Author(s):
Meg E. Stewart* - Vassar College
Mary Ann Cunningham - Vassar College
Kirsten Menking - Vassar College
Abstract:
Field trips provide students with practical applications of lecture concepts and help students develop spatial analysis skills. GIS also teaches spatial relationships and concepts. To unite these two learning tools, we use tablet PCs with GIS software when taking students into the field. Tablet PCs are laptops that can be written on, with a stylus that acts as a mouse and becomes an extremely useful digitizer. We discuss two teaching situations in which tablets have been usefully integrated with conventional field teaching methods.
In Environmental Studies classes we examine watershed features--soils, geology, or floodplains--and social factors--income distribution, population density, or transportation networks. Using GIS we can examine these variables simultaneously at a range of scales and visualize their relationships. With mobile tablet PCs, students can query data in the field, sketch unmapped features, and record observations on their maps.
In a geomorphology class, we use tablet PCs with attached USB GPS receivers to examine meandering streams. The students walk the stream course with GPS receivers to determine its present position. They then digitize the stream on a 1959 georeferenced airphoto, using the stylus, and measure stream channel migration from 1959 to 2005. Using GIS in the field allows students to work with the photos, to digitize features with ease and detail, and to examine features simultaneously on the ground and in the GIS, at the scale of both features and large areas. We feel this combination of scales is pedagogically powerful and offers much promise.
