12:36:26 Well, thank you, Cathy for having me. I'm Lauren Sinclair, and also known as Mrs Sinclair maps which is what I go by online, and my mission is to share as much as I can about how we can be teaching JS very early earlier than most of us think, and all
12:36:47 of you whether you are educators or not. If you have any children in your life. I would like to recruit you to help with this mission. So, I hope this will be kind of a fun break I know you all are around the lunchtime hour I am just starting my day over
12:37:04 here on the Pacific coast.
12:37:07 And I hope this will be something that is really inspiring to you, and also opens up the possibilities in your mind of how you can make an influence on young GIS users.
12:37:20 I want to thank Kathy for starting off our session with a land acknowledgement. I am speaking to you from the village sites of the Noma people's the Moscow Kaulitz collapse summit Clackamas Chinook Tualatin California masala and many others who have occupied
12:37:36 the Columbia River Basin, which is where Portland Oregon is located and where I'm located. And as the wife of a mighty a Canadian man. It's really meaningful to me to hear that acknowledgement so thank you.
12:37:50 And let's make sure I've got all of the correct screens showing so hang on I'm minimizing a couple of things.
12:38:01 And okay let's see here.
12:38:05 Thank you for your patience.
12:38:19 Gotta move around a lot of tool bars here. Okay.
12:38:14 Here we go. Okay, so first of all I would like you all to participate in a little activity that I do with my students when they enter my classroom they're usually about 10 years old.
12:38:28 Some of them 11. And that's called middle school where I am, And I try to build some spatial awareness in my class. In addition to building all the concepts that you're about to see about teaching GIS, so I want everyone to close your eyes I obviously
12:38:46 can't see you so I'm testing you know peaking, and I want you to point north from wherever you are sitting. So I'm thinking about where I am. I would be pointing towards my camera and open your eyes.
12:39:01 When I have students at school I also would have them point to where their houses from the school. And then we actually look at a few examples of how accurate.
12:39:11 Their spatial awareness was, and it's usually pretty poor because students at this age, don't drive, they don't really use GIS in their smartphones yet they are aware that their parents do and maybe they have helped, but they definitely didn't know that
12:39:26 thing was called GIS. So, this is actually a wonderful place to capture kids when they are at the age of. Oh, I guess they're a black box tools that I don't understand how they work, but they help us understand our place in the world, and maybe I can
12:39:43 start thinking critically about how they work. That's where I have the opportunity to teach kids to think spatially.
12:39:51 So how do you do that and how can you have a place in that mission. Well we let them make knots we don't say hey you have to be a university student in order to learn GIS instead my whole belief system is based on the fact that as young as 10 and I'm
12:40:10 sure younger someone else should be that pioneer and show me even younger, they can make maps using GIS.
12:40:19 So that's what I do in my classroom, I make as many fun experiences as I can, using both GIS technology and hands on activities, especially for those very fidgety kids to really help kids understand not only the how the how of GIS, how it works, but also
12:40:39 the why and the conceptual ideas behind it. So some of the ideas that you see here, some of the activities from my classroom will go into today.
12:40:52 Unfortunately I won't have time to lead you through all the many things that I do in all my different classes, but hopefully you'll get inspired and you can check out a few of the resources that all provide today.
12:41:04 I will provide this presentation at the end of our, our chat as well.
12:41:09 So, this is just a tiny snapshot of maps that are made by my students, but that's the end point of an entire semester of teaching them how to think spatially and use GIS and I'd like to show you a little bit of the process that leads them there.
12:41:27 And I'd like you to be thinking about, oh, this is pretty doable maybe I can share this with a teacher in my life, or volunteer at my kids geography club or go into the classroom one time for one hour, and try introducing something like this to a classroom
12:41:44 near me.
12:41:46 So, first of all, why, why are we even trying to think about introducing JS to kids at this age so young. Well, my personal belief is from teaching for, for 15 years.
12:42:00 At this point, I think it's been 15 years that these kids are digital natives, they have never known life without a touch screen, they communicate in visual ways.
12:42:12 And to me, that means they are already set up for GIS because they want to communicate visually with symbols with pictures with patterns. And this is just an example of communication between me and my 14 year old nephew.
12:42:29 Notice how few words are being used here. There's a lot of gifts, a lot of, thumbs up, and Haha, and we're communicating in a visual medium. And these kids are going to enter the workforce.
12:42:46 When they do they're going to bring that style of communication with them, so why wouldn't we give them a visual tool to communicate with instead of me as a teacher saying you need to write more reports and learn how to use reading and writing as your
12:43:03 primary communication skill. I argue that I really want to teach them the communication tool of GIS.
12:43:13 So, here's how we get started, this means that you if you have any amount of GIS experience, you have a specific skill set that you can offer to kids in your life.
12:43:26 Again, through a classroom through a club, maybe just your own kids or nieces or nephews, something like that. And I'd like to give you a couple of tools that hopefully will look really fun.
12:43:39 and you will want to give them a try.
12:43:42 So here's how we start.
12:43:45 Thankfully, the K 12 space in GIS has been growing a lot over the past five years, it's a new thing. But there are loads of resources now to be had and they're becoming more visible as people like me really work on making them more visible.
12:44:03 So no matter how much GIS experience you have, or maybe you have a lot of GIS experience and you feel like I don't know what I would teach two kids of a certain age group.
12:44:13 I have resources here for you to take you from zero to hero, where you can go and be able to mentor without any previous experience.
12:44:21 So here's how I start, I like to start with a combination of hands on activities, which will look at now, and building technical skills, which means actually getting into GIS and learning the basics of how to navigate how to create in our GIS online,
12:44:38 since I work for every that's the platform I use.
12:44:43 So I'm going to introduce you to my classroom by inviting you in through my virtual classroom, the link here is the link to my classroom, and I'm going to ask one of the panelists.
12:44:58 Did my screen change okay so that you can see that we are now on the green screen that says intro to GIS.
12:45:07 I see something in the chat hang on pulling it up, and yes. Okay, wonderful.
12:45:13 I've been working really hard with every, and I partner with them as an educator consultant to say here are things I'm doing in my classroom would you help me publicize them so other teachers and mentors can use them.
12:45:27 So, as you can see here this is my introduction to GIS class ages 10 to 11 at our school I explain a little bit about our structure, and we go through a progression of big conceptual ideas, what is GIS to adding technical skills, and then finally to making
12:45:47 our own maps from scratch, all the resources here from videos to activity sets this is a tic tac toe of different GIS activities to teach kids, basic skills to fully tight lesson plans that I've published with s3, that explained everything and even come
12:46:12 with things like answer keys for teachers or here's what you should hear in a discussion and what you can bring up. It's all provided because I want to make sure that you and teachers out there who have maybe never experienced GIS can simply open up a
12:46:33 resource and give it a try in their classroom without having to be a subject matter expert.
12:46:41 So, although I don't have time to show you all of these videos and things now I am going to show you one example, just so you can see how fun some of these can be.
12:46:52 So we'll go back here.
12:46:57 Okay. So actually, I'm going to go to the next one just free time I'll come back to that one if we can.
12:47:03 One of the first things that I do with students, is we talk about the history of mapmaking as it has evolved over human history.
12:47:13 And we do it as a hands on activity using Plato, so students, model their own terrain, and we give them some guidelines of how to do this. This is the, The typed up less than you saw a moment ago.
12:47:27 And then students follow my guidelines to first sketch a profile, and then sketch sketch Hatcher marks. And then finally, to trace their mountain landscape, at one centimeter intervals and put those down on paper and discover that they've actually created
12:47:48 a contour map.
12:47:49 This is something that every time I teach it in the classroom I get huge, aha was and oohs and ahhs from students.
12:47:58 And like I said I've really tried to type this up in a way where anybody, anywhere can teach it, so that anyone can have that great experience in a classroom.
12:48:09 It takes about an hour and the kids consistently read it as their favorite day of my GIS class. Every year they love Plato day, they love pretending that they're basically back in kindergarten so they can play with Play Doh.
12:48:24 So you'll see in a moment what this results in in terms of a map.
12:48:31 These are the kinds of activities that I make sure that I start my classes with because I want to convince kids, even who aren't interested in computers that Matt making is a really interesting communication tool.
12:48:45 no matter. You know what your own perspective is of technology.
12:48:51 Okay, so this is one example of how I build conceptual understanding.
12:48:56 I'm going to skip over this for just a moment come back to it.
12:49:00 Another is with older students, this is a, a series that I teach to my eighth graders, so it great in the United States. My, my students tend to be 13 to 14 years old in this class, some classes some schools that can be 14 to 15.
12:49:19 But this series mapping epidemic slips, go right back here.
12:49:26 Mapping epidemics lead students through a six week progression.
12:49:33 That again is completely supported by every so everything is typed out there, even lesson videos that you can show the class so you don't have to rely on what you are saying you show a five minute video, and then students work through some activities
12:49:49 so they work in story maps that I've designed like this. So here's the video you watch, and then you scroll down, and it embeds the maps that you need, and asks you questions about them and give students, assignments, where they can really start thinking
12:50:08 about map design, and also how maps are communicating.
12:50:15 And then they actually in less than three of this series learn how to use the spatial analysis suite of tools in our GIS online in a basic way, analyzing the cholera epidemic of the 1850s, which is something you've probably seen before, but you probably
12:50:31 not seen a 13 year old be really successful at it with really no instruction from me besides having them scroll through this story map. I mean if kids can read carefully they can be really successful with this activity, and I've seen it in my classroom.
12:50:49 I've probably repeated this five different times since I invented it as a very start of of coven the cocaine epidemic. And this is something I created, simply because my students were demanding it I mean they were like, what's going on with all these
12:51:04 covert 19 dashboards, we want to know more.
12:51:07 So that's just a glimpse into some of the activities I'm doing in my classroom and some of the resources that are out there, but the goal here is I want you to become a geo mentor.
12:51:20 And what that means is that you would be able to connect with a teacher or a classroom or a club of kids, and help them make some of these activities happen.
12:51:32 I'll be honest with you, I only know the, the US public school system, but teachers are often far too overwhelmed, especially these days to consider doing anything new in their classrooms.
12:51:45 What is a real leaf to us as educators is if someone says, Hey, could I just come into your classroom and all do this thing for an hour, and you just wander the classroom with your cup of coffee and make sure kids are, that's a great thing these days,
12:52:01 so you can be that person using some of these resources and connecting to a classroom near you. And then what I've seen happen in my own school is when I go into someone else's classroom.
12:52:13 And I show them an activity like this, they are then willing to try it themselves. So I now have six different educators in my school who do this independently.
12:52:23 After I showed it to them, initially, and so there's this ripple effect of more teachers trying this, and some of these are teachers in their 50s and 60s who were just not interested in trying new tech had never heard of GIS but once they saw kids interacting
12:52:38 with it they were really excited.
12:52:41 And the link that I'm showing right now is to an American organization and I'm not sure if there is a Canadian equivalent, but this is the geo mentors program and the idea is it's simply a place where you can sign up to become a geo mentor, and teachers
12:53:00 can sign up to request it your mentor so it helps people find each other.
12:53:06 Sorry this is going a little slowly so here you go. It's a very simple registration process.
12:53:12 I'd be curious if there's something in Canada that is working. Similarly, but really even without an organization like this. If you find some children, and you find a classroom or a club, you can give them maps and really help them to have these rich
12:53:28 experiences.
12:53:31 Another resource that I'm going to leave you with, not something that I have created but if you're still on the fence about I don't know if I can go into a classroom with children and show them what to do.
12:53:43 All of these subjects that you see on the screen here, these are all self contained one hour activities that are already prepared for you, around any subject, and they have a teacher guide with all the answers, and they have a student worksheet, where
12:54:05 students can type what they're doing, I have an example kind of side by side over here.
12:54:11 This is one of my students just recently created again I didn't create it but I find these to be very useful so here's the teacher version on the left of a geo inquiry you can see it has a URL to a map that is already loaded with the layers you need to
12:54:25 answer the questions below and it tells you where to click and then asks a question. Then there's also a Google Docs version of that for students to type their answers into this is a great introductory activity for any classroom, and any geo mentor who
12:54:42 might be hesitant about what they're going to teach in the classroom.
12:54:47 It's also great because as you can see here, you can connect to any classroom. It doesn't have to be a geography or a technology classroom, it can be a math classroom, it can be.
12:55:04 I've gone into science classrooms and done to increase about the Ring of Fire, for example, and they can be shorter activities as well if you simply click through things up on the big screen and have field questions from kids instead of letting them get
12:55:23 into the queue and create themselves. So, very flexible resource here. So, I understand, we'll have questions at the end of our presentation time but I wanted to show this slide if you hold up your phone to this QR code on your screen, you'll get the
12:55:37 entire presentation I just showed you, along with some little notes explaining things a little bit more, and everything is clickable everything includes the URLs to all the resources that I just showed.
12:55:51 In addition to this, if you are even ready to go further. I am one of the teachers of a new program from learn arc GIS where we take people who have never taught GIS to students.
12:56:10 And we deliver a six week program, where you can learn things like how to use our GIS online in the classroom, how to use data collection, how do you story maps How to Use Survey 123.
12:56:27 And this is a program that is launching this Wednesday. And if you're interested in that, follow me on twitter at Mrs Sinclair Max and I'll be posting registration details.
12:56:37 It's something that you can drop in and drop out at your leisure so you don't have to attend all six weeks.
12:56:43 But I, I will be working with my partner Jackie in Scotland to present that so if you want more time thinking about this idea of teaching young kids. That's where I would point you to thank you so much for your time and I really do hope that you get in
12:56:59 touch if you try to bring JS into a kid's classroom near you.