Using GIS in a community educaiton project
The students created digital panoramas of several scenes on the street to
visualize where they would locate benches, and what views you would get from
the bench.
Panoramas of downtown Tucson
The students worked with an imaginary budget. They could choose from
different lighting, or benches, water fountains or plants, but the project cannot
exceed the total budget. There are other factors taken into account with their
choices; for example, the plants are judges on aesthetics and shade, versus
allergies they induce, or how much water they.
These are the same factors and constraints that go into real-world
decision making. The students had to justify their choices, and this process gets
them beyond mere tool-learning into understanding how spatial reasoning really
operates.
In the third week of the class, the students moved beyond gathering pure
physical data, and began collecting cultural data. This included video and audio
interviews with persons who work along Scott Street, restaurateurs, theatre
managers, proprietors and the like. There are several historical structures on this
stretch of Scott Street, and some eateries that are well-known for some part of
their cuisine, or peculiar ambience. For example, Dizzy G’s restaurant is wellknown
for its diner food, especially its chicken-fired steak. The Poca Cosa
restaurant boasts a chef’s special that is special, or unique, to anyone who
requests it. The chef puts it together with whatever is on hand at that moment,
and two persons who order the “special” simultaneously, may get something
entirely different from each other (see
http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/cte/tpacav.html
for interviews.)
Each week the class also got talks from domain professionals. For
example, in the second week the class was accompanied on a field trip by an
aborist from a local nursery. Later in the week, they were visited by someone
from Trees for Tucson, a community organization that subsidizes trees for those
who want to plant them. Potential tree locations were mapped into an ArcView
event theme, and posted to the map server, then used in presentations with
accompanying pictures of the trees and the locations to provide those attending
the presentation with as much visual evidence as possible of the proposed
improvement to Scott Avenue.
The class also worked briefly with Spatial Analyst and 3D Analyst to learn
some topology. They learned how to measure distances, where water might
collect, and line-of-sight and shading models to help them place benches for
viewing.
The class reported their findings to the Web site, and used PowerPoint to
make a presentation to the selected audience at the end of the class. When
word of the presentation got around, TV and radio programs showed up and the
project was aired in several local news venues. The project results are on line at
http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/cte/tpac.html, including student presentations.
Student presentation including budget in Excel
Experience
The class was only 4 weeks long, June 17 to July 3, and was taught for the
first time, to ages ranging from 9 to 13 with no previous GIS experience, so
expectations were modest. Nonetheless, the experience was very positive. The
students learned GIS skills, were enthusiastic, and are eager for more.
This project also generated curriculum content for other teachers to use. The
course was primarily taught by University of Arizona undergraduate teacher
interns in science education from the NSF-funded Collaboration to Advance
Teaching Technology and Science (CATTs
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/catts/about.html.) These interns have collected
the TPAC class into a model for other K12s and after-school programs. One
of these spin-off projects has already begun at
http://ag.arizona.edu/agnet/rogers/
