Digital Geography

I met with traveling Australian teacher and GIS evangelist Malcolm McInnery at the Royal Geographical Society this week. We were joined by Judy Mansell from the RGS and David Rayner, the newly appointed National Subject Lead for Geography who is responsible for introducing the revised KS3 curriculum in schools.

Malcolm is traveling to Hong Kong, Canada the USA and the UK to research spatial technology and spatial literacy in schools, with a view to continuing the work that he has been doing to raise awareness of GIS in Australia. His thought provoking questions left us reflecting on why the implementation of GIS in UK schools is still patchy, often depending on an enthusiastic individual teacher, rather than being firmly embedded in the curriculum. Given the rapid expansion of GIS in industry and public services, and the associated demand for spatial literacy skills in students, as well the entitlement arising from the new National Curriculum, it is certainly time to reflect on the role that spatial technologies should have in the classroom.

Is there a problem with spatial literacy?
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Malcolm describes our discussion on his Spatial Worlds blog. One of the main points arising for me was the reaffirmation of my conviction that the best use of GIS stems from students being involved in the collection of data rather than just working with existing data sets. Projects can and should be aimed at real world decision making. Council departments should become used to dealing with enquiries following the latest revealing discoveries from local students. My local crime enquiry is somewhat dated now but is the kind of thing I’m suggesting. Equally there is plenty of scope for students to share data and ideas across national and international boundaries. As schools take on a more international dimension (see previous post) the sharing of geographical information could become more prevalent. My Visualizing a Safer City lesson, where students locate a new hospital in San Francisco was commented on by local residents. This gave the work much more credibility. It would be great for a class in the USA to do the same activity for a new building in my home town.

I look forward to following the rest of Malcolm’s travels via his blog.