Collaborative Development of Secondary School Internet Mapping Activities

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Collaborative Development of Secondary School
Internet Mapping Activities
Dr. David M. Diggs, Dr. Phil Klein, and Anthony
Lopez
http//geography.unco.edu/sbc
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Project Goals

• Create a series of short internet-based
  exercises that look at spatial relationships
  among world biomes, major climate regimes, major
  soil groups (according the United Nations Food
  and Agriculture OrganizationFAO), and relative
  fertility of those soil groups
• This presentation describes 1) development of
  the project 2) the collaborative process and 3)
  some of the projects products and problems.

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Project History

• Univ. of Northern CO has a long history of
  service to K-12 Geography Education Community.
• Undergraduate student with interest in soil
  fertility and biomes (developed during Resource
  Management class).
• Student (a GIS emphasis major) took upper-level
  course for future K-12 Geography teachers.
• Student decided to do class project on creating
  an ArcIMS site for teaching about biomes and soil
  fertility.
• Evolved into project that became available on
  the web.

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Collaboration approach
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Undergraduate Student

• Produced ArcIMS service and website.
• Data manipulation on biomes and soil fertility.
• Conceptual document on how the website could be
  used to teach about biomes and soil fertility.

First draft ArcIMS website (ultimatelynot used)
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Geog. Ed. Professor

• Used a poorly done map of world soil fertility
  for many years (bad projection), redrawn by hand
  on Robinson projection.
• Associated this with climate maps.
• Lack of learning materials (geography) focused
  on soil fertility, biomes, climate, and soils.
• Needed Guided Inquiry process, with
  scaffolding of activities to guide secondary
  students.

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GIS Professor

• Aided student during his ArcIMS development
  phase.
• Database problemsUSDA Soil Taxonomy System.
  Need to use World Reference Base (WRB) Soils
  (1974, 1988, 1998).
• Soil Fertility (Van Velthuizen 2007) important.

Van Velthuizen, Harrij, et al.  2007.  Mapping
Biophysical factors that influence Agricultural
Production and Rural Vulnerability.  Environment
and Natural Resources Series 11.  United
Nations, FAO and the International Institute of
Applied Systems Analysis.  Available at
http//www.fao.org/docrep/010/a1075e/a1075e00.htm
Last accessed 4/16/2009.
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What now?

• Lets do something with this!
• See if there is interest (Geog. Ed. Prof.
  contact teachers).
• Small amount of funding.
• Need to keep it simplethink audience.
• Develop some draft ArcIMS websites/services and
  associated learning activities (GIS professor).

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Database needs and problems

• The easy stuff collapse WWF biomes to
  generalized biomes basic climate map and
  reference layers.
• Soil database. Fertility descriptions use 1988
  WRB. We thought it best to use 1998 WRB.
• Soil Fertility based on verbal rating of soil
  suitability for agriculture (Van Velthuizen
  2007). Initially we converted it to a 10 point
  ordinal scale.
• What about alignment?

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Pre- and Post Design
Activity One
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Activity Two
Activity Three
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Simple portal website
http//geography.unco.edu/sbc
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Learning Activities

• 3 ArcIMS websites, 3 activities.
• Activities lead to the discovery of important
  geographic concepts (via Guided Inquiry).
• Extensive scaffolding of the activities is
  necessary to guide secondary student to these
  discoveries.

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Learning Activity example
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Testing

• Final revision of the materials involved
  classroom testing of the activities and website.
• A recently retired teacher, with many years of
  experience teaching in middle-school, was hired
  to develop the activity ideas into a format
  usable in the secondary classroom.
• Tested in 9th grade geography course in
  Denver-Boulder suburbs.

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Testing

• the best, most friendly GIS lesson she had
  ever used, commenting that it meets both
  geography and earth science standards, making it
  useful both in middle-school social studies and
  science curricula.
• Linked to literacy standards.
• Students liked the exercises.
• HOWEVER, early in the testing phase it was
  clear that we needed ancillary materials.

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WRB 1998 Soil Groups
Major Biomes
Major Climates
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Conclusions

• Active involvement of all participants resulted
  in dramatically improved websites and learning
  activities.
• Cartographic and technical decision-making was
  often a process of compromise due to software and
  database limitations.
• Funding and time constraints do not necessarily
  doom an idea!
• Despite these constraints it is still possible
  to create learning materials that are
  pedagogically strong, have relatively appealing
  cartographic design, and are deemed valuable by
  secondary teachers and students.

http//geography.unco.edu/sbc
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Author Information
Dr. David M. Diggs and Dr. Phil KleinGeography
ProgramSchool of Social SciencesCollege of
Humanities and Social SciencesCampus Box
115University of Northern ColoradoGreeley, CO
80639 david.diggs_at_unco.edu phil.klein_at_unco.edu
Anthony LopezGIS ScientistNational Renewable
Energy Laboratory1617 Cole Blvd.Golden,
Colorado 80401
Acknowledgements Partial funding for this project
came from the Colorado Geographic Alliance.
Thanks to Paula Sinn-Penfold for extensive help
in developing and testing the worksheet
activities. Also a thank you goes out to Scott
Allen, Monarch High School, Louisville, Colorado
http//geography.unco.edu/sbc