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New resources for K-12 educators to try over the summer

It’s close to the end of the school year, but it’s never too late for K-12 educators to explore new resources. Try one or more of these new and exciting ArcGIS Online resources during your summer break so you’ll be ready to incorporate them into your teaching in the fall.

The K-12 members of the Education and Research group have been busy creating new resources for teachers to incorporate into their teaching in the fall. Work through one of these resources over your summer holiday to discover how they can be used in the new school year.

Rush for Gold in British Columbia
The rush for gold in British Columbia started in 1858 with the Fraser River Gold Rush and subsequent Cariboo Gold Rush. These historic events were a catalyst for shaping British Columbia’s colonization, inland settlement, economy and transportation infrastructure.

Using ArcGIS Online, students will create a map to present key historical events, places and persons before summarizing their lasting consequences they had on the province’s character and settlement. Using their finished map, students will create a route that could be used by a local tour operator to take tourists on a bus tour of historic gold rush locations of interest in British Columbia.

Prospecting for Alluvial Gold by William Hind (courtesy Provincial Archives of BC/PDP-02612) Source: The Canadian Encyclopedia

Interviewing Senior Citizens
Seniors have wisdom about traditional knowledge, customary recipes, spiritual ceremonies, healing practices and environmental observations that they can share with the youth in their community. Learning how to record and document this information is an important skill that can be completed using an ArcGIS Online subscription by students living in communities all across Canada. In this lesson and its associated activities, students will identify questions they would like to ask seniors in their community, create a GeoForm Application to record the answers and build an Operation View of the information to summarize the results.

Exploring Settlement and Migration in Canada
Learning about settlement and migration patterns allows us to gain a better understanding of a country’s economic and physical characteristics.In this lesson, students will explore Canada’s settlement and interprovincial migration patterns. Using ArcGIS Online, they will explore data layers representing unemployment, urban and rural populations, interprovincial migration and population density.

Learn how to create your own Unemployment in March 2016 Web map using the Exploring Settlement and Migration in Canada Lesson Pack.

Creating a GeoForm Application in ArcGIS Online
This powerful ArcGIS Online template allows you to enter data through a web form and add a point associated with the location of the information in the form to an ArcGIS Online web map. Users can collaborate on the same GeoForm by adding their own points and information while creating a crowdsourcing application to answer questions and solve problems.

Creating an Operations View with Operations Dashboard
Operation Views can be used in either an Internet browser or through the Operations Dashboard software program. This powerful program allows users to display results from any web map in ArcGIS Online through charts, lists, gauges and other forms of presentation based on live geographic data.

If there is a topic you would like to teach using GIS, let us know at k12@esri.ca. We will be busy over the summer months creating more curriculum-focused resources.

Find more Esri Canada resources at www.esri.ca/lessonplanner and explore our ArcGIS Online content in the ArcCanada group.

If you are new to ArcGIS Online, you can request an account in a K-12 subscription at www.esri.ca/agolaccess.

About the Author

Angela Alexander is a K-12 Education Specialist in the Esri Canada Education and Research group. She has over 15 years of experience working with educators across Canada. Angela focuses on producing geographic information system (GIS) and curriculum-specific resources, and conducting and creating custom workshops for educators. She manages the GIS Ambassador Program and is the Technical Chair for the annual Skills Ontario GIS competition. Angela also writes monthly posts for the Esri Canada Education and Research blog, highlighting K-12 educators and partners, new ArcGIS resources and GIS-related events.

Profile Photo of Angela Alexander