Geospatial technologies

1. The GoogleSpatial World:
Making Classrooms a Spatial
Place
Bob Kolvoord
James Madison University
kolvoora@jmu.edu

2. Why?
 What are the key questions we
expect adults to be able to answer/
address in the 21st Century?
 What skills will be needed?
 Where do we teach them?

3. Spatial Thinking
 [The] ability to visualize and interpret location,
distance, direction, relationships, movement and
change over space (Sinton, 2009)
 Looking for geographic patterns, interpreting
phenomena at different scales, answering the
“why things are where they are” question

4. Support
 National Academies Reports
◦ Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in
the K-12 Curriculum
 Geographic Information Science has significant but as yet
unrealized potential for supporting spatial thinking across a
range of subjects in the K-12 curriculum (pg. 8)
◦ Successful K-12 STEM Education: Identifying Effective
Approaches in Science, Technology, Engineering, and
Mathematics
 “Increase STEM literacy for all students, including those who
do not pursue STEM-related careers or additional study in the
STEM disciplines” (pg. 5)

5. What are the GoogleSpatial
Technologies?
 Geobrowsers (i.e. Google Earth)
 GPS
 Remote Sensing
 GIS

6. Geobrowers
 Easy to use
 Ubiquitous?
 Provide a new vantage point on the
world (the way in?)

7. GPS
 Huge growth in the automobile
industry
 Lots of schools have handheld GPS
units – good opportunity to collect
data (VGI or “citizen science”)
 Do GPS units make us locationally
stupid?

8. Remote Sensing
 “Eyes in the Sky”
 Can be “pictures” or can be at
wavelengths we can’t perceive with
our eyes
 GeoEye - http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/
 Landsat - http://www.esri.com/landsat

9. Basic applications
 Google Maps – http://maps.google.com
 Bing Maps – http://www.bing.com/maps
 Google Earth – http://earth.google.com/
 Google Earth lessons -
http://gelessons.com/lessons/
 Structured
or unstructured, but mostly
show and tell (relatively little analysis)

10. Web-based GIS applications
 National Atlas – http://www.nationalatlas.gov
 ArcGIS Online – http://arcgis.esri.com
 Google Mapmaker –
http://www.google.com/mapmaker
 ESRI Business Analyst Online -
http://www.esri.com/software/bao/
 Broadvariety of geographic data. The
price is right, but flexibility and control
are limited

11. More Web-based mapping
applications
 ESRI EdCommunity Collections –
http://esriurl.com/edteamportal1
http://esriurl.com/edteamportal2
 ArcGIS Explorer Online
http://explorer.arcgis.com/

12. Going Further?
 Desktop GIS software
◦ ArcGIS (http://www.esri.com) - PC only
◦ MyWorld (http://www.myworldgis.org/) - Mac
or PC
◦ Freeware packages
 What’s possible?
◦ Geospatial Semester
 http://www.isat.jmu.edu/geospatialsemester

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16. In the Exhibition Hall
• ESRI - #541
• Google - #2617
• Pasco - #1143
Contact me –
kolvoora@jmu.edu

17. Images courtesty of
 Slide 1 – http://richs.fys.elmhurst.edu/
 Slide 2 – http://mynasadata.larc.nasa.gov/preview_lesson.php?
&passid=2
 Slide 3 – http://edweb.sdsu.edu/courses/edtec700/GPS/lesson-
ideas.htm
 Slide 4 – National Academies of Science (n
 Slide 5, 7 12-15 – The author
 Slide 6 – http://anuragbansal.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/how-to-
install-google-earth-on-ubuntulinux/
 Slide 8 – esri, inc (Las Vegas Landsat Infrared)
 Slide 9 –
http://media.photobucket.com/image/google%20placemark%20-
%20female/paradoxgreg/gmaps-reddk-blank.png?o=7
 Slide 11 - http://www.igic.org/about/index.html