About 1.5 years ago, the head of my research unit (Prof. Muki Haklay) was contacted by researchers from the Institute of Education (IOE) in regards to his interest in a possible project about using GIS in Secondary Schools and offering workshops to teachers as continued professional development. As this work was very much in my research sphere of interest, Muki decided to bring me on board. After initial talks and preliminary workshops with teachers, using the tiny seed-corn money Muki and the researchers were able to procure (roughly £2000), we wanted to keep working together and see if we could spin this into something bigger. We applied for further budget from the Stategic IOE/UCL Partnership Fund (which was produced to encourage researchers from both institutes to work together, as IOE was merging with UCL in the near future) and was delighted when we received a further £8000 to further expand the applications of teaching in a cross curricular fashion (to encompass not only STEM subjects [Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics], but to further expand to the Arts and Humanities); our idea is simple – GIS transcends the disciplines and can be a useful tool to all teachers, across subjects.

With renewed vigour, we ran an exercise with one of the teachers’ classes, using EpiCollect+ (an open source data collection platform app) to map water quality, various types of plants, and pollution in the area – telling a holistic story of the health of the Roding River. Unfortunately, tech was not on our side that day – there was confusion with the app, the phones failed, and ultimately the students simply had to do the exercise by hand (using pen and paper). As my area of expertise largely centres around GIS tech, I was disappointed to here how the initial classroom exercise went and apologised to the teacher for the inconvenience.

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” (as the old addage goes). Another one of our study’s teachers reached out and wanted to do a classroom exercise, and this time I was going to be sure that I was ready – I ordered brand new phones, I configured them myself and this time, I was going to make sure I was there for the exercise (should there be any issues). Instead of water quality, these students were mapping out quadrats (10 x 10 square grids) to measure biodiversity of plant life in a field. Originally, this exercise entailed the use of measuring tap, and pen and paper to record plants and percentages; with EpiCollect+, the students would randomly lay down the quadrat, take a picture with the phone, record the findings, and quickly move on. The key to using EpiCollect+ and smartphones is to utilise the built in GPS of the phone to obtain the location.

The second exercise was a success and, after a bit of post processing, I created an ArcGIS Online Story Map of the students’ output – feel free to take a look here. Though excited by the success of the second exercise, it does make me think about how teachers would be able to implement this technology, and handle any troubles that may arise, without the intervention of an expert in the technology, to circumnavigate any gremlins that may be lurking in the program to muck things up.

Anyway, we’re continuing to move ahead with the work with the teachers and will be submitting a proposal for continued work very soon to the research councils; if we’re successful, we’ll be partnering with these schools for 3 years to develop a framework of how we may implement GIS in secondary schools to be used as a cross-curricular tool to aid and enrich learning. Fingers crossed, and watch this space for further developments. 🙂