Historic barriers to wide-spread use of GIS in the classroom are being lifted as educators embrace the power of Web-based GIS and other Internet based geospatial technologies. Two NSF-funded projects at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon - MAPS-GIS (Mapping Analyzing and Problem Solving with GIS) for college level students and GEOSTAC (Geospatial Teaching Across the Curriculum) for high school teachers – will be discussed. We will illustrate how Web-based GIS is being embedded across the curriculum and how it is being used to teach important geospatial concepts and skills and educate students about GIS classes and careers.

In this presentation, I will focus on getting more from our resources and acquiring grants. Many opportunities are immediately available, but go unused. I will give suggestions on how to access this variety of resources and the logistics of quickly and efficiently utilizing them. Partnerships also play a major role in doing more with less. How to develop useful partnerships that cooperatively benefit both you and the community will be discussed. The presentation will end with the process of grants, grant writing, and determining what you need, how to get it, and what you are responsible for once you get a grant.

GIS Education in the University Setting

Baccalaureate and graduate degree programs in GIS are diverse in their intent and scope. A brief overview of GIS undergraduate and graduate programs in the Northwest will be given in light of a few of the educational needs noted by the recent publication of Geographic Information Science & Technology – Body of Knowledge.

Efforts being made by the Oregon Institute of Technology (OIT) to promote GIS education will be discussed. These efforts include: 1) week-long training workshops for K-12 teachers in the use/implementation of GPS/GIS within their classroom; 2) the construction of articulation agreements with regional community colleges; and 3) the maintenance of suitable GIS curricula to support current degree programs at OIT (i.e., a GIS Minor, a four-year B.S. degree in Geomatics/GIS, and its intent to begin a Master’s program by the Fall of 2010).

Will Rogers once commented: "It's not what you don't know that hurts you. It's what you do know that ain't so." Historical research is a lot like that. You think you have all the answers, and they just don't pan out. For a group of dedicated junior high school students in Lewiston, Idaho (USA), the challenges of learning and applying GIS software led them to discoveries they never imagined. Sometimes the search for truth takes that path. This session will discuss the 5th Street Cemetery Necrogeographical Study, a project honored by ESRI, The History Channel. The Society for American Archæology, the Association of American Geographers, the American Association for State and Local History, and the National Council for Geographic Education.

Few schools have successfully integrated geographic information systems (GIS) into the curricula of their K-12 social studies classrooms, even fewer into the wide variety of disciplines that can be effectively impacted by the study of spatial data. Organizing and maintaining a school’s GIS component depend on several crucial management criteria, not the least of which are the appropriate teacher competencies and standards alignment. Among other essential protocols are data storage and retrieval, network functioning, computer platform capabilities, appropriate learning activities and developing a coherent format that is replicable from one campus to another. This session demonstrates a successful school-based GIS program with its complementary college in-service model.