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Wendee Holtcamp |
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The primary goal of the professional development that I will complete is to integrate the regular use of and instructor competence in Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in N. Harris Montgomery Community College District science classrooms. This instruction will be done through a 4-hour GIS training seminar workshop at Kingwood College and through ongoing mentoring of instructors on an as-needed basis. I will also set up a listserv for questions and answers about the project and about GIS/ArcView. GIS will be introduced through a multi-disciplinary problem-based learning research project entitled “Layers on the Landscape” that I will initiate in Fall 2001 in my own classroom, with the goal of incorporating other classes and instructors into the project by Spring 2002. The Layers on the Landscape project will involve using and reviewing the KanCRN.org’s Stream Monitoring Project protocol and online data submission forms. We will investigate how land use and development affects water quality in the San Jacinto River watershed. Individual chemistry, geology, and biology classes can address individualized questions related to their subject, layering the data into the GIS software. GIS is an extremely valuable tool for students on a practical level because it is a skill that can give students an edge getting into a 4-year college program, or in getting jobs that increasingly use GIS and spatial datasets. In terms of learning, GIS helps students visualize data spatially, and spatial skills have been shown to increase student performance in other tasks and on tests (Hsi et al 1997).
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