Global and federal agreements now scream “Let’s get cracking!” Two major accomplishments this week — the Climate Change agreement and the Every Student Succeeds Act — have opened the door and challenged us all to push hard on changing the status quo.
Young people are inheriting a panoply of threats. Their one hope for survival rests with being able to comprehend challenges, identify relevant influences and their genesis, amass/ sift/ analyze complex data, interpret and share sometimes conflicting results, integrate feedback, and act. These skills can be fostered by caring adults, even with youngsters.
GIS lets users interact with data, explore patterns, ask “Why?”, seek relationships, share discoveries, and generate strategies. Whether about foot and vehicle traffic around the school, characteristics of the watershed, changing employment across the nation, or four-dimensional global biodiversity, students can use all their prodigious talents and passions, and develop more. Given permission to dig into situations without prescribed “single approaches and right answers,” they can engage deeply and build the disposition to do so habitually.
Any US K12 school can acquire an ArcGIS Online Organization account for instruction for free to support this. Any educator lacking background or skills can start easily, without risk, in a few minutes, with focused lessons and project-based resources. Teachers whose kids go the farthest the fastest tend not to know GIS software beyond the basics; what these teachers do know is how to introduce something, then get out of the way and let the students show what they can do.
There is at last uncommon opportunity for educators. Seize the day!
Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri Education Manager
أكثر...
Young people are inheriting a panoply of threats. Their one hope for survival rests with being able to comprehend challenges, identify relevant influences and their genesis, amass/ sift/ analyze complex data, interpret and share sometimes conflicting results, integrate feedback, and act. These skills can be fostered by caring adults, even with youngsters.
GIS lets users interact with data, explore patterns, ask “Why?”, seek relationships, share discoveries, and generate strategies. Whether about foot and vehicle traffic around the school, characteristics of the watershed, changing employment across the nation, or four-dimensional global biodiversity, students can use all their prodigious talents and passions, and develop more. Given permission to dig into situations without prescribed “single approaches and right answers,” they can engage deeply and build the disposition to do so habitually.
Any US K12 school can acquire an ArcGIS Online Organization account for instruction for free to support this. Any educator lacking background or skills can start easily, without risk, in a few minutes, with focused lessons and project-based resources. Teachers whose kids go the farthest the fastest tend not to know GIS software beyond the basics; what these teachers do know is how to introduce something, then get out of the way and let the students show what they can do.
There is at last uncommon opportunity for educators. Seize the day!
Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri Education Manager
أكثر...