Issue link: https://resources.esri.ca/i/732807
Incorporating Web GIS in the K-12 Classroom Esri Canada White Paper EC5_0147_1202_3A Esri Canada | 8 Social Studies: Students can examine the distribution of languages, cultural norms and demographics from the scale of an individual community to the global stage. Students can be encouraged to develop their own sense of place by creating their own community maps using Web GIS. When students create their own maps using basemaps and imagery as reference, they create the connection between what something looks like in real life and how it is represented on a map. This is one of the fundamental goals of spatial literacy. Where to Begin for Teachers A Web GIS is the ideal solution to introduce geographic thinking and GIS technology to you and your students. The most useful Web GIS is one that is ready to use, easy to learn and comes with all the resources and support needed to help you successfully implement GIS teaching in your classroom. The following steps are intended to help you understand where to begin when incorporating Web GIS into your lessons. 1. Connect the Use of Web GIS to the Curriculum To begin, connect the use of Web GIS to support the delivery of your curriculum. Start with a topic that has a clear element of geography to it. Consider using Esri Canada‟s pre-planned lessons created specifically for Canada‟s school curriculum. Simply go to esri.ca/teachingmaterials to find out what lessons may be applicable to your class. Once you get the feel for the capabilities available with Web GIS, introduce lessons that encourage your students to analyze geographic relationships and explore the various capabilities available within the application. For the first time, it‟s best to keep it simple. Then, build on what you and your students learn with successively more challenging lessons. 2. Choose the Technology Choose a technology that fits with your teaching goals and has the applicable functionality and data resources you need to fulfill your lesson objectives. Are you going to use it as a teaching aid in a presentation or will you incorporate it as a hands-on activity for your students? Either way, consider what you need the application to do in order to meet your teaching goals. If you simply want to view and explore a location on the earth, any online consumer-based mapping application will probably do. Although the functionality is limited, and consumer Web mapping does not offer much in the way of data resources, it can provide the basics of using a map to help understand geography. However, while online consumer maps are useful for many classroom activities, they do not serve to achieve the learning goals of an explicit K-12 curriculum. To foster true geographic thinking and spatial literacy, you need to leverage a Web GIS that has functionality to identify spatial patterns and relationships. This requires capabilities to add and overlay spatial data, symbolize or configure data based on their properties, and query the data behind the map. These capabilities are what differentiate a GIS from other online consumer mapping tools – GIS provides you with the ability to look more deeply into the map for answers and information. To this end, ArcGIS Online (arcgis.com) is a great example of the use of the Web that offers a way to explore and analyze geographic relationships within a specific curriculum project. "ArcGIS Online enabled our students to visualize the changes in the [Scarborough] Bluffs over time and uncover connections between the environment, the population and property values. It's a good tool for promoting collaboration within the class, while helping students hone their research and analysis skills." Josette Bouchard-Muller Teacher, Toronto French School