HR: 16:45h
AN: ED24A-06    [Abstracts]
TI: Geospatial Education in Alaska's High Schools: A new Initiative of the Alaska Space Grant Program
AU: Brown, N
AF: Alaska Space Grant Program, P.O. Box 755919, Fairbanks, AK 99775-5919 United States
AU: * Prakash, A
EM: prakash@gi.alaska.edu
AF: Geophysical Institute University of Alaska Fairbanks, P.O. Box 757320, Fairbanks, AK 99775-7320 United States
AB: In the summer of 2004, the Alaska Space Grant Program (ASGP) made its first step to start a new and unique initiative to bring geospatial education to the high schools. Setting up this education outreach effort in the largest of the 50 states of US that has a population density of about one person per square mile, has its unique benefits and challenges. It is particularly rewarding as one reaches out to distant native and minority communities in their own local environment. Introducing Earth and Space Science topics with a geospatial context makes such educational efforts of local relevance. Training in the use of Earth and Space Science data and tools is of practical significance to the distant communities and also contributes to the development of a new technically skilled geospatial workforce that is prepared to meet the state and national needs. In the summer of 2004 ASGP ran the first two week summer workshop on "Global Positioning System (GPS) and Geographic Information System (GIS) for Alaska School Teachers". Fourteen high school teachers from various parts of the state participated and received training on the use of GPS and GIS and carried out small projects of significance to their local regions. Follow up visits were made by the course instructors to some selected schools and within six months, two high schools incorporated these in their class room teaching (www.gi.alaska.edu/~prakash/teaching/geos595). To reach out to schools that do not have well established computational facilities, ASGP build a mobile GIS laboratory with 15 laptops-GPS-GIS software assemblage. This mobile set up will be used in the second two week summer course scheduled to be run in June 2005. This batch of teachers will be more comfortable introducing GPS/GIS technology in their class rooms where they will have the possibility to use the same hardware and software setup as they used during their training, ensuring even greater success of this initiative.
DE: 0830 Teacher training
DE: 0933 Remote sensing
SC: Education and Human Resources [ED]
MN: 2005 Joint Assembly