Abstract
Developing Concepts of Scale Through Hybrid GIS
Track: Teacher Education and Educational Research
Authors: Mary Fargher
In a flatter contemporary digital world, geography educators are best placed to explore the implications of enhancing young peoples' richer concepts of scale through GIS. However,scale in GIS, though useful toconsider, is often reduced to mechanical interpretations only. This paper argues that GIS has enormous potential to play in constructing more nuanced understandings of scale to teach some of geography's pivotal 'big ideas' including globalization, global warming and regional disparity. Findings from an ongoing project using ArcGIS, ArcGIS Explorer online and Google Earth support the central claim that developing meaningful pedagogies around scale is dependent on 'in tandem' powerful geography subject knowledge with expert technological pedagogical GIS knowledge. The paper concludes with recommendations for developing ideas of scale through GIS in school geography.