Teaching and learning about water over space and time using GIS and data
A new story map presents why and how to teach and learn about water and its changes over space and time using GIS tools, methods, and data. Feel free to use the contents in their entirety or choose which components are most relevant to your own course and program objectives.
I created this content for a webinar I gave on Earth Day, but of course these topics are important throughout the year. Water quality and quantity is also a fundamental part to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Water is the perfect theme to bring together physical geography, cultural geography, environmental science, earth science, biology, law, economics, mathematics, history, civil engineering, and many other disciplines. Water concepts and processes can (and should, I would argue) be taught at all levels from primary school to university level and beyond.
The content, presented as a story map, https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/0a7d99f01b814ea19ec06c79ae71c178, begins with 4 reasons why now is the perfect time to be teaching with interactive maps and data services generated from modern web-based GIS: 1. Geo-awareness is at an all-time high, 2. The skills you are teaching using interactive web maps are in high demand in the workplace, 3. A large component of the Big Data world is mappable data, and 4. ArcGIS provides a platform for teaching and learning.
I followed the 4 reasons with 11 concrete ways to teach water concepts and processes with interactive mapping tools and data: The indicators of Planet Earth, the Living Atlas water balance app, the Wayback Imagery, water related data (terrain, aspect, watersheds, dams), real time data (weather, stream gauges), ocean chemistry and currents, field data collection (storm drains and more), spatial analysis tools (create watersheds, trace downstream), societal considerations (ethics, copyright, location privacy), lessons, and community.
I welcome your comments!