Abstract
GIS Live is a live, interactive, web problem-solving (WPS) program that partners Geographic Information Systems (GIS) professionals with educators to implement geospatial technologies as learning tools. It is a collaborative effort of many government agencies, educational institutions, and professional organizations. The challenges that problem-based learning affords can engage teachers and students in research, and the use of technology can serve as a vehicle for publishing and presenting projects to real audiences via the Internet as well as through telecommunications. Using these technologies connects schools with partners from around the world.
Description of GIS Live: An Online and Interactive Teleconference
GIS Live is North Carolina's answer to the increasingly important question of how to help educators bring hands-on geography to their students. Harnessing the immense power of the Web, Geographic Information System (GIS) professionals and university researchers team with teachers and their students to share real-world applications of the latest geotechnologies and explore how these tools can be used for interdisciplinary, relevant teaching and learning. GIS Live is an example of the effective application of telecommunications and web-streaming technologies that provide new opportunities for teacher and student learning. In addition, these technologies offer a means of sharing that has helped bridge distances by facilitating world-wide participation.
GIS Live is an interactive event. During the one-day live main event, those watching over the Internet can participate by asking questions via a message board. Additionally, the streaming video is archived so that others can participate in the event at more convenient times or even multiple times. The accompanying website provides information on pre and post conference activities for schools as well as lesson plans for further extensions. Presentation materials and additional activities are linked to the conference program. The GIS Live website has become a resource for teachers and students during its four-year evolution.
GIS Live resulted from a partnership between North Carolina State University’s (NCSU) Department of Math, Science, and Technology Education; the College of Natural Resources; the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction’s Distance Learning Section; and the North Carolina Center for Geographic Information Analysis (NCCGIA). The partnership is supported by many other agencies and professional organizations such as the GIS Departments of Wake County and the Town of Cary, NC Department of Environment and Natural Resources, the State Center for Health Statistics, NC Geodetic Survey, NC Museum of Natural Sciences, and the NC Urban and Regional Information Systems Association. A steering committee meets monthly to collaborate on the design, evaluation, and theme for the program each year. A series of online communications and smaller teleconferences leads to one larger teleconferencing event which occurs concurrently with the international event GIS Day. In the past, other teleconferences have occurred concurrently with national events such as National Geography Awareness Week or Earth Science Week.
GIS Live is an example of a specific application of distance learning technologies in that it is not centered at one site. Instead, multiple teleconferencing sites are linked with a facilitator at each location. At any one event, as many as 75 people participate at the different sites, focused on one theme or pre-planned activity.
Need for GIS Live
The initiation of GIS Live stemmed from a need to unite the State in a celebration of GIS Day. GIS Day is an international event whose goal is to educate millions of children and adults about geography and to demonstrate GIS technology at schools and organizations around the world. The four premises that have emerged from the North Carolina partnership include:
- Due to federal school legislation, it is more important than ever that reading and literacy are at the center of learning. In addition, North Carolina will soon re-institute the testing of science. It is vital that teachers learn to integrate reading and literacy into their teaching of science. Technology, in general, and GIS in particular, are effective for developing literacy-rich interdisciplinary projects.
- Many teachers are being introduced to GIS and other technologies through staff development institutes. GIS Live is a unifying event that supports these new initiatives and gives teachers and students a means for sharing their new knowledge and projects with others. Teachers can update their knowledge of the latest technologies and ways of applying them to develop interdisciplinary projects.
- GIS Live is a vehicle for creating and maintaining school, community, and business partnerships as a two-way system of communication and support that takes students out of the classroom and into their local communities and environments to do real and important work.
- The program provides teachers with ongoing, on-line professional development in the latest technology tools for developing geography-based, interdisciplinary projects.
The Design of GIS Live
Collaboration and interaction are important components of GIS Live, especially when using interactive technologies. According to Spence, Stubbs, and Huber (2000), combinations of technologies support, enhance, reinforce, and motivate learning. Since educational and state agencies were interested in working together to support teachers and students, they brought their own areas of expertise and pledged their financial support to the project. The committee members, who met once a month via phone and teleconferencing, collaborated and planned the design and implementation of the on-line conference and development of the Web resource. With interaction and collaboration as goals, committee members of GIS professionals and educators supported teachers and students as they planned to present their interdisciplinary GIS school projects.
Each year, based on input from teachers, a theme for the conference was chosen (see Table 1). Over the years, the theme has become more focused. The first year’s theme was GIS Partnerships and the second year’s theme was Using GIS to Solve Problems. Year three focused on a problem scenario called Autumn Breeze: Hurricane Zeus and year four was called Open Places, Wild Spaces.
Years One and Two
In years one and two, an eForum for teachers was held after school. The eForum allowed teachers experienced with GIS technologies to share how to create partnerships, design student internships, and obtain funding. Teachers in a college course at the University of Parana in Brazil even presented their projects in the second year.
During these inaugural years, the Team Challenge was developed. The Team Challenge involved students’ conducting the Mapping Our School Site project (MOSS) (Hagevik, 1999) for 3 hours in the butterfly garden at the Capitol. Students and their teachers had conducted this project at their schools so they were demonstrating their expertise at the Capitol site. Naturalists helped with the fieldwork and identification of plants and animals in the 10m2 plot. Students gave live reports throughout the day that were broadcast back to the videoconferencing site at the NC Department of Public Instruction’s videoconferencing center and then streamed out to the Web. In the afternoon, they used GIS to analyze their results and create maps which they then presented.
In the first year, four schools of middle and high school students worked together on the MOSS problem-solving project, and in the second year, students from the Saturday Program for Academic and Cultural Education (SPACE) also participated. Additionally, students from Carnage Middle School presented their work on The Tumbleweed Project, a partnership with NCSU and NASA that involved designing a wind-driven sensor device with the goal of discovering life on Mars outside. Students were able to discuss their project with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, CA, to explain how navigation works in outerspace. The two-way teleconferencing was so successful that the GIS Live event became a multi-teleconferencing event in years three and four.
Years Three and Four
In year three, a pre-conference teleconference and webcast were held for schools to demonstrate problem-solving, GIS, and literacy integration in science instead of the eForum. During the pre-conference, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg team described Summer Breeze, a highly successful emergency response scenario and introduced Autumn Breeze, a role-play of how emergency response teams in their communities might respond to the threat of a category three hurricane. This helped schools practice connecting to the event as they discussed their participation in the problem scenario. In year four, members of the steering committee traveled to schools to assist them with implementation of problem-solving and GPS into their classes. A video was created of their projects, which was aired during GIS Live. While at the schools, questions were answered regarding connecting, participating, and interacting during the live event. In these years, as a result of requests from teachers, GIS careers were added to the program. By this time, several students had received internships due to their new technology expertise.
All presentations each year at the conference focused on problem-solving and partnerships. For example, a teacher and her students presented their disease transmission detective project that they had done with a regional geographer from the USDA. Middle grade student interns who had partnered with the NC Climate Center presented meteorology projects that investigated student-generated climate questions. The committee paired teachers with local community agencies, including those out of state, as was the case with a teacher who had moved to Columbus, GA. Each year the GIS Live website expanded to include resources for teachers and students. A virtual field trip provided a scavenger hunt focused around events; pre and post lessons for each presentation along with additional pre and post activities allowed teachers to use the on-line conference as a virtual field trip; and many teachers contributed lessons, ideas, and activities to this growing web resource.
Table 1: GIS Live Evolves
Program |
GIS Live 2002
“GIS Partnerships”
10 strands: Health, Critical Incident Response, Crime Analysis, research (remote sensing and wildlife habitat modeling), Coastal Management, Urban Planning, Meteorology and Snow Command, Urban Ecological Analyses, and Marine Science |
GIS Live 2003
“Using GIS to Solve Problems”
11 strands:
Disease Detectives (epidemiology), GIS Careers, School Transportation, NC OneMap, The Tumbleweed Project, Navigating to Mars; Meteorology; Urban Ecosystem Analyses; Crime Analysis; Redistricting and Campaign Planning, Environmental Justice |
GIS Live 2004
“Crossing Boundaries with GIS”
6 strands: Introduction to GIS and GPS; Autumn Breeze: Hurricane Zeus Scenario; Climate Change, Environmental Health; 4-H Club's GIS Project; Bennett's Mill Pond Project; GIS Careers, 3-D Visualization (Raleigh) |
GIS Live 2005
“Open Places, Wild Spaces”
8 strands: Introduction to GIS and GPS; Using Conservation Data; Finding Open Lands, Geocaching; GIS careers, 4-H and Historical mapping, NC Invasive Species, Tracking Tundra Swans & Pintail Ducks |
Highlights |
GIS Live Team Challenge -- MOSS Field Demo by middle grades and high school students and their teachers |
Presentation on GIS and Meteorology by WRAL; Mars Rover Exploration by Project Navigator and Manager, from JPL in CA; GIS Live Team Challenge (MOSS) by SPACE students |
Autumn Breeze: Hurricane Zeus Scenario (Collaboration with Mecklenburg County, Holmes High School, & Columbus, GA)
|
GIS Live Team Challenge--
GPS and Geocaching |
Participants |
Participants from 3 countries (US, Canada, and India); 26 states registered |
35 sustained streams reported; completed evals from -- NC, TN., AK, SC, and Barranquilla, Columbia; participation of 208 students reported. |
5 videoconference sites: DPI, Raleigh; Mecklenburg County Health Dept., Charlotte; NC A&T, Greensboro; Holmes HS, Edenton; East Columbus Magnet, Columbus, GA; roughly 55 sustained streams during the day |
3 videoconference sites: NC Museum of Natural Sciences, NCA&T, Holmes HS; roughly 40 streams during the day |
Professional
Development |
eForum for educators from 3 to 5 pm |
eForum for educators from 3 to 5 pm (Presenters included Brazilians from University of Parana.) |
eForum held in October to help teachers prepare for the event |
eForum not held but individual school visits and production of videotape aired during event on using GPS in the classroom |
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