Abstract

Educational Collaborative Rich Internet Applications in Geographic Information Systems
Track: Education
Authors: William Hanson, Roberto Flores

Although many GK12 science educators believe GIS to be an excellent tool to teach spacial analysis and reasoning, few educators are successfully implementing it in the classroom.
To help solve this problem we are developing a generic ArcGIS web interface implemented as a Rich Internet Application. By emphasizing a web-based and an easy to customize platform, we aim at lessening the technological bar preventing GK12 educators from adding GIS projects to their science education curricula. The first implementation of the software has been implemented and is currently tested in G9 classes in Newport News, Virginia, as part of an interdisciplinary project to collect and analyze environmental data on the Chesapeake Bay watershed. The software enables students to input and visually analyze data based on their geographical relations to previously measured variables.