Highly Commended Award Winner 2012 - Scottish Association of Geography Teachers
The aim of this book is to develop teachers' knowledge and confidence in utilising and integrating online GIS into geography lessons to promote engagement and enjoyment.
A Geographical Information System (GIS) allows students to visualise, explore, question, analyse and make sense of the world around them. GIS is mentioned specifically in the KS3 geography programmes of study, and most GCSE and A level specifications. It is still an area that many geography teachers struggle to incorporate into their teaching. There are expensive GIS software packages available to buy, but this book uses free web-based software which is easy to use. This book is a toolkit that will allow you to first get an understanding of what GIS is and then how using online GIS can be easily incorporated into a range of topics without the need to be a GIS specialist, ICT specialist or having a specialised GIS software package. The range of GIS skills covered in these lessons will provide students with a skill set that they may find themselves using in their life and future work place.
The nine lessons in this book can be incorporated into exciting key stage 3 schemes of work. Each lesson is framed in an enquiry question. It also gives ideas of how the lesson ideas can be taken further. The topics covered in the book are: migration, shopping, crime, health, coastal erosion, flooding, hurricanes, earthquakes and volcanoes.
This toolkit contains:
• nine fully worked lesson plans
• all the resources needed to teach each lesson, including PowerPoints, task sheets and activity sheets. These are available to download from a password-protected area of the GA website
• guidance and information about GIS, GIS skills, and advice and guidance about how to incorporate GIS into your geography curriculum
• further teaching ideas and advice on purchasing GIS software.
Robert Lang is a member of the GA’s ICT Special Interest Group. He teaches geography at King Edward VI Five Ways School in Birmingham, a GA’s Secondary Geography Quality Mark Centre of Excellence
CONTENTS
What is GIS?
Why use GIS in your teaching?
GIS in action
GIS skills
GIS skills used in this book
Integrating GIS into the geography curriculum
GIS lessons at a glance
Lesson 1: What’s in a name?
Lesson 2: Who is shopping out of town?
Lesson 3: What will be beside the sea?
Lesson 4: How safe is your town?
Lesson 5: Are you at risk from flooding?
Lesson 6: Where do earthquakes and volcanoes happen?
Lesson 7: How healthy is my area?
Lesson 8: Where should London’s new Sikh temple be located?
Lesson 9: Where do hurricanes go?
Online resources to accompany the book
Further teaching ideas
Further guidance on GIS
Buying GIS software
Also in this series
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