The Plains of Opportunities
15.3.1 The Technological Landscape: Opportunities
Opportunities for the use of GSTs as meaningful components of lifelong education are rapidly expanding. If the use of GST is thought of as a landscape, then the opportunities could be described as plains, easily traversed by educators and students. The most obvious opportunities are those afforded by advances in tech- nology, including GSTs and other tools. I argue that the most significant advance- ment is the evolution of GIS to a web-based platform. Web-based GIS is a manifestation of the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) method of delivering software and data through a location hosted online by the providing organization, or, more specifically, the “Cloud.” The “Cloud” is a “collection of computers, servers, and databases that are connected together in a way that users can lease access to share their combined power” (Singleton2011). SaaS is typically accessed by users using a “thin client”–a web browser. Many applications use the SaaS model, including computer games (Minecraft), business (SalesForce), multimedia (Screencast), social media (LinkedIn), and office tools (Dropbox, Microsoft Office 365, Google Drive).
That GST has rapidly embraced the SaaS model has implications for educators, students, and their institutions. Working with GST has always involved working with big data” (Kerski and Clark 2012). For instructors to create GST-based curriculum, data is essential. The cloud offers ease of storage without physical media and larger capacity. To use GST in interdisciplinary problem-solving and learning environments, spatial data needs not only to be stored, butshared.Cloud- 15 Opportunities and Challenges in Using Geospatial Technologies for Education 187
based GIS data can be streamed or downloaded by multiple individuals and can be simultaneously edited online. Furthermore, not only can spatial data be shared, but so too can the tools, models, workflows, and scripts, fostering a collaborative working environment. This allows the community to spend less time downloading and formatting data, freeing time for spatial analysis, curriculum development, investigating new tools and functionality, and teaching!
One of the chief challenges for educators using technology is reliance on an often overextended Information Technology (IT) staff. This problem is particularly acute with GST because IT staff may hesitate to install something unfamiliar, that updates often, and that which requires great disk space and computing power. With web-based GIS, no software installations are necessary because the software lives online. GST lends itself to teaching with the “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) model that has become more commonplace as schools and universities downsize or eliminate traditional computer laboratories. SaaS based data, tools, and capabilities can be accessed and worked with on any device and operating system. Updates are done on the server side, eliminating struggles with keeping one’s own “version” up to date.
SaaS online maps are dynamic—customizable, and shareable. They make it easier to map real-time information and incorporate multimedia and fieldwork than desktop-based maps and data. GIS is a system relying upon related skills, tools, and capabilities. GST has grown partly because of advances in computing power, speed, and storage. The internet as a storage and communications medium freed GSTs technically but also socially. Furthermore, as it becomes easier to modify images, edit database fields, embed multimedia into maps, edit maps using HTML and JavaScript, create mashups using Python, host maps using public folders on Dropbox or other platforms, change data formats, upload spreadsheets, geotag videos, map field tracks from GPS receivers and smartphones, instructors’ abilities to teach technical skills in tandem with GST is enhanced. GST becomes easier for instructors to justify because it is increasingly seen asessential to and connected withother twenty-first century tools and skills.
15.3.2 The Instructional Landscape: Opportunities
Policymakers, administrators, and educators have frequently called for increased inquiry-based instruction (Brew2003; Edelson et al.1999). Inquiry is at the heart of problem-solving and teaching with GST in the classroom and in informal settings adheres to the tenets of inquiry-driven education (Baker2005). Emphasis on and funding of STEM education (Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Mathemat- ics) has lent new attention to interdisciplinary, tech-based methods and technolo- gies, including GST (Nugent et al.2010).
The advent of educational content standards in many countries during the past few decades and the nationalization of parts of the educational curriculum (Kerr 1990) have challenged and brought opportunities to the use of GST. Emphasis on
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standardized tests pose a challenge to inquiry driven technology whose benefits are largely in the process, rather than the “single solution” or “one right answer”, making the benefits of spatial analysis difficult to assess, fund, and support.
However, the focus on problem solving adheres to the tenets of many content standards. Many national content standards include spatial thinking and analysis (Kerski et al. 2013). Some states include GST in their standards and also host courses such as Virginia’s Geospatial Semester (Kolvoord2008).
A focus on twenty-first century skills, including innovation, critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, as well as on career, information, media, and technology (Trilling and Fadel 2009) by key organizations (such as the Partnership for twenty-first century Skills) provide further opportunities. Warnings of the adverse impacts of youth spending too little time outdoors support the use of GST in environmental education (Louv2006; Kerski2012; Palmer2000).
Calls for project-based and problem-based learning also supports the use of GSTs, because these technologies were created to solve problems (Drennon 2005). Authentic assessment, or the practice of evaluating student work based on projects and portfolios rather than standardized tests, also supports the use of educational GST (Solem2001) because students who solve problems with them are frequently called upon to present their results to their instructor, peers, or a community group.
The engagement that students have with GSTs, cited repeatedly by educators, is a key factor that has moved these technologies forward. Indeed, students using GST exemplify the inquiry process of asking geographic questions, gathering geographic data, assessing geographic information, analyzing geographic information, and acting on the decisions that they make with their new-found knowledge. In a world where citizens bemoan the segmentation of education, GIS brings unifies content, skills, faculty, and students from different disciplines and levels from primary to university (Wright and Goodchild1997).
The challenge of GST-based curriculum identified by several surveys (Kerski 2003; Baker et al.2009) has been partly filled by such packages as Mapping Our World, Spatial Mathematics, GeoHistory, In Time and Place, Mapping the Envi- ronment, and iGuess. The Body of Knowledge (BoK) built on the earlier Core Curriculum in GIScience by providing a framework upon which to build courses and its revision will continue to do so (DiBiase et al.2008).
As GST embraced the internet, so too did its professional development, through online courses offered by universities, nonprofit organizations (such as eNet Learning), for-profit professional development companies (such as the Online Learning Consortium), and Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs). Penn State University’s map-focused MOOC attracted 47,000 students in 2013 and in 2014. These represent‘open education’(Sui2014) opportunities for GST to gain educators, students, and disciplinary areas. In addition, face-to-face opportunities continue to expand, such as the Esri Teachers Teaching Teachers GIS (T3G) annual institutes (Kerski and Demers2014).
Several significant research advances have aided adoption. These include the Spatial Literacy in Teaching (SPLINT) in the UK (Chalkley 2006), National 15 Opportunities and Challenges in Using Geospatial Technologies for Education 189
Academy of Sciences’ Learning to Think Spatially report (2006) and the NSF-funded Geography Roadmap project (Wertheim et al.2013). An online GIS education bibliography topped 2400 entries by 2013 (Baker et al.2012).
15.3.3 The Societal Landscape: Opportunities
Societal trends have encouraged the use of GSTs in education. These include location analytics that encourage embedding a location in electronic devices, growing awareness of the geographic significance of key twenty-first century issues, growing perception for the importance of fostering good citizenship educa- tion, and increasing awareness of roles for citizen science.
Economic challenges and labor shortages in technological fields encourages some countries to embed GST into Career and Technology Education (CTE) pro- grams (Milson et al.2012). GST was identified in 2004 by the US Department of Labor (Gewin2004) as one of three major growth fields for the twenty-first century.
The NSF funded GeoTech Center effort (Johnson2010) led community colleges to increase their offerings of GIS certificates and programs (Johnson and Sullivan 2010). The resulting Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM) and guidelines for creating higher education courses aligned with key GST workforce skills (DiBiase et al. 2010; Johnson 2010) provided further opportunity. The GTCM’s ethics, organization, and critical thinking support teaching far beyond simply the technical aspects, and its academic competencies of computer science, cartography, geography, earth science, and others reinforce interdisciplinary con- nections that GIScientists had been building since the early 1990s.