It’s not every day that a Fortune 500 company asks high school students for help. But that’s precisely what happened after Detroit school high school teacher Randall E. Raymond and his students demonstrated what they could do with GIS software for Ford Motor Company in 1994. Following the demonstration, Ford hired Raymond and his students to conduct a demographic analysis of auto markets in India, Brazil and China.

Experiences like this have made Raymond a fervent supporter of using GIS software in the classroom “This is the most important technology next to the Internet that’s been developed,” says Raymond, who has used the software in his urban environmental science classes at Detroit’s Cass Technical High School since 1992. Today, Raymond teaches only one class; his actual job is setting up geographical information system technologies for Detroit schools.

Image courtesy of Randall Raymond.

A geographic information system, or GIS, provides students with powerful learning tools that can be developed into marketable skills. Raymond has personally seen this marketability: many of his graduates have found jobs because of their GIS training in high school. But to an educator, the introduction of GIS to students goes far beyond the goal of job training.

“A GIS enables you to take relatively simple classroom activities and extend them beyond the walls of the school and into the community,” Raymond notes.

As industry continues to find new ways to use GIS software, teachers are also finding ways to use GIS in their classrooms. In many ways, it is a natural fit. Computers and maps have a natural appeal to students and the learning process is enriched when classroom activities can be used in “real life” applications.

GIS is the new kid in the classroom, with software for schools emerging in the early to middle 1990s, says Charlie Fitzpatrick, manager of K-12 education for Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc. (ESRI) of Redlands, Calif. Currently, between 2,000 and 3,000 schools around the country utilize ESRI mapping software.

Image provided courtesy of ESRI and is used herein with permission. Copyright (c) ESRI. All rights reserved.

MapInfo of Troy, New York is also actively distributing its GIS software to students. “There is room for plenty of growth,” says Sue Disy, curriculum developer for the company. “It’s in its infancy.”

Teachers use GIS in a variety of creative ways. A class with third, fourth and fifth graders at the Joseph Cook Elementary School in Syracuse, Utah, used GIS software to study how the area would be affected by a proposed new road that was slated to pass through a popular recreation area called Antelope Island. The student group generated traffic data and mapped out a group of possible freeway routes, including some that spared Antelope Island. Ultimately, they were able to play a role in deciding the best route for the road.

The Antelope Island project helped show students how they could relate to the broader world, says Don Cressall, who was the teacher in the Utah class and is now in charge of purchasing and evaluating software for the local school district. “A lot of times kids need to see, ‘How does this relate to me?’ ”

MapInfo’s Sue Disy worked with a group of 12-year-olds in the Albany area who were mapping the community for a local lumber company. “I was surprised, working with 12-year-olds, how quickly they picked up the software and how quickly they understood it.”

In Ohio, teacher Reinhold Friebertshauser used the software to launch a summer program focused on preserving the Chagrin River watershed in the Cleveland area. Friebertshauser gathers students and teachers from local high schools to participate in a four-to-five week session each summer. Students use GIS to obtain extensive digital databases of the area, collecting information about planning and environmental issues such as demographics, soil types, zoning laws, and vegetation. Armed with data and maps, the group has successfully affected plans for construction and development in their community.

One key to the group’s successful learning is its ability to generate its own data instead of using information that already exists, says Friebertshauser, who also teaches computer graphics at the University School in Hunting Valley, Ohio. “Scientific data doesn’t just drop out of the sky. It’s grunt work.”

Some of the best projects using GIS software draw from many different disciplines. “It integrates a lot of different technologies in one package,” says Michael Finney, vice president/operations at Encompass Technologies and associate director of information technology and data services at Ohio University in Athens. “At a high school level, it could help students pull together their math, their civics, their history.”

Students may have enjoyed maps in the past, but they were unlikely to make maps on their own. GIS changes all that. “We would like to see GIS replace pull-down maps,” says Finney, whose company sells and distributes MapInfo software to schools.

Despite its natural appeal, there are also barriers to using GIS in classrooms. For GIS to be used extensively in schools, supporters must overcome issues ranging from discomfort with computer technology to an unwillingness of some teachers to teach students in new and different ways.

Dr. Andrew Mazzara, President of Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan, shows a class how demographic variables can be put on a map.
Image courtesy of Randall Raymond.

For example, students of all ages seem to be able to use GIS with instruction, but before that can happen, teachers must be trained to use GIS products and they must be inspired to integrate GIS into their teaching plans.

“This is a tool that is unstructured,” says ESRI’s Fitzpatrick. “That poses a challenge for the teacher looking for a specific series of steps with a predictable outcome at the end.” Other issues such as access to computers and funding for computer training can also limit the spread of GIS software in the classroom.

Effective use of GIS software also requires computer knowledge. “You have to be fairly technologically oriented or have some good support,” says Don Cressall, who notes that his Utah classroom received extensive financial and training support from business and government.

Finally, Friebertshauser warns against using GIS in a superficial manner. “It is very easy to bring it into an elementary or middle school classroom, do some things with it and say that you are using technology . . . It’s a big step to get between showing it and using it.”

While it may never be a staple in every classroom, GIS already is generating new types of learning around the country. “It’s an exciting tool for kids,” says Cressall. “It has a direct tie to what they’re learning in the classroom and in the outside world.”