Geospatial Teaching Across the Curriculum (Geo-STAC) developed by Lane Community College, is providing a mentored professional development opportunity for high school teachers and hands-on lessons in geospatial thinking and technology for high school students. The need for students to think spatially and use geospatial technologies is becoming more critical as these tools and concepts are increasingly incorporated into a broad range of occupations and academic disciplines. Geo-STAC addresses important needs to improve geospatial education and community college program recruitment by creating a pathway between the community college and high school teachers and their students. Geo-STAC is providing professional development workshops for high school teachers representing STEM and non-STEM disciplines to help teachers: (1) understand the importance of geospatial thinking; (2) learn how to use geospatial thinking in their particular discipline; (3) learn about geospatial technologies; (4) develop a Web-based GIS lesson; and (5) implement a Web-based GIS lesson. Geo-STAC also is working directly with high school students so that they: (1) understand the importance of geospatial technologies and careers in future job markets; (2) learn how to use Web-based GIS to solve problems; and (3) visit the community college GIS lab and experience using desktop GIS. The Geo-STAC project is strongly supported by the new National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence (GeoTech Center), the Lane County Education Service District (Lane ESD), high school teachers, and several community colleges across the country. Geo-STAC is actively disseminating this collaborative model to community colleges across the country.
Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE Geospatial Teaching Across the Curriculum (Geo-STAC) is a project developed by geography and GIS faculty at Lane Community College - Eugene, Oregon to provide a mentored professional development opportunity for high school teachers. The goal of the project was to embed geospatial technology across the curriculum. The intellectual merit of the project was to develop Standards-based, Web-based GIS lessons. The broader impact was to embedded STEM-related technologies (GIS) into non-STEM subject areas (e.g. History, Political Science, Heath, and Language Arts). Geo-STAC lessons were developed by two cohorts of teacher participants. Each cohort worked for 10 weeks to learn the technology and develop a Web-based GIS lesson. The lessons were taught in their classes. These teacher-developed lessons were introduced in nine one-day workshops to 118 teachers. Geo-STAC Web-based maps are accessible using a web-browser. The maps were developed to enable users to: record coordinates, zoom, measure, query, create buffers, change layer order, and map symbology. There are 14 lessons with teacher and student guides. http://gis.lanecc.edu/modules. The primary goal for the Geo-STAC project was to teach high-school teachers and their students how to use GIS technology and to understand the benefits of geospatial thinking and technology After participating in a one-day workshop, 80% of the teachers responded that the workshop was worthwhile and 70 % ()indicated that using geospatial technology was very important for their students. One frustration identified by many teachers was the limitations of Web-based GIS. Many wanted to develop their own maps and add different data layers to fit curriculum needs. Therefore, the Geo-STAC site <http://gis.lanecc.edu/GTFT > hosts an eight-lesson self-directed course called Geospatial Technology For Teachers (GTFT). Teachers who work through the lessons will have the skills to use basic functions of Quantum GIS - a free multiplatform desktop application. Currently, six teachers have worked through the lessons and successfully learned how to use QGIS to perform basic geospatial tasks, such as: converting data layers, symbolizing data, changing projections, Boolean logic queries on attribute tables, and create map layouts. One teacher taught her high school AP Human Geography class how to use this desktop GIS to select the site for a new high school in their school district. Post Project Evaluations The 170 teachers who participated in a workshop (one-day or eight-week) were sent an electronic post-project survey - 49 responded. 1) Twenty-nine indicated they had used at least one lessons since attending a Geo-STAC workshop. 2) When asked to respond to the question: "How did the GeoSTAC workshop change your teaching?" Most of the respondents mentioned an increased awareness of geospatial tools. "It made me aware of other ways that I could bring real life examples to math curriculum. "Made me so much more aware of the world around us and all that is happening in this world of ours...I put maps into the computer apps class and also did a comparison on coffee establishments." "It significantly increased my awareness in how to apply the information in a variety of subject areas. It helped me recognize skills that students have and enabled me to encourage those skills with encouragement of future professions." 3) When asked, "If you did not use any of the lessons, please explain what kept you from using a lesson," most teachers indicated that they did not have time in the curriculum or they did not have access to computers. "I am very excited about the ways I can use GeoSTAC with my English and ESL students; unfortunately, there is little time with all of the new state and federal mandates to get creative with learning. I'm hoping to take this summer and really incorporate new things that I've been learning about to re-energize both my students and myself in the classroom.....? General Observations During the workshops, several observations were made related to the use of technology and integration technology into their curriculum: 1) About 30% of the teachers had difficulty with basic computer skills - copy and paste, navigating from one document to another, saving files to specified drives. 2) Teachers are creative and innovative. Every teacher that attended the one-day workshop wanted to change the lessons to better fit their needs. Therefore, lessons are offered as easy-to-edit Word documents. 3) Many teachers expressed being overwhelmed with the required curriculum at their school. They are interested and see the importance of geospatial technology, but are not sure they can include it and meet the required curricula. 4) Teachers at alternative and charter schools have more time to integrated geospatial technology and have administrative support. 5) There continues to be significant barriers to technology instruction in the classroom due to: old computers, little or no IT support, poor IT collaboration, over scheduled labs, computer-delivered state testing which occupies the lab availability.
