Get the kids outside this spring with GIS!

ShareUser · ‎03-05-2025

As spring rolls across the northern hemisphere, many students (and teachers) long to get outdoors. It’s a great opportunity to engage kids in field data work.

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Ask the question

Whether the teacher is designing the study or students are creating their own, articulating a clear question to drive the investigation is critical. The question should be available to data collection – and sensitive to location. For example, while asking “What does the gravitational field around Saturn look like”? may be an interesting question, it’s probably not answerable through kids collecting data on a smart phone. And since we are interested in mapping our results, the question or some part of it should vary by location? Examples might include:

How does the crawdad population vary around the creek?
What architectural influences do we see around our town?
Where do the most dandelions grow on the school property?

If you or your students are struggling for inspiration, I find using the Living Atlas of the World or even Business Analyst are great tools for browsing all kinds of data. They are the kind of data that will make most students begin asking about the “why’s of where”.

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Acquire data: Design a survey

With a question in hand, creating a way to systematically collect data in an easy and reliable manner becomes important. For most teachers, that means using Survey123 to create a data collection form that asks the right contextual information (date, time, location, student team id, etc.) and collects the necessary scientific or social attribute data (e.g. air or water temp, air quality, soil moisture, etc.). The smart researcher is thinking about how they want to analyze the data while they are designing their data collection protocol. Different questions produce different kinds of data, that affords different types of analyses. For example, it’s not all that easy to map a “free text” data. The easiest-to-map data are often numeric or categorical.

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Acquire data: Collect

With a well-designed data collection protocol in place, get outside with your Survey123 form. Kids can also access a Survey123 form from their cell phones or home computer – if the teacher shares the survey to “Everyone” – at least temporarily. This opens up data collection locations – which can be helpful depending on the research question. Teachers may ask students to submit three data collection records over a weekend.

Encouraging students to reflect on data quality, potential errors, and the influence of external factors helps them think critically about their findings and strengthens their understanding of real-world scientific research.

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Explore the data

One great aspect of using a central data collection tool (rather than clipboards for example) is that all the data are assembled in one location for you and the students. Survey123 data are available as a map layer that can be added to a map made by each student.

Depending on the research question, each student or student groups may need to add additional “operational” data to their ArcGIS Map Viewer map to provide extra context or sense-making of their own data. For example, in looking at the crawdad population in a nearby creek, some students may want to add additional data layers showing water chemistry (such as nitrates collected by the county water office), while other students want to look at a map of vegetation coverage to determine shade on the water.

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Analyze the data

Analyzing data can start with something as simple as searching for visual patterns in the map and then articulating the patterns in student-collected data. This is a powerful way to summarize the data, and it can be done with a wide range of students.

As they advance in their thinking, more sophisticated analytical tools within the geographic information systems can be used. Whether searching for visual patterns or opening the analysis treasure box, the ArcGIS Map Viewer offers incredible opportunity. There are some basic geographic inquiry questions that might help frame an approach to students geographically analyzing data (reference).

Where is it?
Where’s the most and least?
How much is where?
What’s inside?
What’s nearby?
What’s changed?

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Conclude and Act on your field study

For most student investigations, creating a representation of findings is the first step. This is often a report-style description of what was asked, what was found, and statements of findings. A proper report may include photos, videos, sound clips and of course narrative. In our case, a map is also imperative. ArcGIS StoryMaps are ideal for linking these media (and many other types) together into a beautiful and coherent web page. Students may also choose to create an ArcGIS Dashboard that integrates the interactive map and charts and graphs. Dashboards can also effectively be added to a StoryMap to convey student work in powerful ways.

The StoryMap is an excellent vehicle for sharing with other students, parents, school administrators, district leadership, and the community at-large. StoryMaps are ideal presentation tools but also work well in a kiosk mode. They are a great compliment to sharing the work of student investigators and highlighting the success of the learners.

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So, as you venture into the great outdoors this spring, keep in mind that there’s likely an ArcGIS tool that can aid or extend every aspect of your students’ field work!

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