GeoMentors Case Study: Georgeanne Hribar: Infusing GIS in curriculum; 3rd-8th Grade; Virginia

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03-22-2017 08:49 AM
JoleneKeen1
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GeoMentor Case Study: Georgeanne Hribar

City/State of School, School District, or Group: Virginia Beach City Public Schools
 
Grade level of students you or your educator collaborator work/worked with: Grades 3 - 8, subjects, Elementary 3 -5, Middle School 6 -8 (Social Studies, Science, English)
 
Subject/topic of class/group you assisted your collaborator with: 
Infusing GIS in curriculum 
Projects included: 
- Collaborating with teacher on design and use of a place-based bibliography documenting resources for fables around the world 
- Teaching 4th grade students how to create climographs and then teaching the teachers how to link the student-created graphs to the climate location 
- Working with 3rd grade teachers how to create story maps of the student-created museum on Greece and Rome 
- Designing Scene with layers for 3rd grade students to investigate the topography of Greece. They learned to zoom in and tilt the map for a better visualization. 
- Working with 3rd grade students on a map of continents and hemispheres while investigating an annotated online map 
- Collaborating with Grade 8, civics teacher to create a local transportation and zoning map for student investigations 
- Working with Grade 8 Earth Science students to create Story Maps of Geologic Regions of Virginia 
- Planning with Grade 6 history teachers to create directions for student-products: Annotated map for physical regions of the US; Story Map Tour for American Indian cultural characteristics by regions; GeoForm for entering data on explorers of North America 
- Planning with 5 grade and working with 5th grade students on creating maps and story maps to showcase the time period, inventions or innovations of famous scientists 
- Planning and working with 4th grade teachers to enter data about local oyster populations and then use AGO to analyze the information to plan for the placement of new oyster castles 
- Creating a Walk Through London, map and app, so Grade 6 English students reading Oliver Twist can investigate London in times past 
- Working with 6th grade teachers and students to plan the placement of garden beds and paths in the new school
- Working with 4th grade students as they create maps and story maps of key geological events, e.g., major earthquakes, volcanic eruptions.
Students are learning to add URL parameters for a scene and link text to a main screen action.
- Tracing watersheds with 4th grade students using the watershed analysis tools
 
Approximately how many students were engaged in GIS activities through this collaboration: The elementary account has 330 members, not including the 5 classes of 3rd grade students. The middle school account has 870 users.
 
How did you connect with your collaborator? I contacted the principal and suggested how teachers and students would benefit from the infusion of GIS into the curriculum. She requested a draft of a three-year plan. She then provided on-going support by requiring her staff to attend trainings and examine options to enrich the curriculum
 
Describe your collaboration process. Over a three year period, there were 3 major types of interactions: teacher training, planning, and In-classroom support 1) training for the teachers in the use on ArcGIS Online 2) monthly collaboration meetings with each grade level (approximately 30 minutes 3) in classroom support when students were working on GIS based projects (including co-teaching of key geographic concepts and GIS skills) 4) attendance at one of each grade levels whole-day curriculum planning sessions to suggest additional ways for GIS integration. Based on teacher requests and specifications maps/apps were designed and customized
 
Describe the tasks you assisted your collaborator with. Data creation, project vision. In the beginning teachers needed training in the use of the tools.
 
What available resources, if any, did you use or help your collaborator use to implement GIS in K-12 education? Geoinquiries for US History and Earth Science. Various online tutorials provided by ESRI
 
Did you develop any new educational material or GIS activities through your collaboration? Yes. The 3rd Grade Museum  Exploring Geologic Events Story Map Journals--especially ""cute"" is the Yellowstone volcano
 
What did you gain from the experience? What do you think your educator collaborator and/or the students gained? A view insights---maps are more than location; inquiry unlocks meaning; and he or she who makes the map learns the map. The level of student engagement is a joy to behold. The educators are remarkable and guide student inquiry in whatever direction it takes. They have embraced online GIS as a tool for supporting and extending student investigations and problem-based learning.
 
If your GeoMentoring engagement activities were documented through a classroom blog, school website, group’s social media post, newspaper or other media, please provide the websites of those posts. Home on the Reef YouTube video documenting first year of oyster project for grade 4 students. The person listed as author was not involved in the project. Hmmmm. The teachers won first prize in an ISTE competition for this submission. Teachers usually post on twitter to document the student learning including the use of GIS in their classrooms.
 
Any additional comments about your experience? Extremely rewarding to have students engaged in examining map-based information and posting questions for further examination.

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