexity of information makes high demands on limited cognitive resources. This is a key tenet of cognitive psychology, and a key reason to jumpstart and facilitate student understanding with rich visualizations like GIS. It literally helps students’ process complex, dense & ill-structured problems and topics.
Excellent related sources on Visual Thinking and Information Design: Edward Tufte, Donald Norman, Richard Wurman….
Recent history &
directions
Web-based GIS servers - For much of the 1990’s, GIS data could
be easily located on the web but it was difficult to use. Reminiscent
of the early days of the WWW, special utilities for compression and
display were needed to view even one data layer. We now enjoy web
server software and browsers that give anyone access to GIS data and
basic capabilities. Data is co-projected and registered, then stored on
a server, or drawn from distributed sources.
Software – Earlier GIS software
was unix-based and hard to learn and use.Recent packages like ESRI's
ArcView 8.3 are much more usable (and also expensive). Open source
alternatives will gradually evolve and provide full-featured
alternatives to costly software (in the same way that StarOffice
provides Linux users with an open source alternative to MS Office).
New Devices - Mobile GPS is widely deployed in industries with a
large field force where tracking their location matters. But the
capability will reach us all soon, becoming integrated in the new
hybrid PDA/cell phone devices as a standard feature.
Key policy issues
Open GIS - An open source effort led by a consortium of 258
companies and government agencies called OGC. By articulating standards
and promoting the release of tools and data in the public domain, the
use and value of GIS would increase worldwide.
Security - 9-11 led to the removal of certain data layers in RMMS and other repositories of public GIS data.
Support – GIS use in teaching and research is growing fast but
needed support services require considerable stable expertise and
resources.
No disciplinary home – The scope of GIS makes it a powerful tool
applicable to many disciplines but also made it a technology without
one academic home.
Teaching with GIS
· Strongly satisfies key learning standards in K-12 and undergraduate education
· Plugs into a wide range of topics across the disciplines but obviously will have to be evaluated for its relevance to the topics you teach.
· A variety of generic exercises and activities have been demonstrated (see _____).
· At least for some disciplines, there are many GIS project topics tied to current events that will be familiar and interesting to students.
· Perhaps the biggest motivator to incorporate it is to try to boost the lower achieving students in your classes.
Instructional design ideas for GIS instruction
--Well-suited for group work, including semester-long case studies.
--Use of Global Positioning System technology will strongly support GIS-based exercises and students will love it. Have them map their neighborhood, parks, campus, etc., and then map over available GIS data will prove popular. (Ties to popular video games like Sim City are clear.) Field trips to map areas using portable devices work well.
--Exploit quizzing, communication, grading, databases and other features of WebCT and related systems.
--Provide guides / templates to students listing stages of problem-solving taking students through problem ID, hypothesis formation, problem-mapping, testing or simulation (if possible), consideration of alternative solutions, etc. Peter Checkland’s steps for systems thinking are one possible guide. Regardless, make sure you consider assigning concept-mapping to aid problem-solving and other GIS exercises.
Example – GIS in
undergraduate education
Salton Sea Case Study – Student groups used a 3CD set that ESRI
designed as paradigmatic example of educational uses of GIS. The Salton Sea was created by
overflow of the Colorado River in the early 20th c.
It became a major flyway for migrating birds and supported near-by
agriculture. But the water has been degenerating in quality and
quantity. Planning pits farmers against conservationists and depends on
new infusions of hotly contested water resources from the Colorado (inc. by Mexico, Los Angeles). What should be done
to the Salton
Sea and
how? The CDs provide student groups with a very rich digital library of
GIS data, GIS software and thousands of pages of documents to
understand and try to solve the problem.
What do you need to teach with GIS?
Bare Bones Approach – Instructor and students use simple, free software that provide basic GIS capability. Locate free online tutorials. Utilize WebCT or related software to add capability for class work.
Advanced – Instructor uses ArcView or similar to create GIS lessons. Ideally student computer lab provides the software as well on at least a few machines. Students have access to a portable device with GPS capability and GIS software.
Expert – Instructor / department / college run their own GIS server that provides data and tools useful to research and teaching and outreach in that discipline.
Incorporating GIS in
your teaching -
· Brainstorm on uses of GIS in teaching your discipline with colleagues and graduate students
· Locate existing classes in your area that use GIS.
· Use Google to search for GIS data in the area you study and teach (e.g., GIS + your topic) or do a manual search starting from a GIS portal (see appendix).
· Post your questions and experiences of learning to teach with GIS listservs
· Locate and get to know spatial data sources in your discipline
· Make a set of instructional goals for infusing GIS instruction into your classroom.
· Sketch and then make a draft of a website that provides GIS resources for your students
· Consider synergies with your other HPCC teaching strategies - modeling, other visualization, Grid, etc
INTRODUCTION TO THE USE OF GIS SYSTEMS (C.S.WHITE)
Example - Overview of a
leading GIS system
The Resource Management
Mapping Service (RMMS) aggregates a wide range of Illinois GIS data
available from government, academic and private sources. Such data
exists for many states but typically as stand-alone data tedious to
locate and integrate. RMMS facilitates the contentious process of
watershed planning by providing diverse stakeholders a common ground of
data and. The system features natural resource data but includes other
data categories for a total of 60 layers.
Introduction to ArcView
8.3
Exercise
Import RMMS data into ArcView
SESSION APPENDIX
ONLINE GIS RESOURCES
GIS TUTORIALS
K-12 http://www.esri.com/industries/k-12/lessons.html
ESRI Virtual Campus http://campus.esri.com/acb2000/webpage.cfm?WebPage_ID=45&DID=6&CFID=7105171&CFTOKEN=78495607
USGS http://mapping.usgs.gov/www/html/1educate.html
TYPES OF SPATIAL DATA FORMATS
http://vterrain.org/GIS/index.html
GIS IN EDUCATION
http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0700/umbrella11.html
http://www.esri.com/industries/k-12/tocdetails.html#basics
http://www.esri.com/industries/university/stateobjectives.html
GIS MAP DEMOS
http://maps.esri.com/
http://www.esri.com/software/internetmaps/visit_sites.html
http://www.maps.com/explore/viewer.html
http://www.directionsmag.com/mapgallery/
http://www.esri.com/mapmuseum/mapbook_gallery/volume17/index.html
http://www.esri.com/mapmuseum/mapbook_gallery/volume16/index.html
http://nationalmap.usgs.gov/
Digital Earth
GIS TOOLS
http://www.grime.net/GISTools/index.htm#GIS
Search
http://richtech.ca/cgi-bin/seul/seulvw.pl?category=Geography
http://www.directionsmag.com/files/
Spatial Data Sources
http://www.directionsmag.com/files/index.php/browse/13:34
http://www.gsdi.org/
http://www.swissgeo.org/
SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION (NASA)
http://www.nas.nasa.gov/Groups/VisTech/visWeblets.html
SCIENTIFIC VISUALIZATION COURSE
http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/vis/
GIS PORTALS
http://gislounge.com/
http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/home/giswww.html
http://aces.uiuc.edu/aim/gis/
GIS LABS
http://keck.library.unr.edu/gislab.html
Spatial Imaging Group,
3-D / VR AND GIS
http://www-vrl.umich.edu/sel_prj/flow/index.html
http://www.epa.gov/gisvis/
http://www.ats.ucla.edu/at/scivis/
GPS / GIS
http://www.gpsy.com/gpsinfo/
MATH for GIS
http://www.mentorsoftwareinc.com/CC/gistips/TIPSarch.HTM
HISTORY OF GIS
http://www.geography.wisc.edu/sco/gis/history.html
SC98 talk
http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=509058.509115&dl=GUIDE&dl=ACM&type=series&idx=SERIES371&part=Proceedings&WantType=Proceedings&title=Conference%20on%20High%20Performance%20Networking%20and%20Computing
3-D PHYSICAL MODELS
http://www.sws.uiuc.edu/chief/gis/beckmanprinting.htm
RMMS
http://space1.itcs.uiuc.edu/website/rmms/
http://www.watershed.uiuc.edu/resources/educational_materials.cfm
RELATED 'TREAT'
Web
'Geography'
On-deck
geo-one-stop.gov