Peter Webley demonstrates the use of a gigipan camera to teachers from the Bush.
The educators came from Manley Hot Springs, Minto, Ruby, Huslia, Allakaket, Hughes, and Nulato, all members of the Yukon-Koyukuk School District. MapTEACH Principal Investigator Sidney Stephens said the district has been very supportive of and enthusiastic about the training. Now that the second phase of the curriculum has been completed the teachers are starting to test some of the activities in their classrooms. “GPS is proving really popular,” Stephens said.
The teachers are developing their own instructional units to use in their schools. Among the possibilities are lessons on permafrost, place names, landmarks, mental maps, remote sensing, erosion, GPS, GIS, and color infrared radiation maps. “This is the ideal thing,” Stephens said. “This is important to the school district and they send their teachers to take the courses. This takes training and equipment.”
She is particularly happy that the integrated program incorporates local Native knowledge with technology. “There are multiple ways of looking at and making sense of the environment,” Stephens said. “This allows the students to build on their own cultural values while using technical skills and gaining the scientific understanding it takes to meld those skills.
“We want students to be engaged and find out ways to find answers.”
Stephens added that in today’s job market students who earn GIS degrees are pretty much guaranteed jobs. “GIS is such a hot field that it is second in demand for careers. This could really lead to jobs in their communities.”
MapTEACH, a project of the UA Geography Program, offers hands-on education for middle and high school students in Alaska; its focus is understanding the local landscape from multiple perspectives and on learning to make and use computer-based maps of scientific, cultural, and personal significance. The project emphasizes the integration of geoscience, local landscape knowledge, geography, GIS, GPS, and remotely sensed imagery. MapTEACH draws upon the expertise of teachers, education researchers, remote sensing specialists, geoscience professionals, Native elders, and others with traditions-based knowledge. The program is funded by the US Department of Education.
Assisting with the training were UA Geography Program Assistant Professor Patricia Heiser, De Anne Pinney Stevens of the Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys, and Peter Webley of the Alaska Volcano Observatory. In addition to classroom work, the teachers took field trips to a permafrost tunnel in Fox and learned to map potential permafrost sites. They also studied erosion areas and tackled techniques for collecting information on particular landscapes. “We wanted to model things they could do in their own communities,” said Dr. Heiser.
Discussions are beginning for the next phase of the training, possibly to include summertime river travel and study for teachers, students, elders and scientists.
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