20 ingredients important for a vibrant and sustainable schools geospatial program

JosephKerski

I recently wrote an essay about 20 ingredients important for a vibrant and sustainable geospatial program in higher e.... I am following that with this essay that you are reading now with 20 ingredients that are important for successful geospatial integration in schools.

This list was not created in a vacuum, but rather, it results from the work I have been engaged in with colleagues during the past several decades in supporting and fostering geospatial programs in schools around the world, I offer these 20 ingredients important for successful implementation of geotechnologies for your consideration. In fact, the Esri schools program goes back to 1992: My colleagues and I have a long-term commitment to working closely with schools, doing whatever we can to help them be successful with geotechnologies (GIS, remote sensing, and GPS/GNSS). As with any "top" list, these ingredients are open to debate. Therefore, I welcome your comments; the challenges you have faced in building and sustaining your own geospatial initiatives, and your own recommended best practices.

Why is such a list and an essay needed? I and my colleagues frequently write about the rapid evolution of GIS, education, and society in this space and in other venues such as LinkedIn, and for good reason: These changes affect why, when, and how GIS technologies and spatial thinking can and should be taught and used in education. We cannot 'do what we've always done' and expect GIS and spatial thinking to thrive in schools if we are not actively considering innovative ways to teach these in the future.

And if you are new to GIS, this is the perfect time to begin, for the reasons I mention here in this essay about the benefits of teaching with GIS but in short, using GIS has never been more engaging, doable, or relevant to teaching, learning, and problem solving for your students in their future workplaces.

First, I would like to remind the reader as I did in the higher education essay that there are higher, nobler goals to teaching and learning with GIS, as seen in the graphic below:

This list of 5 benefits, too, is open to debate, and indeed, they are not the only ones. In fact, in this essay, I describe 10 educational benefits that GIS offers. But whether the list includes 5 or 10 items, the key takeaway is that learning GIS software and tools is one important benefit, one which certainly will help the learner obtain their career goals. However, learning GIS tools is a side benefit to the higher, nobler goals listed above and in the essay (the higher goals include community connections and content knowledge). The tools change; they continually evolve: Thus, keep focused on the most important tool of all--your brain! GIS has always been a thinker's tool.

Progress and adoption of GIS has been occurring in primary and secondary institutions for many years. The advent of web based GIS, with no software to install, along with streaming data services, field data collection tools such as ArcGIS Survey123, and web mapping applications such as story maps, greatly increased the rate of adoption from 2010 onwards. GIS is being used across a wide spectrum of schools from public to private, rural to urban communities, and small to large school districts. It is also taught by home school groups. GIS in schools is also a global phenomenon, not confined to just the USA. It happens wherever educators seek to use an engaging, inquiry-driven set of tools and methods in instruction. GIS has also been adopted by many after school programs such as Scouts, 4H, geotech clubs, and others. Success stories abound, which you can examine for encouragement and ideas, such as Roxana Ayala's story here and a wildfires-and-the-unhoused story here.

Most GIS use in schools is as an instructional tool, approach, and source for instructional content, in a variety of disciplines, such as geography, mathematics, history, science, language arts, and others. Educators here primarily are teaching with GIS. But there are some places and schools where teachers are teaching about GIS--that is, in named GIS courses, including in the EAST program in Arkansas, the Geospatial Semester in Virginia, and in other places, such as at Windsor High School in my own state of Colorado, where an instructor turned an advanced Geography course into a GIS course over 15 years ago.

Before offering this list of 20 ingredients or recommendations, the reader needs to recognize that there is no single pathway for schools to embrace GIS. Each school needs to carefully consider their mission, objectives, where they want to be in the next decade and beyond, their capacity, their community, their student body, their workforce needs, their existing strengths, and much more. Indeed, as I have worked with many schools over these past many years, they have been innovating with GIS in many ways. The best pathway for your campus might not be the same pathway for others.

I also want to remind the reader who is considering becoming involved in GIS education, or is already involved, that they need to spend most of their time listening. I have had the honor of visiting hundreds of schools over the course of my career, both while at USGS and while at Esri, and I spend a lot of time listening to needs, challenges, concerns, and visions of educators. I encourage you that if you do the same, your advice will be more relevant and valuable to the busy educators and administrators with whom you are working. Lastly, this is a rapid time of change for educational institutions, for society, and for all technologies including geotechnologies. These changes can be stressful for faculty and entire institutions, but they can also bring about innovation, as I recently wrote about in this essay on this Esri Education community space.

The 20 Ingredients

The following are my 20 ingredients and recommendations that I believe are important for a vibrant and sustainable schools program, for your consideration. You may already be engaged in many of these, and if so, share with others! I do hope that this is helpful as you chart your pathway forward.

Start with what I consider to be 10 key strategies for teaching with GIS, here. These include making your GIS-based instruction holistic, focused, multi-scale, varied, interesting, and visionary. Use some new tools such as 3D visualization and artificial intelligence, and some fascinating new data sets such as the 3D buildings data, the 90 million iNaturalist observations, or the Mars 3D viewer!
A chief challenge in any geospatial initiative or focus in schools is articulating its value to faculty so that the faculty will be supported by their administrators and colleagues. I used to work at USGS so I am going to use an analogy of a core sample of conglomerate taken from the ground: In such a sample, think of the cobbles and stones as established subjects that everyone recognizes and understands--biology, mathematics, geography, history, economics, and so on. Geospatial technology and spatial thinking are like the sand and soil in that sample: If you try to pick up the sand or soil, it flows through your fingers. The analogy is that geospatial tools and perspectives are not well understood, but they are important: In the conglomerate, the soil is essential to bind the whole thing together: In education, spatial thinking and analyzing change over space and time can serve as a bridge to bind disciplines together. It can bring teachers and students into the same room, or a field experience, for interdisciplinary projects, which many researchers and teachers feel is important to 21st Century education. Building awareness of the value of spatial, holistic, and critical thinking to education is important. All faculty want to teach in engaging, meaningful ways that gives students tangible life and career skills; they want their students to care, and they want their students to want to be lifelong learners. Demonstrating that these objectives can be achieved, and that these skills can be effectively and engagingly taught using an inquiry-driven toolset such as GIS, is a task that every educator interested in using GIS must be able to tackle. We have no shortage of resources to help those educators articulate this message.
If you are working with a school as an advisor, a parent, a geomentor, or if you are a teacher aiding your teacher colleagues in their use of GIS, focus on what educators care about: Student achievement, student engagement, community connections, world issues, skill-building, problem solving, critical thinking, achievement. Build from these discussions, rather than starting with GIS, per se. Start with asking teachers, “What are you teaching and where in the curriculum are students not engaged or where are you using outdated and static maps or other resources you are dissatisfied with? Then focus on how GIS could enhance those parts of the curriculum and then >>> actively listening! … Instead of saying to a school, “you need to use GIS in all of your lessons….” (which won’t resonate with anyone!).
I wish to assure you educators that you don't have to be GIS experts to use it effectively: Just like with other (most?) technologies, students will grasp some GIS techniques more rapidly than you do. It is OK! Your role as educator is still critical: You are framing the inquiry. Another note that I hope is reassuring is that "Using a professional tool in education is a challenge: Teaching is hard. Learning is hard! Don't feel that you need to grasp all of a technology (whether GIS or anything else) to use it successfully. In fact, I argue here that if you or your students get comfy with just 10 skills, you and they will have superpowers.
Schools will get the whole school bundle with their ArcGIS Online organization account, including ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro and other software access. Most schools globally focus on ArcGIS Online rather than ArcGIS Pro: The online tools provide capabilities for most needs. Plus, ArcGIS Online has fewer technological challenges--it works on any device, is connected to vast data sets and lesson libraries.
With schools, the focus has largely been not “teaching GIS” but rather “how can I use GIS to teach ____” (science, social studies, history, math, data science, and other disciplines). In other words, GIS is seen as an instructional approach and set of tools in an established discipline. But I submit that I would like to see more GIS courses in secondary schools as we saw with the CAD labs that were common especially in the 1990s.
When we see a map or satellite image, we usually want to first look at our own neighborhood: Therefore, start with students' own school neighborhood and ask questions such as, “where has the nearest earthquake, tornado, or typhoon occurred over the past 60 years? What is the median age by neighborhood in my city? The median income? Why do those patterns exist?” Include examining satellite images of students' own school and neighborhood as a starting point for inquiry and discussion.
Start with links of data and maps that I recently taught for educators in a professional development institute, using the following syllabus: https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/02/19/a-model-professional-development-wor...
Then dig deeper with apps listed here, on https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2017/07/26/10-things-you-can-do-with-arcgis-onl... These are 10 things you can do with ArcGIS Online – using the migration app, the wayback imagery, historical topographic maps, the water balance app, and others, including the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World apps: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/52ae78c57b3a4924bff9fd490d76ee10. Anchor each investigation in a spatial thinking discussion of what’s where, why is it there, why should we care?
Many educators start with resources and activities that do not require a sign in to ArcGIS Online. You could use the wonderful new Esri NatGeo MapMaker or many of the one-page standards-based GeoInquiries lessons for established subjects such as AP Human Geography, Earth Science, or World History, for example.
See short activities listed in https://esriurl.com/k12gis More activities are here: https://teach-with-gis-learngis.hub.arcgis.com/ and in the Learn library: https://learn.arcgis.com Show a few videos that I have listed here - https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/02/28/videos-to-get-students-excited-and-k...
Many educators start with: Lessons and maps on www.esri.com/geoinquiries These all use ArcGIS Online for the maps and spatial analysis. Start with the Level 1 exercises: No sign in is required! Use this model or other models and make it local to your country and region! When students / faculty want to dig deeper, continue with GeoInquiries and move to Level 2, where analysis and saving is now possible and a sign in is required. One of my colleagues and I completed writing this new course for educators where you dig into the Living Atlas of the World – which you might use a bit of: https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/5dc1b74ce4212b48e187e837/teaching-with-arcgis-living-atlas-of... My colleagues and I have created many short activities (such as in Arcade, joining data to living atlas, how to create a story map, and other items) in our education space and blog on Esri Community that the essay you are reading right now is a part of: https://community.esri.com/community/education/pages/education-blog
Some educators start with a project in mind: Use the GeoProjects as examples: Field mapping of trees, trash, pets, ozone, and many more.
GIS and society: A resource to get students thinking critically about data is our collection of essays and teachable moments on https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com Examine the Google Maps in China, the erroneous map and data points including the 3200 degree temperature reading in Texas, the ethics of mapping, and location privacy. among others. These essays are designed to be short and implementable as conversation starters. Maps are very useful, very powerful, but they need to be consumed and created thoughtfully and critically: Don’t just “accept” every map you see!
Start students down the coding pathway by building expressions in ArcGIS Online: Teenagers / total pop of that enumeration district and divide the result by 100 for the percentage. This is powerful yet simple to do and with meaningful math connections (STEM in action!). See some of my examples here: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/using-custom-expressions-in-arcgis-online/ba-p/884516 and on spatial joins, here: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/2-short-activities-that-illustrate-how-to-join/ba-p/88... Then for deeper dives: Use ArcGIS Notebooks or some Python via https://developers.arcgis.com
Get into the field! The Survey123 field toolset, one of three primary Esri tools to gather and map data, is easy to set up but powerful: See my example here on walkability: Students could collect walkability data in their own community, but also, fire hydrants, tree species, traffic or pedestrian counts, weather info, noise (with a phone app), historical homes, and much more: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/how-walkable-is-your-community/ba-p/883382. Consider connecting the field data collection to mapping the results, creating a dashboard, and then wrapping the survey, map, and dashboard into a story map, as I have done with the walkability example. These are straightforward to create and yet are powerful tools for teaching GIS technology and connections to the community.
Build a network with other educators in your school and in your district, and with a network of other educators to build community, confidence, and skills. Don't feel that you need to do this alone! One example is the T3G Community, in which there are monthly webinars and much more: https://community.esri.com/t5/t3g/gh-p/t3g
Consider connecting what you do with GIS in the classroom to what your school could be using GIS for--to keep students safe as they are dropped off or get off the bus (logistics in pedestrian and vehicle access to your school), other campus safety initiatives, campus energy use, and campus infrastructure mapping. For more, see this page.
Consider using web mapping applications such as story maps and instant apps as the "final product" for your students, serving the role that a term paper or report has served in the past. To be sure, term papers and reports still have their place, but moving some assignments to these configurable web mapping apps allows students ways to be creative, and serves as an effective platform for them to present their results orally to you as their instructor and to their classmates (for examples, see this essay). It also can serve an effective assessment tool for you as their instructor as you check their app URLs according to a predefined rubric. These apps can also serve as components of what eventually will become the students' K-12 digital portfolio.
Focus on problem solving and less on ‘how to run specific GIS tools’ in your courses; that is, teaching and modeling 'how to be a lifelong learner.’ Content knowledge matters -- to employers such as Esri and others, and it is the reality of what will be the focus on the standardized tests that students must take: Therefore, focus on selected content that you and your students can apply GIS to: Understanding natural hazards, equity, population change, ocean currents, river systems, habitat, biomes, supply chain, transportation networks, cultural and physical regions, weather and climate, and other aspects of our world. s), they won’t be as highly in demand in the workplace. Resources that can serve as examples here include teaching sustainability, teaching about water with GIS, teaching mathematics using interactive mapping, and teaching about weather using GIS.

I look forward to your comments.

--Joseph Kerski