Abstract
Montana EdPARC: Seventeen Years of K-16 Geospatial Education
Track: Teacher Education and Educational Research
Authors: Van Shelhamer
As part of the Education Public Access Resource Center (EdPARC), a division of the Upper-Midwest Aerospace Consortium, Montana, has been involved in a regional effort to improve geospatial thinking and reasoning in the public schools for 17 years. Montana was the first state to obtain a State Wide Education license for all public schools in the State through a cooperative effort. Teacher workshops, short-courses, summer institutes and follow up sessions have help teachers guide students in solving spatial problems by using GPS/GIS and remote sensing tools and data As a result spatial learning and problem solving has been enhanced in agriculture, science, mathematics, and social studies. Montana EdPARC in cooperation with GeoEssentials, Inc. continues to distributed teacher developed lessons. An e-mail distribution list is used to distribute monthly Geospatial notes to teachers to infuse new ideas about the applications of GIS.