Getting Started with GIS in the Geography Curriculum
Rob Manger – English Martyrs’ Catholic School, Leicester
Rob Manger is a Geography teacher at English Martyrs Catholic School in Leicester,
which supports learners between age 11 and 18. Rob’s ICT innovation project
focused on developing his own skills in the use of Geographic Information Systems
(GIS), with the aim of increasing the effective use of technology use across his
department. In the course of the project, he has also developed and shared a range
of teaching resources for use across key stages 3-5. Additional resources are shared
openly for other geography staff to use, and can be downloaded from the DigiLit
Leicester blog. This project was supported by a Leicester City Council Building
Schools for the Future (BSF) ICT Innovation Award.
At the beginning of my BSF ICT Innovation project I identified the key reasons I wasn’t using
Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in my teaching as:
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I didn’t have time to learn how to use and implement GIS.
I didn’t have access to reliable computers.
I didn’t know what the best software for me to use with my learners might be.
I didn’t know if I would have to pay for subscriptions to sites, or if it would be possible
to use GIS for free.
I didn’t know which data I could use and where it could be sourced from.
I didn’t know what support might be is available should it all go wrong!
I feel I am now in a much better position in which to comment on these barriers and perhaps
remove a few.
I didn’t have time to learn how to use and implement GIS
Time is always the enemy and there are never enough hours in the day. I have been lucky
enough to have been allowed to attend two courses. The first of which was useful in
widening my experience of Google Earth, the second was an introduction to using the ESRI
ArcGIS Online mapping platform. This inspired me to take the time to experiment and learn.
The time invested has been worth it and I’m pleased with my progress and the outcomes.
There is no denying learning to use GIS requires a significant amount of time. It is important
to feel confident in the concepts underpinning the GIS, it’s applications and confident to cope
with any problems and misconceptions that may arise. A lot of these only become obvious
through taking the risk to try things out both personally and with a class. The time and risk
will only benefit the students in being able to analyse, question and interpret large amounts
of spatial data, quickly. Therefore, the initial time learning to use the GIS is time well spent in
order to deliver a high quality geography curriculum, with less time spent on lower order
skills of creating the presentations and more time spent on the high order thinking skills of
interpretation, analysis, and evaluation.
I didn’t have access to reliable computers
We now have improved access to computer rooms and devices, thanks to the investment
made in the school by BSF. These are working well and our IT support work incredibly hard
to fix any problems we encounter.
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I didn’t know the best software to use.
The best software to use will depend on the task and the age group of learners. Below I’ve
included a table of my comparison and evaluation of different Geographical Information
Systems. I have reviewed Google Earth, Digimaps for Schools, and the free and subscription
versions of ESRI ArcGIS Online,
In my opinion, Google Earth and the subscription version of ArcGIS online offer the most
flexibility. ArcGIS online is the only GIS I have reviewed that gives the user the ability to
filter, query and perform analysis on geo spatial data within the software, allowing the user to
identify more detailed patterns and solve more advanced problems. I found Digimaps to be
more useful in terms of introducing younger students to the concept of GIS and digital map
skills.
Google Earth
Google Earth is probably the programme that the majority of staff and students are most
familiar with. I discussed Google Earth at length in my first project blog post. It remains a
main stay of my teaching when describing the location of a place due to the ease of
navigation and visual appeal. I have created a piece of virtual fieldwork using Google Earth
based on a fieldtrip to the Field Studies Council (FSC) Blencathra Centre. Whilst I think this
has been a useful learning experience for me and is a useful teaching tool for revision and
those students whom were unable to attend the fieldtrip, the creation of the virtual fieldtrip
was time consuming and I think it is a bit clumsy.
In the future I would use the ArcGIS online Story Map application to create the virtual fieldtrip
in half the time with a better outcome, and allowing for greater geographical analysis.
I have also begun to use GE Graph to display data directly on to Google Earth. This requires
a free piece of software to be uploaded onto your computer. Points or Polygons can be
drawn and saved as a KML file. These are then uploaded to the GE Graph progamme and
the data added to the point or polygon. This is then uploaded back onto Google Earth. See
below for examples of work by Vicki Johnson of Rushey Mead School and myself. Some
experimentation is required to get the desired presentational results, however this is very
intuitive and easy.
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For me, the most powerful use of Google Earth is to support learners in exploring concepts
of place and space – for example, using the platform to create a tour of their local area,
England, or beyond.
Edina’s Digimaps for Schools
Digimaps for Schools is very useful for interpreting OS maps in a digital format. The package
is much more visually appealing and less daunting than other GIS software packages. My
favourite part of Digimaps for Schools is the fact that it uses the same OS maps and
symbology that students are expected to use in paper format in examinations thus
increasing their familiarity with them. This has been more appealing to many students
particularly boys and more practical to many geography departments as they will no longer
be required to store many paper copies of OS maps. It offers a different format to interact
with OS maps, interpreting relief, symbols and land use, however, students will still need to
be able to demonstrate the skills of grid referencing, measuring distance, and area manually
for examination purposes.
Digimaps for Schools allows learners to interact with digital mapping with the inclusion of a
number of tools to identify points, draw polygons, measure distance and area and create
buffers. These could be used in order to explore enquiry questions posed by a teacher, for
example, which land uses will be affected should the cliff at X retreat by 10m. (It is possible
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to develop this enquiry question much further in ArcGISonline by adding further demographic
and socioeconomic layers of data to the map.)
Apart from the appeal of digital OS maps and the basic analysis tools, another useful
function is the ability to view a historical map layer from 1890. (An update in September
2015 will also include 1950s mapping in full colour which will enable students to further
analyse change over time) I have enjoyed using this to illustrate the growth of settlement
both with year 7 students and year 13 students. This would be of value to history
departments as well and I will be sharing this accordingly.
Alan Parkinson has created a number of free resources for Digimaps to introduce the skills
required. I have created two lesson plans to help students to continue to explore the uses of
Digimaps. One of these explores a piece of coastline to create an information board for
tourists with year 8 learners:
An example of a students work using Digimaps for Schools
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An example of a students work using Digimaps for Schools
The second resource I created with Digimaps for schools is designed to for Year 7 learners
to investigate land uses with in settlements and urban morphology:
These have been well received by the students. However, I have identified a number of
issues:
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When using the grid line function of Digimaps the grid lines overlay the photographs.
Either deselect the grid line function or suffer poor presentation quality (I wanted to
use the work for a grid referencing activity at a later date so chose to keep the grid
lines layer).
Be aware of issues with numeracy when comparing area as the units change at
different scales m2 to km2.
Objects cannot be ‘sent to the back’. Choose the order that objects are added to the
map carefully.
Overall, the students have reacted well to Digimaps; they enjoy investigating the variety of
maps, including historical maps, and have enjoyed the tasks given to them. As a teacher, the
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software is fairly intuitive and has not been time consuming to get to grips. It is important to
become familiar with the software in order to warn the students of some of its limitations. The
lack of an undo button (students regularly confused the start again button for an undo
button, leading to much frustration) and the limit of 30 characters when labelling features for
example. The ability to save and print the students work on high quality OS maps is also a
huge bonus. It is now up to me to develop more relevant and useful tasks to engage the
students with map work. I plan to use Digimaps for Schools with years 7 and 8 in order to
introduce them to GIS and interact with OS maps in a more student friendly and
contemporary format.
Digimaps has recently been updated to include a number of different functions, including a
limited ability to upload data in the form of a csv file and Grid reference tool. Please see this
blog post for the updates.
Digimaps for Schools new upload CSV tool now allows a similar work flow to that of
ArcGISonline with regards to the collection of primary data. Students can collect data for
identified points using longitude and latitude, eastings and northings or postcodes and add a
piece of data to that point. The fact that this is the same workflow as ArcGISonline only with
fewer data fields will further differentiate the analysis required nicely for Keystage 2 and 3 by
asking them to look for highest and lowest figures only rather than requiring students to
analyse lots of different data all at once. I believe it may also be possible to create a Google
Document which will allow for the collection of primary data in the same way as the Geoform
technique does for ArcGISonline as described below.
This new function makes Digimaps for Schools an excellent starting point for younger
students to get to grips with the concepts of GIS before moving on to the more advanced
analytical tools in GIS software platforms such as Esri’s ArcGISonline.
ESRI ArcGIS online
ESRI’s ArcGIS online is the best GIS I have used in terms of flexibility and the powerful
analytical tools it provides. Whilst it is the software that has required the greatest amount of
time from me and definitely caused the most frustration, it has also inspired me to use more
geospatial data and introduce this to my students. I can think of many more applications for
ArcGIS online in our curriculum than the other programmes I reviewed.
My experience is with the free version and we have recently purchased a subscription for an
organisational account. I would still say I was a beginner with using ArcGISonline, however I
have been inspired to learn more and I am making good progress in spite of a few tantrums.
One of the main advantages of using ArcGISonline is the function to upload geospatial data
either from your own fieldwork, ready-made layers from ArcGISonline and Esri or from
geospatial data contained in websites such as Police.uk. This data is automatically plotted
for you which allows more time to focus on analysis and problem solving.
My initial questions were: what geospatial data can be uploaded to ArcGIS online? Where
can it be sourced? Why isn’t the data being plotted in the way I was expecting it to be?
Any data that has been linked to a specific location can be mapped in ArcGIS; however,
some data sets will require more work than others. The easiest data to plot is data that is
linked to latitude, longitude and post codes. I’ve had issues when attempting to plot data
using place names and country names due to variations in the spellings of place names.
These can be overcome with a little effort and investigation.
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@RHSB_Geography – Work completed by Raphael Heath demonstrating plotting data using
middle layer super output areas (MSOA)
Sourcing the data: primary data or secondary data can be used. I’m excited about the ease
with which students will be able to collect their own data in the field, locate that data with a
longitude and latitude, and then upload it to the computer to be analysed. This can be done
by using ESRI’s ArcGIS Collector or by using predefined data collection points with known
longitude and latitude, or by manually identifying the longitude and latitude of the data
collection point using a smart phone and entering it onto a piloted data collection sheet or
spreadsheet and uploading the data at a later date for analysis. The creation of a Geoform is
a further technique with which to collect primary data. I aim to use this in September to
collect data about tourist destinations to further analyse in ArcGISonline.
Link to Geoform
Secondary data can be found all over the internet. The first place to search for information
should be ArcGISonline itself. There is a wealth of data already mapped in ready made
layers. A further interesting source I have found is the Gapminder website. It has a library of
data that it uses for its visualisations and has collated these making it easy to use them.
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When using secondary data it is very important to make sure that the spreadsheet is saved
as a .csv file and is as ‘clean’ as possible. By clean I mean it is highly likely that you will have
to spend some time editing the file to ensure the data is unambiguous for ArcGIS online to
interpret it accurately. This is easier said than done sometimes!
The work we have completed using ArcGIS online has been as simple as measuring the
area and coastlines of continents with year 7 students. We have taken part in Raphael
Heaths GIS world record attempt inputting data about quality of life and then analysing the
results and year 9 have analysed the location of instances of graffiti using the density
mapping function to identify which areas would benefit most from a graffiti wall.
Years 12 and 13 have explored the Index of Multiple Deprivation for Leicester.
I have also attempted to create a Story Map of a piece of fieldwork we completed, evaluating
the success of the City Challenge in Leicester. I attempted to create the story map as an
afterthought and didn’t have the detail or information in a format I required. I now understand
that this requires better planning prior to the trip in order to achieve the best results and be of
the most use to the students. StoryMaps are an interesting tool provided by Esri that require
further investigation on my part.
The EcoMartyrs, our school eco group, have used ArcGISonline to analyse the modes of
transport students use to travel to school. From our investigations we have discovered
students of English Martyrs' Catholic School are driven almost 3,000km to and from school
each day. That is the same as travelling to Warsaw, Poland and back, every day. The
average distance a student is driven to school is just 4.4km. The total amount of time English
Martyrs' students spend travelling in a car each day is over 80 hours. The average car
journey lasts just 7.4 minutes. These statistics were calculated using the analysis tools within
ArcGISonline. The numeracy required to interpret these statistics begins to highlight the
cross curricular links that GIS can open to us. We plan to use this information to inform
students and parents, SLT and school governors and possibly the City Council in order to
encourage more students to use sustainable modes of transport.
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Since subscribing to ArcGISonline I have really learned to appreciate how to use geospatial
data within the classroom. My mind is a buzz with applications and as someone more
intelligent than I once said, “the only limit is our imagination.” I have begun to write a list of all
of the areas of our existing curriculum I can embed GIS to supplement the learning that
takes place and also develop further resources for our ever changing curriculum and
geography.
Comparisons
Google Earth
Digimaps for
Schools
Esri
ArcGISOnline
Esri
ArcGISOnline
Subscription
version
Subscription
Free
(subscription
version is
available)
Annual
Subscription –
Secondary
Schools - £86.25
– £143.75
dependent on
numbers on role
Free
Annual
Subscription
£100
Map area
Global
Great Britain
Global
Global
Base Mapping
Aerial
photography
OS mapping
Variety of base
maps including
aerial
photography and
street maps
Variety of base
maps including
aerial
photography and
street maps
Scale/Resolution
?
Maps at 12
scales available:
1:8,00,000 –
1:1250
Global – 20m
Global – 20m
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Search function
Longitude and
latitude, post
codes and place
names
Post codes and
place names, grid
references
Longitude and
Latitude, post
codes and place
names
Longitude and
latitude, post
codes and place
names
Inputting data
Manually add
points, lines and
polygons.
Manually add
points, lines and
polygons.
(I believe it is
possible to
convert CSV files
to KML though I
have not done
this)
Ability to
automatically add
and label point
annotations from
a csv file
containing
latitude/longitude,
easting/northing
or postcode
information
Automatically
upload
geospatial data
as points (up to
250 points)
Points, lines and
polygons can be
added manually
Automatically
upload
geospatial data
which can be
analysed using a
number of tools
automatically.
Points, lines and
polygons can be
added manually
Esri
ArcGISOnline
Esri
ArcGISOnline
Google Earth
Digimaps for
Schools
Subscription
version
Distance
measuring tool
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Area measuring
tool
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Measure
elevation
Yes
No (manually
using contour
lines)
No (Layer can be
added with
height data or
Web app is
available to
measure
elevation)
No (Layer can be
added with
height data or
Web app is
available to
measure
elevation)
Buffer tool
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Edit map layers
with polygons
and lines
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Annotate map
layers
Yes
Yes (limited to 30
characters)
Yes
Yes
Save work
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Print work
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Filter Layers
Yes
No
Yes
Yes
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Query Data
No
No
No
Yes
Add Media
Images, video,
graphs
Images
Images, video,
graphs
Images, video,
graphs
Historical
mapping
Yes – dependent
on when imagery
has been
collected
Yes – Maps of
1890 available.
No (limited areas
are covered by
historic map
layers provided
by ESRI)
No (limited areas
are covered by
historic map
layers provided
by ESRI)
3D function
September 2015
update to include
full colour 1950s
mapping
Yes
No
No
Yes – using My
Scene
Google Earth
Digimaps for
Schools
Esri
ArcGISOnline
Esri
ArcGISOnline
Subscription
version
Support
Mainly Forums
Google Earth
Community
Google Earth
Hacks
edina@ed.ac.uk
have been
extremely helpful
and prompt with
support
Jason Sawle is extremely helpful and
runs the GIS4Schools blog
These comparisons are from my understanding of the software alone. Please forgive any errors or
misconceptions on my part.
A subjective comparison of the different GIS programmes I reviewed. These are my own personal
opinions. 1 = Worst – 5 = Best
Google Earth
Digimaps for
Schools
Esri
ArcGISOnline
Esri
ArcGISOnline
(Subscription
version)
Ease of use
5
4
2
2
Time needed to
become
confident
4
4
2
1 (still very much
learning)
Flexibility of
application
4
3
2
5
Opportunities
for
incorporating
tasks into
curriculum
3
3
2
5
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Key stage
generally most
applicable to
KS 2,3 and 4
KS 2, 3 and 4
Useful
resources
Google Earth
Library for a
number of
overlays
Free resources
for schools
Resource sheets created by Bob
Lang for GA annual conference 1 2
Free resources
for colleges
Lesson resources from ESRI
KS 3 and 4
KS 3, 4 and 5
Map Gallery from ESRI
Raphael Heath at The Royal High
School Bath tweets about their
interesting work here
Project conclusions
The ability to analyse geospatial data is an increasingly important skill. We are exposed to
more geospatial data in web applications, smart phone apps and in the media. It is therefore
extremely important that we can interpret it, analyse it and evaluate it ourselves. Our
students are also expected to have experience of GIS throughout the key stages.
Primary and secondary geospatial data can be collected or downloaded from many different
sources. The core issue is the flexibility of the platform used. It is more helpful if the platform
is compatible with wide a range of geospatial data, and provides a range of ways to interpret
and analyse this data.
When deciding on a subscription to a piece of GIS software, it is important to assess the
requirements of your learners and the amount of time in which you are willing to invest in
order to learn how the different software packages work and how to use them in order to
help your learners achieve your learning intentions and beyond. In my opinion, ArcGIS
online offers the most opportunities for teachers to use geospatial data efficiently with
students, and to incorporate work with data into the curriculum providing they are willing to
invest the time and effort required to become confident in its use. Otherwise Google Earth
(free) and Digimaps for Schools both put a tick in the box for using GIS with in the curriculum
and allow learners to analyse data spatially with less time commitment required from
teachers to learn how to use the software.
Overall, Esri’s ArcGIS online is the one for me. Although, as stated in the subjective
comparison above, it does require a substantial amount of time and effort (I’m a bit of a geek
like that and my wife is very understanding) - however, the long term gains for the students’
geographical understanding are worth the investment. The fact that it is widely used in
business and government is an added bonus which would give students worthwhile
experience for their future academic studies and employment.
Getting Started with GIS in the Geography Curriculum – Final Report by Rob Manger / English
Martyrs’ Catholic School / Leicester City Council is licensed under CC-BY 4.0
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