GTAV Conference 2011 – What’s going on in spatial technologies
This post constitutes the ‘handout’ for my sessions at the Geography Teachers’ Association of Victoria (GTAV) 2011 conference to be held at RMIT in Melbourne’s CBD. For those who don’t have the privilege of coming along to this wonderful event, my session aims to give teachers a feel for what is new in the world of spatial technologies so feel free to review the resources below for potential use in your own classrooms.
The pace of the digital age is relentless. Every year smaller, newer, sleeker, more powerful, faster and more efficient digital technologies are released into the market and teachers have the overwhelming task of keeping up. For those of you interested in spatial technologies (given you have made it to this page I am assuming that covers all readers!) here are some of the latest and greatest resources out there. The beauty of the websites below is that they are all available for free online and they all can contribute in some way to answering those ‘where’ questions that form the basis of Geography.
Online spatial technologies
Online mapping technologies offer an easy way to engage your students with spatial technologies and there are more and more great mapping applications being developed all the time.
Google Maps/Earth
With Google Maps and Google Earth you can create interactive maps, virtual field trips and even activities for your students that are easy to use and share. There are many many resources out there that you can use to help you get your head around these tools, start with Contour Education’s ‘Spatial from Scratch’ booklet from our Resources page and then check out our Video page to see videos showing you how to use these wonderful tools.
ESRI
ESRI have a number of tools that teachers might find useful in the classroom, starting with their ESRI online mapping tools.
QGIS
QGIS is a free, open-source piece of software that has most of the features that teachers would find useful in ArcGIS. Click here to download.
Additional resources
There are many blogs and other websites that can help you to understand what is new in spatial technologies as well as giving your students some background knowledge that can help them get started with spatial.
The future?
Augmented reality and location-based games are the next big thing in spatial technology. Augmented reality allows the user, via their device, to view the ‘real’ world with additional layers of data and information. There are many applications for mobile devices as well as computers that allow students (users) to view their world with multitudes of additional data and information, although this technology is being refined constantly to make better use of the concept. Already there are many apps, such as the popular Layar application, that let you view YouTube, Wikipedia, historic images and other relevant information through your device’s camera giving you an enhanced view of the world. There are apps that let you engage with your local park, conduct treasure hunts and even apps that let you create your own real-world games where your students can work through play. These technologies are new, they are still being refined but they will certainly paly a role in the teaching of geography into the future.
Here are a few mobile applications that allow you to set various challenges or tasks for your students to undertake when they get to your designated location. Some simply provide information while others are more engaging:
You can also try incorporating QR codes into a task. Try the QR Code Treasure Hunt website for some great resources on setting up a treasure hunt – it is much easier than you think! Where do you think this one takes you?
To wrap up, there are many exciting things happening in the world of spatial technology; some new and yet to reach their full potential and some tried and tested. Play with the tools, download the applications to your Android or Apple device and see if they would be useful in your class (don’t be afraid to play around with the applications’ settings – you can’t break it!). If you are feeling unsure of yourself, don’t bite off more than you can chew, remember that you don’t want to get side tracked into teaching about these technologies rather than with them – they are simply here to help us ‘do’ good geography.