But Santaiti and her students have a lot of work to do before they begin. First, they need to find out where the Hispanic population lives. Then they need to locate community resources near these neighborhoods. Where are the schools located? Where is the nearest library? Where is the most convenient recycling center?

Eventually, the class wants to create maps and flyers in Spanish showing where the local recycling center is, what days it's open, and what items can be recycled. To accomplish all this, Santaiti's students are excited about using GIS software.

Looking at the Future

Santaiti is one of 50 teachers working with The Concord Consortium's Education for a Sustainable Future (ESF) project, which is seeking flexible software tools that can help learners understand critical environmental, economic, and social issues that will affect their communities in the 21st century. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software is one of those tools.

For years, fields as diverse as disaster relief, crime prevention, and urban planning have used GIS. Now that GIS tools are becoming easier to use, they've caught the attention of educators. Students are using GIS tools to better understand sustainable development, which has been described as "meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability for future generations to meet their needs," according to the Brundtland report by the World Commission on Environment and Development.

Sustainable development is interesting to students because it involves their own future. "If we are going to engage students and citizens in creating sustainable communities," explains Keith Wheeler, Director of the Center for a Sustainable Future, the division of The Concord Consortium which is coordinating the ESF project, "then we must take advantage of tools like GIS that allow individuals and groups of people to see what the current situation is. What does the future hold? How can the opportunity for proactive planning and design help create a natural and human landscape that is in balance over time?"

Often the biggest problems a community faces involve a number of stake holders, all of whom have interests they want to protect, resources they want access to, and long-term goals and objectives they want to meet. GIS tools are invaluable for decision support, consensus building, data visualization and future planning activities, which are a critical part of sustainable development. By using GIS tools, everyone can explore various proposals and their outcomes in order to find common ground.

What is GIS?

The quickest way to upset a GIS enthusiast is to describe GIS as "mapping software." The phrase brings to mind simpler tools such as MapQuest, which is good for planning a car trip, but is not an open-ended, flexible tool like word processing or spreadsheet software.

But even though calling it "mapping software" limits the GIS definition, it does provide a conceptual starting point for the discussion of GIS. Maps traditionally have been simple reference tools, often two-dimensional images representing features of an area of interest. Usually a map is created for a specific purpose. A road map shows you where the highways are. A city map shows you the street names and maybe the location of local landmarks. Santaiti's students might be able to use such a map to circle the location of schools who might take part in a recycling program. Another map might show the location of senior centers or local businesses, but that's about all. Generally maps are passive - they don't change as you work with them.

GIS, on the other hand, is an explorer's tool suited for the investigative mind. It supports multiple modes of operation, including map making, data collection, data analysis, decision support, and data visualization, which help answer complicated questions, such as: What will happen if the water level in the river rises ten feet? Which roads will be washed out? Which houses will have to be evacuated? What are the phone numbers of the people who live there?

Santaiti's students are investigating the relationship between recycling, language, education, and the local community. If they create a flyer in Spanish, where should it be distributed? How many people live in the community around the recycling center? Is there a library nearby where flyers can be distributed? GIS can be helpful in answering these questions.

There are two main types of GIS data. "Feature" data shows where things are - "X marks the spot" kind of information. It might describe where the recycling centers are located. "Attribute" data might describe the kinds of items that can be recycled there - newspaper, tin, green glass, cardboard. It might explain the types of plastic that can and cannot be recycled at each center, give a description of each, and even display a photograph of the containers. Once you have some feature data, it's pretty easy to keep recording new attribute data.

GIS uses data layers to control how many features are displayed at one time. A data layer is like a sheet of transparent acetate. Each sheet has a different feature printed on it, such as the contours of local roads or the outline of the school district. As few as one or as many as a hundred data layers can be visible at one time. By turning on and off layers it is easy to compare and identify the relationships between them.

If we add a layer to Santaiti's class project showing where the Hispanic population lives, we can see the proximity of the recycling center to the Spanish-speaking community. We can also add data layers for the location of schools and libraries. Another layer can show where businesses are located.

Layering allows you to see the data that you are interested in while hiding the things you don't care about.

Perhaps the most powerful feature of GIS is its ability to perform complex and meaningful queries on all of the data at once. Using the data layers we have mentioned so far, one could ask the data a question, and get a customized image, showing us the location of all Spanish-speaking households which are less than a mile from a recycling center and within walking distance of a school or library. It can also show pictures of what types of items can be recycled at each center. This would be a great map for kids to use in targeting recycling information to the Hispanic community.

Government and Business Use

Federal agencies which are set up to monitor the health, growth, safety, demographics, and natural resources of the country rely on the use of GIS tools to create maps, analyze data, prepare for disasters, and generally gain a better understanding of the physical and sociological nature of the country.

Many of these agencies, such as the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Census Bureau, publish their data in formats that can be easily used. Often they have web sites from which you can download data. In some instances, you can buy a CD-ROM full of information. Many state agencies also make GIS information available. Good local GIS data may be as close as your town hall. Companies use GIS to study consumer demographics or to minimize their environmental impact. Demand for GIS experts in business and government is pushing community colleges and universities to offer GIS courses.

Software Choices

GIS software can be expensive, but ESRI and other software vendors offer competitive prices for the K-12 market. ArcView, the leading GIS software from ESRI, can be purchased for about $200 for a school site license. ESRI and others offer less robust alternatives to ArcView, such as ArcExplorer, which has fewer advanced features but is easier to use, and it's free! ArcVoyager is another inexpensive ESRI product. Before making an expensive purchase, take a look at the freebies.

Keep in mind that GIS is a challenge. The time commitment required to become comfortable using it is a serious consideration. The ESF project will be developing a more intuitive "Visual Community Designer" tool which incorporates some of the capabilities of robust GIS applications.

Learning Opportunities

GIS tools work well with a project-based education. A student using GIS to study a local river can create a light green map layer showing higher concentrations of dissolved oxygen and a dark blue layer showing lower concentrations. Now that the student has entered her data and chosen a visualization scheme, she can begin to notice trends. Is there a relationship between higher concentrations of water contaminates and neighboring roads? Add a map of the roads and find out. While many people are confused by lists of numbers or even charts and graphs, most people could read this student's map and understand its environmental implications.

In some instances, the data a student creates can be valuable to local agencies. Students at Osborne High School in Osborne, Georgia, are looking at teen pregnancy and drug use in their high school. They're partnering with other community organizations, such as the police department, the school board, and churches to create useful information. Students will help the police department, which has only handwritten reports, to code the crime statistics on a map of the community. This information will be correlated with school location and other community resources. As a result, the police will be better informed, and the students will have made an investment in their community.

There are countless creative uses for GIS in the classroom. GIS is just one example of how information technology, when used appropriately, can help students understand complex real-world issues.

Noah Fields is a Software Developer for the ESF project.
Noah@concord.org

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