Last week, Alistair Hamill hosted a highly engaging session for geography teachers from the CALC schools at Lurgan College. The meeting focused on the new GIS initiative, which aims to involve young geographers in a citizen science project addressing climate change.

Alistair Hamill introduced the CALC Geography Pathway GIS initiative, emphasizing its goal to engage students from the Craigavon Area Learning Community in a meaningful climate change project. The initiative centers on surveying local trees, integrating geographic information system (GIS) technology to enhance students' understanding and involvement in climate action.

Climate change is a critical topic in the curriculum, and this initiative aims to balance the urgency of the subject with pastoral care for students, avoiding eco-anxiety while fostering a sense of agency. By using GIS, students will see the direct impact of their actions, collecting and analyzing data to understand their environment better.

During the session, teachers discussed the project's framework, which includes using tools like Survey123 to collect data. Students will map tree locations, document their characteristics, and analyze the data to identify patterns and relationships, such as the correlation between tree distribution and socio-economic factors.

One of the highlights of the project is its practical application. The data collected by students will be used in real-world contexts, potentially informing local stakeholders and decision-makers. This hands-on experience not only enhances students' geographic skills but also empowers them as active contributors to their community's climate response.

To maintain the momentum and foster continuous collaboration, Alistair Hamill set up a Google Classroom for participants. This platform will allow teachers to share resources, discuss progress, and plan future meetings.

The session concluded with a sense of enthusiasm and anticipation for the upcoming academic year. Teachers left inspired by the potential of the GIS initiative to make a tangible difference in climate education and community engagement.

Teachers from post primary schools all across CALC met to use GIS to collect survey data on the management of the Knock River, Belfast. 

This was to give us an experience of using GIS, to discover how easy it actually is. This is the experience our pupils will have when we use it with them, so getting a sense of the accessibility of the end user experience is important.  We walked along about 3 km of the river, collecting data along the way with the goal of producing a usable resource for our pupils back in class.

The key question we were considering throughout the day was: how does GIS enhance the geography we would be doing anyway?

Then we went to the Geography Deparment in QUB, where we were hosted by Conor Graham in the GIS suite there. 

• Initially, Alistair demoed the use of the GIS map from the front. He pointed out that this was the majority of his GIS work in the classroom, using the software as a teach from the front tool.  He said that he simply narrates the procedures he is doing: ("I'm just going to turn this layer on, then I'll change this basemap") saying that, as pupils watched him explicitly model its use over and over at the front, they were picking up the procedural knowledge by osmosis. 

• Then all the teachers got to play with their data. The buzz in the room was palpable, and the quote of the day came from Kate: "Wow! It's like Christmas!" Again, this was to give them a sense of what it's like to use GIS, the same kind of experience their pupils would have. And they were clearly seeing how accessible this would be.

• We finished with Alistair showing an example of how he scaffolds pupils as they use GIS for themselves, using Google Slides as a kind of Digital Workbook to guide pupils as they themselves use the software. And everyone got a chance to play with some amazing GIS data on the La Palma eruption of 2021.

And so we came back to the question at the start: does GIS enhance learning? The answer was a resounding yes! And the first steps in our TPL pathway were taken.

Explore the data we collected in this GIS map below

Here is a short video guiding you through what we did with this map.

Some feedback from the attendees