Teaching the Geospatial Semester
My experience teaching JMU's Geospatial Semester at Fairfax High School in Virginia.
What Is the Geospatial Semester?
James Madison University's Geospatial Semester is an opportunity for high school students to take an introductory GIS course and earn college credit. Read more at the JMU GSS page below:
My Path to Becoming a Geospatial Educator
Quick Facts about Geospatial Semester @ FHS
GSS Schools - Read more at www.isat.jmu.edu/geospatialsemester
- FHS is 5th high school in FCPS to offer Geospatial Semester (here called Geospatial Analysis)
- Almost all students are seniors (12th grade); Counts as a 4th science or an elective.
- Year 1: Enrollment of 90 students - 3 classes
- Year 2: Enrollment of 120 students - 4 classes
- Years 3-5: Enrollment of 150 students - 5 classes
- Approx. 85% of students dual-enroll and earn 3 credits from JMU
- Students have gone on to major in GIS, earned internships (FEMA, USGS), and receive scholarships (USGIF).
What do we do?
GIS is used to: Inform, Tell a Story, Analyze
Primarily ArcGIS Online with introductions to desktop (Pro) as needed.
Daily lessons/tutorials to build AGO skills specifically and geographic awareness more generally.
Occasional problem scenarios for students to solve individually.
Classwide collaborative midterm project.
Independent final project.
Trying new things!
Every student can find value in learning GIS(or geography, or maps...)
Examples...
Analysis of Data:
Scenarios to solve individually:
Article from FauquierNow.com
"Some facts about this map:
- The total area of the viewshed in square miles is 11.18. The total area of the viewshed within each parcel is about 1.24 square miles.
- The number of parcels/portions of properties affected is 1466 out of the 4515 properties in Warrenton.
- In total, 2919 people would live within the viewshed of the tower, meaning they'd see it every morning and every night.
- The top 5 owners of the largest properties affected are the County School Board of Facquier County (38.5 Acres affected), St. Leonards Farm Inc. (30.6 Acres affected), Warrenton Baptist Church (27.8 Acres affected), Premium Business Parks LLC (27.2 Acres affected), and St Leonards Farm again (18.9 Acres affected)."
Collaborative Midterm:
Student pairs researched, mapped, and reported on a natural disaster that occurred in 2019.
Project managers assembled StoryMaps into a Collection for organized viewing.
FHS at the ESRI Conference
An example of a disaster report StoryMap.
Excerpt from the project:
Students documented all instances of data analysis and all data sources.
Data Enrichment: The census areas of Stromboli were enriched to include 2017 Population, 2017 Total Households, and 2017 Average Household Size (most recent data).
Analysis Tools: Buildings within the pyroclastic area were identified using Find Existing Locations, and Buffers were created around the pyroclastic area and the hiker point.
CSV: Locations of buildings on Stromboli and 2019 Volcanic Eruption points.
Imagery Source: Sentinel-2 Imagery filtered to July 2 and July 7, 2019.
Compare App
Independent Final:
The successful completion of an independent project earns a student college credit for this course.
Students had 3 choices:
- Participate in Virginia's StoryMap Competition.
- Complete an Independent Project.
- Report on any county in the USA regarding the effects of Covid-19.
Data Analysis Tools in ArcGIS Online were used to calculate proximity to existing and proposed Covid-19 testing sites.
VA StoryMap Competition
An example of an entry in the state's StoryMap competition.
Trying New Things!
The students have to be encouraged to play. Unscripted time to try new things is gold.
GIS Day @ GMU
Covid-19 Dashboard by a student
The QuickCapture app allows for the quick capture of data using a mobile device. In the example below, empty feature layers were created in ArcGIS Online. Then, the app was build using the QuickCapture Designer .
Students outside collecting infrastructure points with Kathryn.
Raw collected points
Finally, the QuickCapture data was brought into Scene, along with LiDAR and building polygon data from Fairfax County to construct a 3D Scene of our school.
The Big Payoff
I absolutely loved this class ... Working solely with material I had never seen before was a really unique and challenging experience for me. As a result, when I was successful in completing a mapping task or big project I always felt very accomplished and proud of my work.- Kristen
Two of my students
Resources for teaching (with?) GIS
Teach with GIS | Learn ArcGIS
Geospatial Semester - CISE - JMU
