Here, There and Everywhere: Local Geospatial Inquiry Learning During Online Education

Purpose & objective

Starting with the publication of the National Council for Geography Education’s Geography for Life standards in 1994, advocates have called for teachers to integrate geospatial tools into their classroom instruction. Geospatial technologies such as geographic information systems (GIS) are essential tools to studying our world and the challenges of the 21st century, such as climate change, migration, and resource management. The geospatial industry is a rapidly-growing sector of the global workforce, and geospatial technology drives advances in research, economic growth, and even political change.

Until very recently, however, most teachers did not have access to tools such as GIS; even teachers who had access to GIS faced a daunting task of learning the complex technology and figuring out how to integrate it into their curriculum and their day-to-day teaching.

For the past five years, we have engaged in a series of collaborations with schools in Pennsylvania, Delaware, Texas, and Washington to assist teachers in mastering geospatial tools and integrating them into their curricular instruction. We have conducted professional development (in both face-to-face and online-only) formats to help teachers learn the technologies, explore different approaches to geospatial teaching, and build curriculum-aligned lessons that engage their students by exploring local issues, incorporate authentic data collection, and feature inquiry-driven learning. We have a curriculum development model that we follow (socio-environmental science investigations, or SESI--see Hammond et al., 2019) and a proven professional development sequence (see Hammond et al., 2018).

All of the tools we use are web-based and have proven to be invaluable during the disruptions caused during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, during the pandemic, our participating teachers have been faster to adopt these tools and integrate them into their online instruction than during our earlier work in traditional, face-to-face classroom instruction.

At the end of the session, our participants will be able to:
1. Name and describe three free, cloud-based geospatial tools for teaching middle and secondary curriculum-aligned lessons: ArcGIS Online, Story Maps, and the Collector app.
2. Locate and adapt three sample lessons that teach curricular content through inquiry-driven, localized instruction using geospatial tools. These lessons can be run in online, face-to-face, or hybrid formats, depending upon what the circumstances of the school and community allow.
3. Locate and use resources for building their own local geospatial inquiry lessons for their classrooms.
4. Explain the importance of geospatial tools to students’ curricular mastery, workforce preparation, and civic agency.

We will feature three teacher-developed lessons from our most recent round of professional development and collaborative curriculum development:
1. Trees and carbon sequestration: About how much carbon does a tree store?
Students estimate the height and measure the circumference of trees in their neighborhood; they then calculate the weight of the tree and the amount of carbon stored within it.
This activity is part of a unit on the Tragedy of the Commons and specifically illustrates one of the three main carbon sinks (trees).
Once students understand the concept and scope of carbon sequestration in their local context (that is, neighborhood trees), they then study the impact of large-scale destruction of carbon sinks such as clear-cutting in the Amazon rainforest.
2. Built environment scavenger hunt: What functions does the built environment serve?
Students learn about the functions of the built environment (food, shelter, communication, safety, education, etc.) and record where in their neighborhood these services are provided.
After looking at the concept in their neighborhoods, students examine the city-wide systems that serve these functions: grocery stores, housing, post offices, police and fire stations, schools, and so forth.
3. Macromolecules in your local community: Where in your neighborhood do macromolecules come from, and what effects do they have?
After learning about saturated fats and other macromolecules, students record where in their neighborhoods people consume macromolecules (fast food restaurants) and where they might be able to exercise and break down macromolecules (gyms and fitness centers, parks and recreation facilities).
Students next look at community data on cardiovascular health (hypertension, heart disease, obesity, diabetes) compared with locations of fast food restaurants vs. parks throughout their city.

Each of these activities make use of the three core geospatial technologies used in our project. All three technologies are completely free to use by K-12 institutions and can be implemented with or without student accounts.
1. ArcGIS Online (see https://b21.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html for an example of a free, school-level account): This professional-grade, web-based GIS allows users to search, analyze, and annotate geospatial datasets.
2. Story Maps (see https://storymaps.arcgis.com/) allow teachers and students to create presentations that combine text, images, maps, datasets, videos, and more. Our teachers use story maps to explain curricular content and scaffold student data collection; students use story maps to present their final geospatial projects.
3. ArcGIS Collector (https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-collector/overview) is a free app for mobile devices; it connects to ArcGIS Online and allows students to collect geo-referenced data using forms set up by their teachers. Students and teachers can examine and analyze the collected data in ArcGIS Online, and combine them with other layers of geo-data.

Also, each activity concludes with a call to action, an opportunity for students to propose solutions to the local and/or global problems they have studied. As they present these solutions, they draw upon their newly-acquired skills with geospatial tools: building maps, presenting datasets, and forging persuasive text and visuals in a powerful story map.

Our work has been supported by a sequence of grants from the National Science Foundation (DRL-1614216, DRL-1949400).

Outline

5 minutes: Introductions, distribution of URLs for web-based resources and the backchannel communication (Slack). The backchannel will be used to both pose questions and to support participants’ access to the audience participation portion of the presentation (see example #2, built environment scavenger hunt, below)

5 minutes: Overview of grant scope and aims. Show grant website, school’s organizational account in ArcGIS Online (https://aihstigers.maps.arcgis.com/home/index.html), and precursor grant website (https://eli.lehigh.edu/sesi).

10 minutes: First sample activity: Trees and carbon sequestration. Start by showing Tragedy of the Commons story map (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0224bdbdb65b420e9148ab9cd87f7969), then tree data collector and sample student data. Address relevant questions from backchannel.

10 minutes: Explanation of the SESI instructional model: driving question, student data collection and analysis, integration with other data sources.

15 minutes: Second example: Built Environment scavenger hunt. Show data collector, student collected data, additional layers for analysis. AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION: Audience will log data from the presentation room, which will be displayed in real time in the GIS.

5 minutes: Third example: Macromolecules. Show introductory story map (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/016009fee7c8464e92afe8fa7662b387), data collection, additional data layers.

5 minutes: Highlights from backchannel discussion

5 minutes: Closure. Reinforce resources for adapting these activities to participants’ local environment and/or adopting these tools by setting up their own school organizational account. Provide opportunities for continuing interaction (backchannel, grant website, presenters’ email addresses)

Supporting research

Publications

Carrigan, J., Bodzin, A., Hammond, T., Rutzmoser, S., & Farina, W. (2019, April/May). Investigating urban trees. The Science Teacher, 27-35.

Hammond, T.C., Bodzin, A., Anastasio, D., Holland, B., Popejoy, K., & Sahagian, D. (2018). “You know you can do this, right?”: Developing geospatial technological pedagogical content knowledge (GS-TPACK) and enhancing teachers’ cartographic behaviors with Socio-Environmental Science Investigations (SESI). Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 45, 305-318.

Hammond, T.C., Bodzin, A., Anastasio, D., Holland, B., Popejoy, K., & Sahagian, D. (2019). Shoulder-to-shoulder: Teacher professional development and curriculum design and development for geospatial technology integration with science and social studies teachers. Contemporary Issues in Technology and Teacher Education, 19(2), 279-301.

Kangas, S., Hammond, T.C., & Bodzin, A. (2019). Using geospatial technology to teach language and content to English learners. TESOL Journal, 10(2), 1-12. DOI: 10.1002/tesj.422