Collaborative Development of
Secondary School Internet
Mapping Activities
Dr. David M. Diggs, Dr. Phil Klein,
and Anthony Lopez
http://geography.unco.edu/sbc
Project Goals:
 Create a series of short internet-based
exercises that look at spatial relationships among
world biomes, major climate regimes, major soil
groups (according the United Nation’s Food and
Agriculture Organization—FAO), and relative
fertility of those soil groups
 This presentation describes 1) development of
the project; 2) the collaborative process; and 3)
some of the project’s products and problems.
Project History:
 Univ. of Northern CO has a long history of service to K12 Geography Education Community.
 Undergraduate student with interest in soil fertility and
biomes (developed during Resource Management class).
 Student (a GIS emphasis major) took upper-level
course for future K-12 Geography teachers.
 Student decided to do class project on creating an
ArcIMS site for teaching about biomes and soil fertility.
 Evolved into project that became available on the web.
Collaboration
approach:
Undergraduate Student
 Produced ArcIMS
service and website.
 Data manipulation
on biomes and soil
fertility.
First draft ArcIMS website (ultimately—not used)
 Conceptual
document on how the
website could be used
to teach about biomes
and soil fertility.
Geog. Ed. Professor
 Used a poorly done map of world soil
fertility for many years (bad projection),
redrawn by hand on Robinson projection.
 Associated this with climate maps.
 Lack of learning materials (geography)
focused on soil fertility, biomes, climate, and
soils.
 Needed “Guided Inquiry” process, with
scaffolding of activities to guide secondary
students.
GIS Professor
 Aided student during his ArcIMS
development phase.
 Database problems—USDA Soil Taxonomy
System. Need to use World Reference Base
(WRB) Soils (1974, 1988, 1998).
 Soil Fertility (Van Velthuizen 2007)
important.
Van Velthuizen, Harrij, et al. 2007. Mapping Biophysical factors that influence Agricultural Production and Rural
Vulnerability. Environment and Natural Resources Series 11. United Nations, FAO and the International Institute of Applied
Systems Analysis. Available at: http://www.fao.org/docrep/010/a1075e/a1075e00.htm Last accessed: 4/16/2009.
What now?
 Let’s do something with this!
 See if there is interest (Geog. Ed. Prof.
contact teachers).
 Small amount of funding.
 Need to keep it simple—think audience.
 Develop some draft ArcIMS
websites/services and associated learning
activities (GIS professor).
Database needs and problems:
 The easy stuff: collapse WWF biomes to generalized
biomes; basic climate map; and reference layers.
 Soil database. Fertility descriptions use 1988 WRB.
We thought it best to use 1998 WRB.
 Soil Fertility based on verbal rating of soil suitability for
agriculture (Van Velthuizen 2007). Initially we converted
it to a 10 point ordinal scale.
 What about alignment?
Pre- and Post Design:
Activity
One
Activity
Two
Activity Three
Simple
portal
website:
http://geography.unco.edu/sbc
Learning Activities
 3 ArcIMS websites, 3 activities.
 Activities lead to the discovery of
important geographic concepts (via
Guided Inquiry).
 Extensive scaffolding of the activities is
necessary to guide secondary student to
these discoveries.
Learning Activity example:
Testing
 Final revision of the materials involved classroom
testing of the activities and website.
 A recently retired teacher, with many years of
experience teaching in middle-school, was hired to
develop the activity ideas into a format usable in the
secondary classroom.
Tested in 9th grade geography course in DenverBoulder suburbs.
Testing
 “the best, most friendly GIS lesson” she had ever
used, commenting that it meets both geography and
earth science standards, making it useful both in
middle-school social studies and science curricula.
 Linked to literacy standards.
 Students liked the exercises.
 HOWEVER, early in the testing phase it was clear
that we needed ancillary materials.
WRB 1998 Soil Groups
Major
Biomes
Major
Climates
Conclusions
 Active involvement of all participants resulted in
dramatically improved websites and learning activities.
 Cartographic and technical decision-making was often a
process of compromise due to software and database
limitations.
 Funding and time constraints do not necessarily doom an
idea!
 Despite these constraints it is still possible to create
learning materials that are pedagogically strong, have
relatively appealing cartographic design, and are deemed
valuable by secondary teachers and students.
http://geography.unco.edu/sbc
Author Information
Dr. David M. Diggs and Dr. Phil Klein
Geography Program
School of Social Sciences
College of Humanities and Social
Sciences
Campus Box 115
University of Northern Colorado
Greeley, CO 80639
david.diggs@unco.edu
phil.klein@unco.edu
Anthony Lopez
GIS Scientist
National Renewable Energy
Laboratory
1617 Cole Blvd.
Golden, Colorado 80401
Acknowledgements
Partial funding for this project came from the Colorado Geographic Alliance.
Thanks to Paula Sinn-Penfold for extensive help in developing and testing the
worksheet activities. Also a thank you goes out to Scott Allen, Monarch High
School, Louisville, Colorado
http://geography.unco.edu/sbc