This month:
Searching for a box in the woods using the GPS system is great fun, but you really have to stretch to make it an educational experience. Later in this article I give an example of how some South Dakotans have accomplished that stretch. An alternative would be to take that same GPS receiver out in the field without any preprogrammed data and mark a waypoint every time you find a toad/weed/oak tree. Go back to your computer with the data and insert the points into a map of the area. Download weather data from your local/state environmental database and see if any correlations show up. Much can be done without the GPS data, but the live data makes the learning more real and interesting.
This year, the state of South Dakota is using the school systems as a tool to help with the West Nile virus problem. Schools are taking GPS units out into the community, searching for possible mosquito hatching sites and mapping them for the spraying crews later in the year. They hope to reduce the 1000+ cases and 14 deaths that ocurred in 2003.
Many large urban areas and cities have a GIS agency to do community mapping and planning. South Dakota only has two of these: Rapid City and Sioux Falls. Many other smaller communities would like to have their park trees, fire hydrants and even public garbage cans mapped. Taking on tasks like these would be a quality social studies project for schools.
In South Dakota, Montana and Utah, the state departments of education have purchased state-wide licenses for ESRI ArcView mapping software. Any school can use it at no cost. The state of South Dakota has GPS receivers to loan out in lots of ten for two weeks at a time.
Cassie Soeffing in Sioux Falls has been using GIS in the classroom so long that she works summers at EROS Data Center north of the city. Every year at our state Technology in Education conference, Cassie has another project to show us.
Kelly Lang used to teach at Douglas High school, near Rapid City, but he is now retired and gets to work on GIS projects every day. He does have a project that uses geocaching to teach lessons; it's used by Boy Scouts and the Douglas school district. Separate courses of 12 caches each were set up on school district land or at Medicine Mountain Scout Ranch. Each of the caches contains a log book and cards that are part of a lesson to be taught. Groups are given GPS units with the coordinates of each of the 12 caches that they are meant to find. If they happen upon the wrong ammo box, the card inside will not be much help. The Boy Scouts learn about scouting law, and the school students build an environmental story out of the cards collected.
The South Dakota State Department of Education has provided ample training opportunities for teachers to learn the use of the software and equipment. Since the first of the year, we have hosted trainings by Joseph Kerski and Roger Palmer at our middle school in Pierre. Joseph is an enthusiastic trainer and GIS education specialist with the USGS office in Denver. Roger and his wife have a GIS and education consulting business in Dallas and Roger teaches high school science in the Dallas area.
Data for download is everywhere on the Internet. Most states have a location for data somewhere on a state server. Montana and Utah have wide-open data available to anyone. Here in South Dakota, you have to ask for an ID to access the available data, but a teacher won't have a problem getting one.
Following is a web site listing the location of GIS data for many states, as well as other sites offering information regarding GIS and software:
>http://emrl.byu.edu/gsda/data_image_obtain_drg_public.html
Other sites:
http://terraserver.microsoft.com
http://nationalatlas.gov/index.html
http://www.esri.com/industries/k-12/
http://kangis.org/learning
Software and pricing:
http://store.esri.com/esri/ (schools receive a discount)
http://www.oziexplorer.com/ (used to convert GPS data to an ESRI shape file?