New! Get to Know GIS for Secondary Students 5 Course Sequence
My colleague wrote a free 5 course sequence entitled Getting To Know GIS for Secondary Students. The goals of these courses are to view and identify map features and patterns, use GIS tools to analyze a problem, create a GIS web app that tells a story, and describe how GIS helps people do their work. The courses include compelling videos and hands-on work with dynamic web maps and tools. The courses are accompanied by a helpful guide for educators that includes help in setting up accounts in ArcGIS Online for students to use to work through the courses. Students not only gain practical GIS skills in these courses, but also develop skills in critical and spatial thinking, and have the opportunity to examine careers that use these skills.
This sequence will be most useful for secondary students, and their teachers, but it will also be useful for other educators who are interested in teaching and learning with GIS. I had the opportunity to take the entire 5 course sequence this week, and found it interesting and informative. One of my favorite parts was examining real job postings and creating a story map, and I also enjoyed digging into the problem of determining where a city should contract artists to paint murals.
You can complete each of the courses in one hour; so plan on five hours for the sequence. The courses are listed on the Esri Training site, and you can track your progress there while going through the course. While you are on the Training site, spend some time there checking out the other training resources!