| Contents Page | Al-Khabar Home Page | CGIS Home Page | The use of computerized information is a growing part of everyday life. In today's society people look to electronically stored geographic, social, economic, political, and environmental information to help them answer practical questions in their daily lives. The answers they find have relevance in their education, influence personal choices and business decisions. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are an exciting new set of technologies increasingly utilized by the State of Qatar as a powerful way to analyze spatial data. Currently, GIS is not commonly used in K-12 classrooms. While some others use GIS for administrative functions, so far, no GIS curriculum has entered the classroom. In co-operation with The Centre for Geographic Information System (CGIS) where GIS is used, the ministry of Education (MOE) arranged, last year as a test of whether students can digest this technology, for eight students to utilize GIS software to understand and solve real-world problems. The training program allowed them to overlay multiple "themes" of information to question different "what if" assumptions. By attaching data to co-ordinates on a map, students can visualize patterns, trends and ideas while gaining a better understanding of geographic concepts. As well, those potential students involved in projects include: analyzing networking information, investigating a Bus Routing Application problems, studying and making recommendation on its use, researching its effects on the community, and evaluating various local features such as population, transportation, topography, and road networks. As a result, MOE found out that putting GIS into the classroom presents an exciting opportunity for students to actively engage and participate in this emerging technology. The Importance Of Using GIS In An Existing Curriculum A key component of the project is to develop exemplary inquiry-based curriculum for geography education that takes advantage of the analytical power of GIS. In our review of existing resources we have not found these kinds of curriculum resources to be available. We believe that exemplary curriculum is the key to the success of GIS in schools. Teachers and school systems will not widely adopt GIS unless it is tied to an existing curriculum that fits with emerging standards. Our focus in this project, therefore, is to develop curriculum unit that introduces GIS concepts and skills through the geography curriculum unit in close collaboration with the high school teachers and advisory board in MOE. The unit will be prepared as a set of lesson plans, student activity sheets, and supplementary materials such as paper maps and primary reference sources. The project will include a set of digital maps, data tables, prepared themes, digital images, and text files related to the content of the geography unit. Students will work with this GIS information in the context of the curriculum activities. Starting from a GIS base map, aerial ortho image, and land use data, students will gather data on the natural resources of the State and its current conditions. Using on-screen digitizing they will construct data layers representing the administrative boundary for different municipalities and cities at different historical times. These layers will show the history of human modification. CHOICE OF GIS SOFTWARE MapObjects availability in PC platforms for free in the State along with the wealth of data available in ArcInfo format is one of the deciding factors in our choosing it for the project. The inclusion of Visual Basic and other software packages in order to allow for the customization of the interface will streamline the processes (i.e. access to spreadsheets or database management software that might allow for multiple-student participation in the data creation process.). In the future, as our experience grows and as we become better acquainted with classroom needs, we will revise the question of GIS software and, perhaps, include other programs in our development process. DEVELOPMENT OF A GIS PROJECT FOR EDUCATION In our view the selection process should consist not only of the work on screen, or within the computer, but also should take into account the entire spatial analysis process. Our process will take care of "What questions do we want to ask? How do we ask our questions? What information do we need to answer these questions?" The non-spatial / spatial selection process is the second component of the spatial decision-making procedure. This process will be limited to how users manipulate the software to answer questions. Spatial data has two distinct forms; "what" something is (its a non-spatial quality) and "where" something is (its spatial quality). The challenge is to organize the interface and the functionality so as to make these processes clear and easy to distinguish. This is a big challenge, because the dual nature of spatial data is so often integrated where the non-spatial questions often lead to spatial questions, and vice versa. A "where" question often leads to a "what" question. In general, the performance criteria for the project, based again on desired ease of student and teacher use should allow for: 1- The application should work quickly. 2- Data access should be streamlined. 3- Zooming in and out on maps should occur easily and quickly. 4- Student data input should be easy. 5- Common operations should be customized. LOCAL DATA Fortunately, a wealth of consistently on-line created data at the local level is available and up-to-date, 24 hours a day through different organizations. One of the missions of this project is to provide a set of local data which students are using in their curriculum. The common opinion is that students relate better and react more strongly to data they can recognize. INTERFACE One goal of this project continues to be exploring interface options that work well for students and teachers, options that reduce the complexity of GIS processes and offer the user an easier, more intuitive feel. Much of our investigation into this area has been empirical. The reasons being the touch on the complexity of the software and data and the processing skills involved in the use of GIS. For this project, our plan is to start with the existing MapObject interface and choose features and functionality to add customize options for organizing the data entry process, streamlining related functionality into simple buttons and tools that perform tasks, and creating a more intuitive GIS interface. MULTIMEDIA This is a potentially important advance in the way GIS can be used in schools. The question we ask is "multimedia to what end?" Linkages between pictures, drawings, text or film and spatial locations can be a powerful means of reinforcing a sense of place with personal expressions. But our concern is the possibility that students will place more emphasis on the technology than the process and content of what they are doing. Therefore, it will be important to preface the use of multimedia with a clear explanation of its place in the activities. At this stage, we plan to develop a prototype and expose it to the Geography Advisory Board where their task will be to test it with students to identify the required modifications and procedures that best tend to have a complete geography course using the GIS technology. |