Just a couple of days after the official GIS Day, I went to a New Hampshire elementary school to do a fun, 45-minute GIS presentation for a 3rd grade class.
We began with a discussion of acronyms: 'What do the letters in GIS stand for?' We talked about a couple of other acronyms students were familiar with, like UPS and NASA, to help connect the pieces. There was some discussion about what Geographic Information Systems means.
The teacher and I collaborated on the presentation in advance and she had preloaded a couple of resources on a large touch-screen board: GIS with Kids: Mapping Favorite Color and National Geographic MapMaker.
Starting with Mapping Favorite Color, we worked together to get the class's overall favorite color (blue) added to the map. Then we explored other areas of the world and the colors we found logged across locations. Kids named some areas they wanted to look at and they shared ideas in response to the question: 'What is useful about knowing what someone else's favorite color is if they live far away from us?'
Many kids in the class concluded that it would be helpful to know for making friends when you travel or if you were to move. This was a great jumping off point for the class to add on to what we'd learned by suggesting ideas about what other types of information we could put on a map to learn about children around the world.
Following exploration of Mapping Favorite Color, we switched over to National Geographic MapMaker for more exploration options.
Starting with Basemap options, we investigated how different types of basemaps can make understanding other information easier, going from an option with well-defined roads and highways, to a topographic option, to an ocean-focused bathymetry option. It was a special highlight to locate Challenger Deep (several students knew what this was!) and discuss some of the amazing accomplishments of my Esri colleague Dr. Dawn Wright (@DawnWright) who is among a very small number of people to have visited that remote location. The class was struck to learn that Dawn and her crewmate discovered a beer bottle upon reaching Challenger Deep. Students brought this up multiple times later in the conversation to voice thoughts about how the bottle could have gotten there and how GIS could help prevent harm to the ocean life.
From there, we explored a built-in map option that detailed biomes, which the class is currently learning about—a great opportunity for them to teach me something and lead some of the conversation.
And having seen the Open map options, curiosity in the room rapidly accelerated. Requests came in to explore wildfire incidents in the U.S., tropical cyclone tracks, average surface air temperature, and light pollution. We all had fun finding Alaska's northernmost visible light, which told us that people most likely must live there.
By the end of the presentation, my repeated questions: 'How can we learn what this color means?' or 'How can we find out what these different symbols mean?' were met with an excited "Legend!" or pointing at the Legend button.
My takeaways? First, 7- to 9-year-olds can absolutely get fascinated with maps and GIS. Second, 3rd grade is a great age where having a structured starting point but making room for students to suggest where the lesson goes can work really well. When switching between different types of curated maps, start with home to see what's going on in the place they know before then take suggestions for places to explore. They can compare and contribute their own interpretations of what the information they're seeing means and why they care about it.
Jesse Cloutier
Community Manager, Engagement & Content
