GPS in the Classroom
This year the school district I work for purchased 35 Garmin Legend GPSr units. We had a department team building day to become familar with these devices and to try and start generating ideas for classroom uses that would engage students in their everyday learning. I have been very active in the hobby of Geocaching for just over a year now, and I can see some uses for using these devices instructionally. I would really like to build a good base of lessons or ideas that incorporate the use of GPSr into the different curriculum areas.
If you have used or know of someone who has used GPSr units in a classroom setting, please post the ideas or links to what they are or have done.
on February 22nd, 2007 at 6:35 pm
Jeff,
Hi! I think we have a great deal in common. In my spare time, I teach GPS workshops to (mainly) teachers and a few students.
What does GPS stand for? In addition to the Global Position System it also stands for Great for Parents and Schools!
I just taught my fifth workshop last November for some faculty at Bowie State University (BSU)and they want another one this Spring.
See http://noaacrest.bowiestate.edu/crest/GPS/pages/gps00.html
for pictures.
In 2005, I partnered with BSU and won a Community Grant from the City of Bowie to do a workshop for Bowie High School Teachers.
Last summer I returned to my Alma Mater of West Virginia University (WVU) and did one for High School Students under an NSF grant for Engineers of Tomorrow. Please take a look at url below for an article about me.
http://www.cemr.wvu.edu/news/news-details.php?item=691
In addition, I have had two articles published in the Bowie Blade and another will be in the BSU Magazine soon.
I have one scheduled with Prince George’s Communuty College on 31 March.
What grades and subjects are you interested in?
Let’s talk
Mark N. Lewellen
GPS_Grant_Guy
on February 23rd, 2007 at 10:39 am
Mark,
Thanks for the information and the links. I am looking for ideas across all curiculum areas and probably for grades 4-12. I could see using them with younger students, but I think I would get more use from the 4-12 teachers. I had two high school teachers alread take some initative and use the GPS units in correlation with projects they already had planned for this year. I have a fifth grade group that would like to try them, and I really want to develop something that would make it very worthwhile for the students and the teacher.
Jeff
on February 23rd, 2007 at 4:42 pm
Jeff
It took a while but I found a list I was keeping of examples of GPS/GIS in education. Here it is
How is GPS and GIS Being Used in the Classroom?
• Colorado students examine changing demographics of neighborhoods from 1970 to 2000 in their neighborhood.
• Louisiana students assisted state government agencies by using GPS and GIS to validate the exact location of school buildings and attribute data about the schools. In the process of collecting data with authentic purpose, students learn skills in a technology field growing so rapidly that it will create many new jobs in this decade.
• North Dakota students help local state parks use GIS to study and manage their resources while another group of students map out alternative sites for a local landfill and ways to monitor its operation.
• Rhode Island students study the economic impact of rivers in their communities.
• South Dakota students use a GPS device to locate points of interest around the school or community (e.g., students mark the location of certain species of trees, parks and recreation centers, or bicycle routes, etc.). The marked waypoints can then be downloaded into an existing map, or students can create entirely new maps.
• Texas students work with local police department to map crime in their area.
• Vermont students use GIS technology, science journals, and photos to determine the origin of a local pond and its ecological relations to the community.
• Wisconsin students map the white tail deer population and work with the DNR to monitor changes and movements.
Overall lessons: The use of GPS/GIS technology also provides the opportunity to focus on an area of the curriculum that for too long has received only cursory attention at the middle and high school levels. Unfortunately, many students graduate thinking that geography is the memorization of states and capitals and is useful only for reading a road map. By using the geographic technology available today, students are able to go beyond textbook maps and build their own representations of the world in spatial terms. By using GIS data, students can dramatically see the effects of both human and physical systems on the earth, and more specifically, their own communities.
Since you are into Geocaching, Travel Bugs are also a good way to get kids into it
Below is a mish mash of articles I have
Sorry it is not in a better format. It should give you some ideas
I got hooked on geocaching last summer when I took a teacher training course, and now do I not only use it in my classroom, but it’s a hobby for me. My 6th graders and I have hidden three caches near our school. They all have themes to them so we can review some of our geography knowledge.
We have a 50 states theme (Flat Stanley 50 States Tour) where geocachers are asked to leave something behind that represents one of the states. I then take these items back to the class for the kids to identify. We also have a Wisconsin themed cache (Flat Stanley Cheese State Tour). Speaking of Flat Stanley, we have two of them floating around as travel bugs, one going around all 50 states (currently in Ohio), and the other taking a tour of Wisconsin.
Our latest cache is a travel bug exchange (Travel Bug School Field Trip). The kids made their own travel bugs and they all began in one cache. Now they are well on their way to their goals. Type my user name (whitnallgps) on the search travel bugs page in the box for “by username” and click “owned” to see an entire list of the bugs we have out there.
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For example, on the topic of how a GPSr works, you could include discussion of the following subjects: (1) satellites and what type of information they broadcast, (2) introduce the concept of triangulation and discuss how triangulation works (you might use three individuals from the audience, each holding a different length of string, and you stand where all three strings meet–two strings normally yield two different spots, but three strings really help), and (3) how fast the signals are travelling and how things in the atmosphere can “interfere” with the accuracy of the signals. You might also cover the types of uses of this technology (transportation, surveying, military, etc.) and how it is used in different careers.
For more information, I’d suggest you take a look at Dale DePriest’s guide on GPS (while the material is directed at Garmin units, the information on the technology will apply to all models and brands). His website is here: Dale DePriest .
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I am a geography teacher in WA and I am going to set up a geocahing exercise for my students. Basically, I will set them off on a multistage cache and at each cache site they will have to look around and tell me how one of the Five Themes is represented in the area. Although they will technically have Location already, they should still be able to talk about Region, Movement, Human/environment interaction, and place.
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It is my understanding that you are asking how will you get teachers interested and excited about using gps in schools and how they will be beneficial to student learning. my answer is that students today are very computer-minded and i think that giving them a gadget is going to spark some interest. when teaching, i would give one gps to a group of several students which will give students the opportunity to work together socially. they can each be assigned roles in the group as well. one will be the recorder, another the presenter, and another the gps user. the actual lesson content can vary from physical education to science to social studies- any subject really. for example: the lesson can be focused on archiological finds or something- students have to report to a destination where they will find some artifacts left by the teacher and come up with a report about what they found there and how they think it might have gotten there. (other the it was put there by the teacher) in doing so they had to communicate, cooperate and were also involved in some level of physical activity (depending on where it was that they had to go to find the cache) then they could report about the terrain, group dynamics, and any number of things. to get the teachers buzzing i would give them a gps, a brief description of operation and send them on a hunt. hide some candy on campus somewhere outside in a box and send them out. the possibilities are endless- i hope that this helps grease your wheels. any questions just ask SC
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Program Description The Initiative will introduce K-12 students and teachers to the world of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) and will involve them in an authentic and powerful application of the GIS technology. The GIS K-12 Initiative will cross multiple LCET initiatives, including Making Connections. INTECH 2 Social Studies is an immersion experience centered around the use of mapping tools such as GPS, GIS and GeoMedia software. Workshop participants will gain an understanding of what GIS consists of and the power of using it in the Social Studies classroom. Come discover how GIS can be used to help students solve problems by displaying information spatially on maps. Using GIS to overlay different types of data, students discover meaningful patterns that allow them to make decisions about real-world scenarios. Through collaboration with Intergraph, Louisiana teachers completing this professional development model will receive GeoMedia software, a full-featured GIS program used by business and industry. Due to improvements in digital mapping technology, government agencies are in need of localized small-scale detailed data. These are measurements that schoolchildren can provide. The most valuable benefit to students of the mapping capabilities of modern GIS is that it can connect a student’s immediate surroundings and experience with large-scale maps and real-world problems.
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Another example of geocaching in state parks is to log the location of interesting overlooks or features of the park, then produce a brochure with the coordinates and a suggested route to visit them. I believe thats what was done at Big Sioux Rec. That way, they accommodated geocachers without actually hiding traditional caches in the park.
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On the map
Geocoaching, a new sports involving high-tech toys and hiking, is luring Central New Yorkers
Wednesday, October 3, 2001
By Mike McAndrew
Remember when scavenger hunts involved reading clues written on scraps of paper to find hidden treasures? The clues might tell you to go to the oak tree, turn right, walk 50 steps and look under the big flat rock.
Those simpler days are gone.
These days, folks like Syracuse’s Anton Ninno are mixing their love for outdoors adventures with high-tech gadgets to create 21st century scavenger hunts.
Ninno and dozens of other Central New Yorkers hunting for hidden treasures are tapping into the same technology the U.S. military uses to guide its missiles, ships, planes and troops: global positioning system receivers.
In these modern scavenger hunts, hunters are directed to go to a longitude and latitude coordinate, not to a recognizable landmark.
And the game isn’t even called a scavenger hunt anymore. It’s got a new moniker: geocaching.
“It’s a modern-day scavenger hunt. That’s exactly what it is,” said Ninno, who has emerged as the Syracuse area’s most ardent geocacher.
Caches all over CNY
Within 75 miles of Syracuse, several dozen geocachers have hidden 89 caches in the past five months. The sites have colorful names like Capt. Hook’s Hideaway, Dry Bones Cache and Hobbit Hollow Cove Passage.
Geocachers usually put little inexpensive toys or trinkets inside their cache’s watertight containers. Folks who find the cache are welcome to take one home with them, but they’re expected to replace it with something they bring.
The caches are all over Central New York – at Syracuse’s Oakwood Cemetery and Green Lakes State Park in the town of Manlius, and along the Erie Canal path near Weedsport, from Chittenango Falls to Pulaski’s Salmon River Falls.
Ninno said geocaching is becoming popular with different groups of people. “There’s the techy, computer gadget-loving folks who like playing with things like math software and geographic information software,” he said.
“Then there’s the hiking, camping, kayaking, canoeing outdoors folks who discovered GPS receivers for those purposes, and from there went on to geocaching. Then there are some who just heard about it through the media and think it sounds neat.”
Geocachers use a GPS receiver to tap into the $12 billion Global Positioning System.
A GPS receiver is a palm-sized electronic unit that can be used to determine one’s precise location anywhere on the planet, within about six to 20 feet. The devices receive radio signals from up to 24 GPS satellites that orbit the Earth about 12,000 miles above us.
The satellites’ signals travel at the speed of light, or about 186,000 miles per second, as they go through space.
Inside each GPS receiver is an almanac programmed into their computers that tells them where in the sky each satellite is at any given moment. The GPSs use an algebra equation (Velocity X Time = Distance) to figure out how far it is from their location to each satellite.
The GPS receiver then triangulates with at least four satellites to calculate its precise latitude and longitude coordinates on the planet.
“It’s pretty awesome math going on in the palm of your hand,” Ninno said.
Before they head into the woods, geocachers visit the Geocaching.com Web site on the Internet to learn the coordinates of a cache near their home. Then the hunt is on.
“People are using military technology for a fun consumer entertainment,” said Pete Brumbaugh, a spokesman for Garmin International, one of the leading manufacturer of GPS receivers for consumers.
Turn off the noise
Handheld GPS receivers – which cost $119 and up – were first marketed to consumers around 1993.
But until last year, the Defense Department intentionally introduced “noise” into GPS satellite signals. That would degrade the accuracy of any position calculations made by GPS receivers on Earth. The Defense Department wanted to make the technology less useful to hostile forces or terrorists.
On May 1, 2000, President Bill Clinton directed the Defense Department to stop manipulating the satellite signals so that the GPS technology would be more useful to industry and consumers. The first geocaching site was planted near Portland, Ore., two days later.
There are now more than 5,200 caches hidden in the United States, according to Geocaching.com. California is leading the way with 969 caches. Utah is second with 453. New York ranks third with 290.
And the GPS market is booming. During the last quarter, Garmin sold more than 350,000 handheld GPS receivers, primarily to geocachers, aviators and hunters and anglers, Brumbaugh said.
‘It isn’t that simple’
In the Syracuse area, the first geocache site was posted on Geocaching.com April 8 in Oakwood Cemetery by a group of workers at the Everson Museum of Art.
Ninno got into the geocaching game a week later, hiding a cache off Troop K Road west of Manlius, at the only spot in Onondaga County where the degrees of the latitude and longitude are integers, or whole numbers. The coordinates for that cache are 43.0 degrees north, 76.0 degrees west.
“People say, ‘Isn’t this like shooting fish in a barrel? You get the coordinates from the Web site. Then turn on a GPS and go,’ ” Ninno said. “But it isn’t that simple.
“Your GPS can be off by 20 feet. And the coordinates might be off by 20 feet. So you’re off by 40 feet in the middle of the woods. All of a sudden it’s not fish in the barrel.”
There’s even a cache in the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge that you can’t reach without a canoe.
Ninno has planted 16 caches in the Syracuse area, more than anyone else, and found another 20 caches hidden by others. While he was on vacation this summer in California’s Napa Valley, Ninno put one there.
Lesson in geography
His new hobby fits in well with his job. Ninno works for BOCES teaching teachers how to use technology in the classroom. Ninno also introduced a few local teachers to the craze.
Mike “Moob” Osborn, a ninth-grade earth science and astronomy teacher in the Fayetteville-Manlius High School, recently went searching for Ninno’s Troop K Road site with Jim Kuhl, a sixth-grade earth science teacher at Central Square Middle School, and Kuhl’s 11-year-old daughter, Holly.
“We’re looking for two imaginary lines,” Osborn chuckled as he walked through the woods off Troop K Road. Holly found the cache in a hole under a fallen maple tree.
Inside the military ammo box was a log book signed by the 11 other groups of people who had visited the site, a disposable camera that visitors can use to take their pictures, and a variety of unusual prizes that geocachers had left there, including a 5 Boliviano bill (the currency of Bolivia), a staple remover and a scientific ruler.
“I could bring my class out here on a field trip,” Osborn said. “This is how you learn geography.”
Last year, using his own receiver, Kuhl, a Syracuse resident, demonstrated how GPSs work for his 11- and 12-year-old students. He said the device made learning geography fun. “You put a GPS into their hand and it’s like a Game Boy,” Kuhl said.
This year, Kuhl has applied for a state grant to purchase seven more GPSs for his class, and he’s drafting a curriculum to incorporate GPSs in earth science classes across the state.
Ninno, Kuhl and Osborn will be presenting workshops on using GPS in schools in November at the New York State Science Teachers Conference. “Today, kids don’t learn by sitting in a class. They learn by doing,” Ninno said.
© 2001 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.
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on February 27th, 2007 at 9:30 am
Mark,
Thank you so much for this information, this is a great help and does get my “wheels” turning for ideas now. I am going to one of our high school campuses tomorrow to view a project one of the teachers has been working on out there. I will post what he has done with GPS.
I have one interest teacher who wants to use the GPS units in April, so hopefuly as I explore some these articles I can put together a nice project for 5th grade students.
Thanks again for all of the information.
Jeff
on February 27th, 2007 at 7:44 pm
Jeff
Great glad to help. I am a member of a local Toastmasters International and I am participating in a speech contest tomorrow. The title is, “Going Geocaching”. If you would like to discuss GPS/GC/GIS over the phone please let me know. I work from home most days and I have unlimited long distance so its not a big deal.
Mark