The GI-Pedagogy project supports and equips teachers to bring Geographic Information Systems (GIS) into the classroom in innovative and effective ways. The project has two aims: first, to review existing pedagogies relating to GIS and to develop effective and innovative new approaches; and second, to embed those approaches through a combination of teacher training and resource provision. The focus of the project is on giving teachers the training they need to fully incorporate web-based mapping software into the geography curriculum. The GI-Pedagogy project will produce a toolkit of resources for teachers, available for free on the project website. Once a toolkit for teaching with GIS is developed, this resource will be shared and disseminated via in-person training events and online. GI-Pedagogy responds to teacher and student demand for more digital and web-based approaches to teaching and learning. It also developed in part from the findings of a previous EU-funded project, the School on the Cloud. The project partners include three universities, two secondary schools, and a professional body. Together, the six partners will develop and trial innovative teaching approaches. A new pedagogy for teaching with GIS will be refined in partnership, and through continuous feedback between teacher training and research institutions, front-line educators, and professional geographers. Surveys will be used to monitor the experiences of participating teachers at our two partner schools and at other associate institutions. This stage of the project includes a rigorous survey of existing approaches to teaching with GIS along with a review assessing the effectiveness of new pedagogies. Following this development phase, the project partners will create a toolkit of resources for teachers based on the most effective strategies for teaching with GIS. The toolkit will be available online, along with a MOOC demonstrating how the toolkit can best be applied in the classroom. These online resources will be supplemented by our six multiplier events: a series of face-to-face training sessions for around 140 participants, hosted at the project's partner institutions. At the conclusion of the project, the final results will be made available as part of a digital exhibition. This will also document the experiences of the partners, and particularly of those teachers who were involved in trialling and applying the project's new pedagogy as part of their own teaching practice. The impact of this project will continue even after its completion, as the practices and principles developed will be embedded in the culture of the partner institutions and in the classrooms of those teachers who attended the training or who made use of its online resources. Several partner institutions have pledged funding to ensure that these resources remain freely accessible even after the conclusion of any EU grant. Not only will the project benefit those teachers and students who are direct participants in the development of a new pedagogy, but also those who undertake teacher training at the partner institutions after the life-cycle of the project has ended. By giving teachers the resources and training they need to embed new GIS technologies in their curriculum, GI-Pedagogy is also equipping students with the digital skills they need for the geography of the future.
The objectives of the Gi Pedagogy Project were to; 1) complete a review of existing pedagogies relating to GIS, and connecting then with the research findings from Cognitive Science and Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, to identify effective and innovative new pedagogical approaches, as well as examples of best practice from a small-scale survey of expert teachers. 2) develop a toolkit of innovative pedagogical approaches as a resource for beginning and early career teachers (novice learners) to use, so that they are able to (learn to) integrate GIS into their teaching in a pedagogically sound way. 3) design a free, online MOOC and Teacher training course using the findings from the review and toolkit. 4) present case-study examples of these innovative pedagogies, as an online digital exhibition. There is a wealth of resources available, but these become quickly outdated, so this project was designed to address this need for teachers to consider the pedagogy of GIS. The toolkit and model draws on pedagogy which is simple and achievable, for those who are new to working with GIS, to provide a way of demystifying the technology to enable (novice) teachers to use existing material in their lessons to make learning better.
We applied for this project to provide early career and trainee teachers with the skills and resources they need to embed Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology into their everyday teaching. GIS technology exists and is freely available to all schools across Europe, yet it is only used routinely in the classroom by a small minority of technical enthusiasts and remains ‘untapped potential’. From research done prior to the project, it was clear that there was a gap between the early adopters who use GIS and have highly developed technical skills, and the majority of teachers, who do not use it due to a lack of confidence as well as time for developing their skills. The aim of the Project, is to build on previous work done by Gi Learner, which developed a 'learning line' based on competencies and teaching materials for students to use independently in lessons. This is done by supporting teachers’ own use of GIS to teach with, to model its use and embed it into the curriculum. Using the TPCK model, the project explores the connections between GIS and cognitive science to adopt an effective and modern pedagogical approach, using high quality and innovative teaching methods which will prepare students for a digital future.