Workshop Leaders

Mark Lowry is a world renowned Geography and Geotechnologies educator at both the national and international level. As a Geography consultant with the Toronto District School Board and President of “the Ontario Association for Geographic and Environmental Education” Mark has more that 20 years experience infusing Geotechnologies and spatial literacy into Ontario’s and other curricula worldwide.

As part of his work experience, Mark has spent a significant period of time developing the core Geographic and Earth Science curricula for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He was chosen for this position because of his expertise with the inclusion of geotechnologies (GIS, Remote Sensing and GPS) into the common curricula throughout many jurisdictions in North America Through his work as a lead writer for the Geographics and Geomatics courses I have been working closely with educators and Industry to infuse GIS, Remote Sensing and GPS into all many facets of the Canadian Educational system. I was given the responsibility of leading the writing team to include geotechnology as part of the Core “Canadian National Standards for Geography” for the Canadian. Major achievements to date have been the negotiation and implementation of the first school board site license for the use of GIS and Geotechnology (the Toronto district School Board-4^th Largest in North America) The first Jurisdictional site license for GIS software (The Province of Ontario) and most recently the negotiation of the first Country site license (for the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan) These multi-site licences have all be negotiated for the most common and robust of software (ESRI’s ArcView and ArcGIS) which is the world standard with more than 80% of all GIS users using it

Mark is presently creating courses and programs for E- learning and the virtual schools that will both allow for the use of specific GIS software to be used from server technology by both students and staff. He is one of the developers of the Historical Atlas of Canada Online Learning project with specific responsibilities for creating the educational component. . This will be the first time this has been done in North America and will greatly increase the power and scope of Internet and server technology at the virtual student level. He received the award of Excellence from a major software producer for my work in educating teachers in information technology at both the board, provincial, and International level.

Mark has held teaching positions for both pre-service and experienced teachers in Canada (through the Ontario Institute Of Education At the University of Toronto , Ryerson University, and the University of Ontario – Institute of Technology), the Middle East and selected areas of Asia. His foci are methodologies design strategies, and pedagogies needed to make a geo –complex a vital part of any school system. Mark has both nationally and international designed lesson packs and textual materials to be used in the delivery of GIS and geotechnologies with in the geography and general school environment.

Mark’s educational passions though always rooted in Geography have branched out to include the integration of various subject based strategies and methodologies that allow students to use specific literacy’s to enhance their education. He is also quite involved in the infusion of sustainability into all facets of the educational milieu and is co-chair of the Education for Sustainable Development consortium which is sanctioned by UNESCO and is operating under the tenants of the Bonn declaration. To this end Mark has presented papers in the last 18 months to the “5th World Environmental Education Congress” (in Montréal 2009) and The 2010 North American Association for Environmental Education conference. Mark is also leading a committee of geographers in Ontario that are creating a Geographic Skills, Structures and Concepts Continuum that will be the underpinning of the revised Ontario Geography curriculum.

David Brian is Head of Humanities at the Chinese International School, Hong Kong. He has been teaching Geography in Hong Kong for 23 years and is a strong believer in getting students outside of the classroom to engage in experiential learning opportunities. He became interested in GIS and it’s applications for outdoor learning 10 years ago and introduced it into the school’s secondary Geography program. Currently, GIS is used throughout the 7 to 13 program both within the classroom and beyond it. Beyond the classroom use of GIS currently takes place on Tung Ping Chau, Shang Chuan Dao and Guizhou, China. In addition to introducing GIS to students, David has organized two GIS Workshops for Educators here in Hong Kong and is currently planning the third GIS Workshop for Educators on March 11,12,13, 2011.