Developing the GIS Program
GIS was introduced into the curriculum at Thomas Jefferson about five years ago, largely through the efforts of Principal Geoff Jones and the school's first GIS teacher, Kathryn Keranen. "At the time," said Jones, "we were looking at new developments we were certain would make an impact in science and technology, as well as in many other fields. GIS was one of those. We were also interested in visualization and dynamic systems modeling because at the senior level we look at the geosciences as integrated systems -- biological, chemical, physical -- that have sociological and other interdisciplinary components to them. To do interdisciplinary work, we needed dynamic systems modeling tools. GIS is the most powerful."
IDRISI was acquired from Clark University in Massachusetts, basically because it was the only software that would run on the 286 machines TJHSST had at the time. It could also process unsupervised classifications (albeit 14 hours overnight) from LANDSAT imagery donated by NASA. Nevertheless, teachers studied remote sensing, HTML and the Internet, and modeled generic data sets such as the Yellowstone fire of the 1980s and the Mississippi flood of the early '90s. Much of the early assistance in teacher training was provided by USGS Mapping Division's John Jones, who continues to work closely with the school on GIS projects and curricula. Kathryn Keranen, however, who became the school's leading GIS teacher, is largely self-taught, having mastered ArcView when she was stranded at home during the Blizzard of '93.
In 1995, TJHSST acquired a new GIS lab with 133MHz Pentiums and ArcView GIS donated by ESRI. Since then, ESRI's ambassador to education, Charley Fitzpatrick, has provided the school with technical support and curricula advice and shared new developments in GIS education from around the country.
Keranen and other teachers who perfected their skills with ArcView developed the GIS program at TJHSST. Their senior-year curriculum was subsequently adopted as a pilot course by all 24 high schools in the county. Sixteen have since received new GIS labs, the remaining seven to be installed this year. Keranen said funding for the new facilities was largely the work of a county education task force. "They felt it was important to graduate students who were capable of using these technologies, whether students were going on to college or joining the work force."
Keranen currently teaches three GIS classes at TJHSST and trains teachers in other high schools two days a week. "Sometimes I teach classes for them to model how you would introduce GIS," she said. "I'll start them on a project, or go out and walk across the grounds with them and try to come up with a project." Although her efforts have been largely successful, she acknowledges that science teachers with little or no experience in technology were hesitant at first. "The GIS program represented a big change in the way they teach." Most were eventually hooked, she said. "The things you see going on in their classrooms now are not anything like traditional science courses."
The GIS Program
Teachers, in turn, introduced students to GIS through image processing, said Jones. They showed students that they could take almost any stream of data and create visual images and ideas quite different from what they might have imagined. In one example, teachers used data representing ocean levels and U.S. coastline elevations, then manipulated the data to show what would happen if the sea level were raised by an inch. They could see the flooded coastal areas. "It was a simple demonstration, but if you believe in global warming, which will raise ocean levels, then here's where the coastline is going to be," Jones said. "That grabbed their attention. They could zero in on their own hunk of coastline and see the consequences. They could put New York City under water."
TJHSST freshmen begin studying GIS concepts through field work, data collection, building data sets, and looking at different relationships using Mylar overlays on aerial photographs and topo maps. The work is done without using software. A 10th-year course in computer science provides an understanding of the tools needed for statistical analysis and design, and for manipulating arrays of information and data. Students develop fundamental programming skills, write simple procedures and do basic modeling. There are no GIS requirements in the 11th year.
In the 12th year, GIS becomes the interdisciplinary tool in a required geoscience curriculum encompassing astronomy, meteorology and oceanography. GIS application skills are developed through tasks that progress from simple to complex. Using ArcView, students determine the entire campus area, classify vegetation, develop polygons, construct a digital elevation model, and calculate permeable and impermeable surfaces and the amount of runoff that would occur in a storm. They work with raster and vector data, and do an extensive unit in remote sensing, in which they import LANDSAT imagery, determine various land classifications and do ground truthing.
Real-World Applications
The GIS program culminates in a final project in which seniors take part in an ongoing geosystems study of the Lake Barcroft area in the upper reaches of the Cameron Run watershed in Fairfax County. Tasks involve estimating nutrient and sediment loads in the watershed; producing soil classification and soil phosphorous isoline maps; classifying land from remote sensing data; ground truthing; and assessing groundwater quality parameters -- pH, dissolved solids, hardness, sulfates and carbonates. Base maps include a Fairfax County database of the watershed with all lakes and streams; a tax-parcel map; and aerial photos with 18-centimeter resolution. The resources were provided by county and local government offices and by NASA. Until now, map coordinates have been used to georeference data. This year, students will determine coordinates using newly acquired Trimble GPS Explorer II Receivers and post-processing procedures.
The CAD lab, one of the electives in the 12th year, requires seniors to do an independent project. GIS projects this year included a study of the effects of runoff from abandoned coal mines in Virginia's lakes and rivers; an assessment of flood damage to segments of the Chesapeake Bay and Ohio Canal; mapping bike trails in Alexandria's Great Falls Park; and recreating the Civil War setting of the Manassas battlefield.
Evolved over three years, the current GIS program at TJHSST may soon change. A team of teachers is working on plans to vertically integrate GIS into the curriculum. "The idea is to have kids start collecting data, along with the physical and social sciences, in their freshman year," Keranen explained. "In the sophomore and junior years, they will progress through point data collection with x-y coordinates; work with GPS, digital data and remote sensing; and in the senior year, carry out data entry and work with real-life problems."
Benefits
TJHSST teachers found the most effective way to teach GIS is to link the technology into real community work. The process gives students the opportunity to work on real problems -- in some instances, with professionals in the field. Community-related projects garner support and training from various government agencies, as well as from industries interested in promoting GIS. In response to the school's community-related projects, NASA contributed LANDSAT imagery and high-resolution, multispectral aerial data. Next year, NASA's Lewis and Clark satellites will provide spectral data for any requested area in Fairfax County. The data will be used to determine the percentage of permeable watershed in the area.
Challenges
Jones acknowledged that building support for the program has not been an easy task. "GIS is still not well understood by the larger community," he said. "People look at it largely as a hardware-software kind of thing. If they are familiar with GIS at all, they're imagining something in their automobiles that someday will be able to tell them where they are." He said one of the goals of the school is to create better community understanding of GIS and its importance as an educational tool. "We have sent faculty and students far and wide to share their work, to say to people, this is an area that all of us need to attend to. GIS is a key technology that needs to be more broadly introduced in the sciences and social sciences throughout secondary education," he said.
"We're just beginning to understand the power of being able to look at multivariate and dynamic systems, and do computational modeling in science that will allow us to ask questions we have never before been able to ask. It is going to change the way we think."
Bill McGarigle is a freelance writer specializing in communication and information technology. E-mail:
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