GIS+integration

A GIS (geographic Information System) is a system that captures, stores,analyizes, manages, and presents some type of data. It allows you to View, understand, question, interpret, and visualize that data in a ton of ways. It can show trends, and patterns in the form of maps, globes, reports and charts. My main focus is the integration of the very popular GIS Google Earth. GIS's are very popular and as long as people are putting more and more data onto computers the systems will evolve and continue to grow and should be embraced, and hopefully properly integrated into the class room. Google earth provides the oppurtunity for kids in the classroom to see the entire globe in good detail. It can take you anywhere on the planet in an instant. It s not practical to take a group of students who want to learn about, lets say, Mt Everest. You can use google earth to take width and heigth measurment and look at the surrounding landscape and get more information you can't get from just looking at a map. You can use google earth to find any place or land feature(Even your own house!), you can use it to find map densities and map quantities on top of environments, that are easily seen and unaccessible to a student normally. You can use it to create your own data layers, such as researching and plotting the movements of a wolf pack, and showing changes in home ranges and movement.

Pro's

1) Using google earth gives you a much more interacive way to look at maps 2) Can look at land features, and other field data, without having to go out into the field, 3) Can easily switcch between different layers of data 4) Its impractical to take a field trip to the pyramids/himalayas, google earth gives you a 3-d look at many places which are not easliy reached 5) Easily accessible, Google earth is easily downloaded onto any computers 6) Save's paper for having hundredes of copies of different map types ( SImplest but could be the biggest relative advantage)

Con's 1) Learning curve for google earth tools, for some maybe greater for some teachers/ students 2) Tech issues, having proper plug ins for data maps 3) some uses could just be replacement, and unecessary to use GIS, paper maps maybe just as effective in some cases.