Fun with GIS 342: Here Come the Young

[CharlieFitzpatrick]

Get ready, educators in high school and college! More and more students are building GIS familiarity and even expertise at younger and younger grades. Are you ready to help them go farther, think deeper, engage more powerfully, and be truly engaged learners?

1. The Virginia Geospatial Semester serves a year of college level (dual enrollment) GIS instruction as a standard academic course, finishing with an independent project. Most students are 12th grade, but some students take a first year in grade 11 and do a second year of even deeper GIS projects. Across the 25+ schools in this network, enrollment in VGS for the coming school year may hit 1000.
2. Career & Technical Education (CTE) classes across USA are providing one or more years of GIS experience (sometimes general, sometimes focused on a specific industry). CTE courses frequently steer toward industry-oriented certification, for which Esri's "GIS Fundamentals Foundation" certification is a natural target. CTE teachers and students alike are getting ready to take the test this spring.
3. This year, in Virginia, a middle school is running a specific year-long GIS class, led by a long-time GIS-using social studies teacher. Students are building competency in understanding maps, making maps, using layers, interpreting information, generating data, sharing content, and creating presentations. A technology educator at the same middle school is embedding GIS concepts and activities within her CTE classes' work.
4. Starting in 2000, school projects appeared on stage at Esri's User Conference. High school, middle school, and even elementary school students have demonstrated comfort with technology, working with multiple tools to understand information and solve problems. In 2023, a trio of rising 6th graders demoed National Geographic MapMaker, a new tool designed for introducing students and teachers to learning core academic content through a GIS lens. When asked how long it took to get comfortable with MapMaker, the students replied "Maybe a minute?"
5. In the ArcGIS Online Competition for US High School & Middle School Students, participants do a custom research project, generate data, build maps, document everything, and submit the final result as an ArcGIS StoryMap. National winners tend to be in grades 11-12 (HS level) or 7-8 (MS level), but in 2023 the honorable mention for middle school went to a 4th grader.

Educators who inherit GIS-savvy students are advised to build your own capacity, so you can help these young learners be ever more impactful. If you know an educator who is nervous about starting with GIS, point them to MapMaker and the Education Summit @ Esri UC 2024.