Lets get kids to contribute their knowledege of their community to Esri basemaps!

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06-03-2014 08:24 AM
Status: Open
BradyHoak
Esri Contributor
In order to use ArcGIS Online to its full potential, K-12 students will expect to see their school buildings, house footprint, neighborhood trees, playground features, and up to date streets on the topo basemap.   It would be wonderful if students had a way to learn about GIS and at the same time add their knowledge into the content in the topo basemap and Community Maps Program data through the ConnectED Program.  Kids could add things they know about and care about:

- Details around their school (safety dropoff zones, trailers, location of atheletic and theater event parking)
- Tree types in their neighborhood and special nature areas
- Improvements to features on the streets where they live (own a street, street ambassor!, confirmed by their address somehow)
- Ice cream Stores/Meet Up places, and kid friendly businesses in their community
- Specific features in playgrounds and parks such as age approproate play structure classifications, bike racks, water fountains
- Athetic fields classifications, Goals, lighting

The ConnectED program could be a catalyst for improving the Esri Community Maps Program data - our K-12 students could help the data collection effort in their community.  Local schools will want to get the basemaps improved, and could help local government to do so by participating in the Community Maps Program. New Toolsets that lets kids contribute themselves and learn at the same time will need to be designed! They could see the results of their work fused into the common basemap and feel part of a larger community. We need to invent something new that is easy and designed for k-12 though to make this work. There needs to be a way to deconflict their inputs with existing content as well, or with with exiting contributors, especially when local government is already contributing too. Another idea (also submitted under a new idea post too)  - there might also be a  new basemap just for kids with a new cartography style appropriate for k-12 content. A new collector type mobile app might be needed that is purposed just for this effort, as most kids would use a mobile device to do this.
1 Comment
LindaSciaroni1
This is what I want to do. How can I learn?. We have a very good GPS and we have the longitude and laitude of all the trees on our campus and the girth measured in centimeters. Now we would like to phtograph and index them on a actual map.

What software and loging susytem will work best to create a long term project that our kids can up date and modify each year.?