Geographic software helps teach critical skills


EAST also gives students technical training, and gives teachers and school administrators pedagogical training.
EAST also gives students technical training, and gives teachers and school administrators pedagogical training.

Thanks to a new statewide license, all schools in Arkansas will have access to geographic information system (GIS) technology–software the Arkansas Department of Education (DOE) hopes will continue to give students 21st-century skills and community service opportunities.

With the new statewide license, all 266 school districts in Arkansas will be able to use the GIS software from software maker ESRI.

“This is an important step in providing educational opportunities for our students to meet the challenges of the 21st century,” said Jim Boardman, assistant commissioner for research and technology at the Arkansas DOE. “Learning GIS gives students important skills that can be applied in a wide range of occupations.”

For the past several years, high school students in Arkansas have had the chance to use GIS technology through the EAST Initiative, an independent, secondary-school program that encourages the use of advanced technologies to develop solutions for community-related service projects.

For example, a recent EAST student summer project at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) concentrated on creating a detailed three-dimensional model of critical portions of the city of Fayetteville, Ark. The makers of Google Earth and SketchUp were so impressed by the project’s results that they have now featured the work as a “Google Pick” in the Google 3-D Warehouse. Items in the 3-D Warehouse can be downloaded for use in Google SketchUp or viewed in Google Earth.

Also, in 2007, two students from Beebe Middle School who had just completed sixth grade were invited to speak at the ESRI User Conference in front of 12,000 GIS professionals about their project.

“They were producing a map book for the emergency helicopter pilots who might need to fly into one of the towns in their county in the event of a disaster, such as a tornado,” explained Charlie Fitzpatrick, ESRI’s K-12 education manager.

“They were busy generating a set of standardized layouts of each town, with critical info so the pilot could interpret it and fly to a designated spot in each town. This was important because a tornado had gone through one of the towns recently and, with no street signs surviving, it was hard to give guidance to a chopper that needed to fly in.”

At the 2009 EAST conference, students from various schools participated in a competition using ESRI software. The winning entry was a bus routing project done by a senior at Drew Central High School. Second and third place went to a team of three sixth, seventh, and eighth graders at Harrisburg Middle School, who (while working in successive class periods) looked at where to place a new tornado siren in their town and presented their findings to the town council; their other entry explored evacuation routes for residents living in several counties in the Mississippi Delta.

“What’s exciting to me about what these students are doing is that they are real projects, requiring basic but solid skills with some advanced technology, [as well as] good critical thinking and problem solving, the ability to cope with an ill-structured problem, [and both] collaboration and independent work,” said Fitzpatrick. “These are solid skills for STEM and beyond.”

“Through our longtime support of GIS projects in Arkansas high schools, we have developed a close relationship with the Arkansas DOE,” said Matt Dozier, president of the EAST Initiative. “We will be working with the department to help facilitate its implementation of the technology in schools across the state.”

The Arkansas DOE is in the process of planning a comprehensive program to introduce GIS technology to all of the state’s students, teachers, and administrators.

A web site will be set up to exchange information, post announcements, answer questions, and manage GIS software distribution; for now, the web site offers interested schools a chance to sign up for news releases and more information.

“The statewide license in Arkansas covers both instruction—all grades, all classes, all subjects, any number of computers—and administration (all schools, all districts, any number of computers). Arkansas has a huge opportunity to engage kids at all levels in activities that support personal goals, classroom activities, and community needs, all at once. That’s what the Arkansas DOE recognized and acted on,” said Fitzpatrick.

Links:

EAST Initiative

ESRI GIS for schools

Arkansas Department of Education

Sign up for our K-12 newsletter

Newsletter: Innovations in K12 Education
By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

Want to share a great resource? Let us know at submissions@eschoolmedia.com.

New AI Resource Center
Get the latest updates and insights on AI in education to keep you and your students current.
Get Free Access Today!

"*" indicates required fields

Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Hidden
Email Newsletters:

By submitting your information, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy.

eSchool News uses cookies to improve your experience. Visit our Privacy Policy for more information.