GIS in the Classroom: Using Geographic Information Systems in Social Studies and Environmental Science

Book description: Marsha Alibrandi takes us to the cutting edge of teaching social studies and environmental education using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). A computer application for urban planning, weather reporting, and geological and demographic studies, GIS has been increasingly employed by teachers to help students improve their geographical and critical thinking skills. Alibrandi presents an overview of this technology and examples of how it can transform your classroom. -- from Publisher website.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/education-books/1032/thumbnail.jp

Forum: Roundtables of environmental and geographic discourse: Realigning paradigms

The article discusses the importance of geography and environmental education in schools in Great Britain. Man-made boundaries are essentially agreements and half have congruence with natural features on the planet. The boundaries of disciplines are essentially agreements to study certain topics within the bounds of the origins of each discipline, yet each discipline has evolved in depth and breadth since its origins. The inherent structural assumptions of environmental education such as ecology, biodiversity and cause-and-effect relationships, when applied spatially, give rise to the newer studies such as biogeography, paleoclimatology, and even neuroscience. New imaging, sampling and analytical technologies are now in use and further developments will make possible even finer resolution from astrophysics to nanoscience. Given that both geography and environmental education are areas that transgress historic notions of the bounded discipline and now have even more common areas of congruence, it would seem that greater respect and collaboration across the two are happily intertwined

Pre-Incan Peru: Archeology and Agriculture in the Chachapoya region

Peru’s prehistory, climate, and terrain are the landscape upon which one of humankind’s longest migrations occurred. When the glacial period ended, a geographic and cultural transition began when the meltwaters carved river valleys across the South American continent. Culture-rich communities of fishers, miners, artisans, and morticians populated the Peruvian coastal plain long before the first Inca. Enriching the geography and history curricula with recent pre-Incan archeological finds, this article provides new information from the Ice Age climate’s Paleo-Indians to the last millennium before the Inca, combining recent genetic and new archeological and paleo-climatic findings adding to understandings of pre-Incan Peru. While most North Americans are aware of the Incan empire, few realize that its duration lasted less than a century: the century that ended with Spanish conquest and colonization in 1535. Three recent archeological finds in northwest Peru shed light on the many pre-Incan civilizations that preceded the fifteenth century. The new finds include a 1,000-year-old mountaintop complex named Kuelap , nearly the size of the Incan Machu Picchu site, with evidence of hundreds of burials and a massacre, possibly tied to the Incan conquest of the many Peruvian city-states to form the empire. Nearby the Chachapoya (‘‘people of the clouds’’) mummies whose giant sarcophagi stood watch in a cliffside burial city, overlooking a sacred lake for hundreds of years until they were looted. Now they are safely housed in a museum that the community helped build and maintain. Finally, the entombed sacrificial remains found at Huaca Chotuna, one of the many Huacas (sacred mounds) from coastal Peruvian civilizations that show prehistoric effects of El Nino . Ritual human sacrifices, burials, and mummification were present throughout many Peruvian civilizations

Grading With Points: The Determination of Report Card Grades by High School Science Teachers

This study examined the grading practices of 91 high school science teachers. Surveys were used to collect data about types of assessments used, the weight given each assessment, and the mechanism used to determine students\u27 report card grades. It was found that few of these teachers used alternative forms of assessment such as performance assessments, journals, or portfolios. While there was little difference among teachers based on experience, gender, or school setting, preference and weights for different assessments varied among science subject taught. These teachers used two types of mechanisms to calculate report card grades: averages and points. Teachers who used point systems for grading purposes were interviewed. The results of this study indicate that reform efforts have had little effect on the grading practices of these teachers. In addition, a large percentage of these teachers use point systems, which act against reform efforts by reinforcing task completion rather than conceptual understanding as the goal for science education

Redefining region: Social construction of region and place in a watershed education partnership

This ethnographic case study of eight environmental teacher educators who collaborated in a four-state watershed education partnership was focused on processes of social constructions of region and regional partnership. Participant observation in meetings, interviews, and spatial representations were used as data for the eleven-month study. Spatial representations at two intervals were analyzed for documentation of conceptual change. A metaphorical model was used as the interpretive frame for analysis of interview and partnership meeting discourse features. Participants identified central features of place, diversity, and scale as they elaborated upon their sub-watershed valley regions as home. Participants identified experiential learning as the foundation for watershed education, and reported that grounded experience was their own most essential way of knowing the watershed. The participants valued collaboration, networking, learning about one another\u27s work, and the opportunity to make professional connections as benefits of partnership. In an examination of discourses of self and the environment, analysis of partnership discourse strategies yielded evidence of prosodic phenomena such as raising questions and laughter as means of maintaining synchrony and coherence in meetings. Over the study period, the participants\u27 spatial representations demonstrated tensions between political and bioregional boundaries and growing similarity across representations of the partnership. Issues of support for multistate regional partnerships were considered. Conclusions were that cultural and folk concepts of region are useful in determining scale to inform watershed education policy initiatives and implementation. In partnership meetings, democratic practices were considered most practical for getting something done. Implications for education included expanding applications of metacognitive approaches, a focus on experiential learning in watershed education, and the place of place as an interdisciplinary educational focus. Finding a cultural taboo on conflict, the researcher recommends further development of curriculum environmental conflict resolution, and calls for intergenerational community watershed councils trained in conflict resolution and mediation as foci for regional watershed education efforts

Making a place for technology in teacher education with geographic information systems (GIS)

In North Carolina in the Spring 2000 semester, an experimental \u27Geographic Information System (GIS) in Education\u27 course for pre and inservice teachers was introduced at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Participants mastered a complex technology and overcame barriers as they collaborated with university faculty to coconstruct the course through reflective discussions and e-mail. Mostly social studies educators, the students chose final projects that applied GIS to analyze social problems spanning scales of local community history to international migration patterns

Teaching green: The high school years

Marsha Alibrandi is a contributing author, Thinking Spatially: GIS in the high school classroom . Book description: This resource is ideal for anyone working with young people in grades 9-12, whether in schools or in non-formal educational settings. Richly illustrated, it offers 50 teaching strategies that promote learning about natural systems and foster critical thinking about environmental issues, both local and global. It contains new approaches to learning, strategies for living sustainably, and numerous activities that promote interdisciplinary learning. In addition, the book provides suggestions for how best to green individual subject areas, develop integrated learning programs or replicate exemplary programs created by innovative schools and communities.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/education-books/1035/thumbnail.jp

Digital Geography: GeoSpatial Technologies in the Social Studies Classroom

Marsha Alibrandi is a co-editor (with A. Milson) as well as a contributing author (with T. Baker), A brief social history of GIS in education, 1994-2006. . Book description: The purpose of this volume is to provide a review and analysis of the theory, research, and practice related to geospatial technologies in social studies education. In the first section, the history of geospatial technologies in education, the influence of the standards movement, and the growth of an international geospatial education community are explored. The second section consists of examples and discussion of the use of geospatial technologies for teaching and learning history, geography, civics, economics, and environmental science. In the third section, theoretical perspectives are proposed that could guide research and practice in this field. This section also includes reviews and critiques of recent research relevant to geospatial technologies in education. The final section examines the theory, research, and practice associated with teacher preparation for using geospatial technologies in education.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/education-books/1031/thumbnail.jp

The Electronic Republic?: The Impact of Technology on Education for Citizenship

Marsha Alibrandi (with A. Milson) is a contributing author, Critical Map Literacy and Geographic Information Systems: The Spatial Dimension of Civic Decision-Making . Book description: In 1991, Lawrence Grossman wrote that a new political system is taking shape in the United States. As we approach the twenty-first century, America is turning into an electronic republic, a democratic system that is vastly increasing the people\u27s day-to-day influence on decisions of state. Grossman\u27s forecast implied a sea change in the way citizens would interact with, and participate in, their representative government; a revamping of the way Americans would \u27do\u27 citizenship. Harnessing the power of technology to promote the ideal of democracy that first pulsed through our nation over 230 years ago may be a feasible achievement in a technocratic age, but whether technology can help achieve a revolution as seismic as the political one that our founding fathers initiated may be a practical impossibility. Fusing the power of technology and democratic ideals opens opportunities for greater access to information and offers a medium for people to be heard and express their voice with dissemination to the masses through digital tools, such as blogs, podcasts, and wikis. Indeed, the emergence of the Internet as a nearly ubiquitous element of American society has brought about new opportunities to enhance citizen engagement in democratic politics and to increase the level of civic engagement among American citizens. Despite such rhetoric, however, research has indicated that Grossman\u27s electronic republic has, for the most part, failed to come to fruition.https://digitalcommons.fairfield.edu/education-books/1034/thumbnail.jp