New! Get to Know GIS for Secondary Students 5 Course Sequence

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01-20-2017 07:02 AM
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JosephKerski
Esri Notable Contributor
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My colleague wrote a free 5 course sequence entitled Getting To Know GIS for Secondary Students.  The goals of these courses are to view and identify map features and patterns, use GIS tools to analyze a problem, create a GIS web app that tells a story, and describe how GIS helps people do their work.  The courses include compelling videos and hands-on work with dynamic web maps and tools. The courses are accompanied by a helpful guide for educators that includes help in setting up accounts in ArcGIS Online for students to use to work through the courses.  Students not only gain practical GIS skills in these courses, but also develop skills in critical and spatial thinking, and have the opportunity to examine careers that use these skills. 

This sequence will be most useful for secondary students, and their teachers, but it will also be useful for other educators who are interested in teaching and learning with GIS.  I had the opportunity to take the entire 5 course sequence this week, and found it interesting and informative.  One of my favorite parts was examining real job postings and creating a story map, and I also enjoyed digging into the problem of determining where a city should contract artists to paint murals.  

A section of the 5 course sequence.

You can complete each of the courses in one hour; so plan on five hours for the sequence.  The courses are listed on the Esri Training site, and you can track your progress there while going through the course.  While you are on the Training site, spend some time there checking out the other training resources!

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About the Author
I believe that spatial thinking can transform education and society through the application of Geographic Information Systems for instruction, research, administration, and policy. I hold 3 degrees in Geography, have served at NOAA, the US Census Bureau, and USGS as a cartographer and geographer, and teach a variety of F2F (Face to Face) (including T3G) and online courses. I have authored a variety of books and textbooks about the environment, STEM, GIS, and education. These include "Interpreting Our World", "Essentials of the Environment", "Tribal GIS", "The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data", "International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning with GIS In Secondary Education", "Spatial Mathematics" and others. I write for 2 blogs, 2 monthly podcasts, and a variety of journals, and have created over 5,000 videos on the Our Earth YouTube channel. Yet, as time passes, the more I realize my own limitations and that this is a lifelong learning endeavor and thus I actively seek mentors and collaborators.