Fun with GIS 293: Top GIS Tool for School?
"Which tool -- or tools -- should I teach?" I get this question a lot from teachers who hesitate to use GIS because there are so many useful tools. I'll confess to answering differently depending on the situation, but always some version of these:
1. First, get good at USING maps and apps that others have created. The more time -- and times -- you explore and practice reading and interacting with content others have already made, and the more questions you can ask and answer using those resources, the better you will see what's needed, and what's possible.
2. ArcGIS Online. Get good at it. If you discover needs not served by that tool chest, then add ArcGIS Pro.
3. Get good at ArcGIS Online Map Viewer. When you discover a capacity you require, add it.
4. Map Viewer, StoryMaps, Scene Viewer, Survey123, Dashboard, Hub … but not all at once.
5. Focus on the basic tools. It's far more impressive doing powerful things with basic tools than doing basic things with powerful tools.
This is my guidance for school teachers and their students. Employees and college students don't have as much time or leeway to dabble. But for teachers and students at secondary level and certainly younger, these guidelines should help.
Item #1 above is my absolute: seeing and interacting with maps is vital. It is certainly useful for young learners to create hardcopy or digital drawings of spaces in their universe, starting with a single room, but once they grasp representing reality with a simplified miniature version, they can build facility with patterns and relationships. Soon enough they will struggle with notions of precision, completeness, currency, emphasis, perspective, bias, mission, and so forth. They will need to consider how different people, or even a single person at different times, might see the same phenomena in different ways. The more facility learners have exploring these contents, interacting with them, deriving meaning, articulating questions, designing thoughtful responses, and communicating effectively, the greater their potential.
Think of GIS like driving. From a very early age, we ride around in all manner of vehicles, go different places, see different environments. If we're lucky, we get to play bumper cars, and practice safely going forward, backing up, turning, looking around, and thinking about other vehicles. We might even go out on bicycles, on neighborhood roads, with live traffic. Long before we might work on solo driving of an automobile, we amass many hours of relevant experience. Similarly, spending time with maps, especially interactive ones … thinking, poking, reading, wondering, interpreting … then panning and zooming, and repeating … this all matters hugely.
Because, top line, the user's mind is by far the most important tool. Items 2-5 in my list above can help teachers strategize, but they should all be in service to building in learners the disposition to see and think about the world in a holistic way.
