Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
is working in a user-friendly way, so the pupils will begin to use GIS questions and
will understand the productivity and usefulness of the real GIS (Bandrova
2001
).
The training with electronic atlas could be directed in three ways:
Work with data. Different kind of tasks can be given to pupils. They can select a
list of type objects, classify objects, examine some details of every object, and
connect them with information for other objects. It is a flexible system for object
searching according to different criteria—name, type, address, key words and
others. Every reference can be saved for future usage.
Work with maps. It is possible to scale maps, move map images, switch on or off
the visibility of layers, and choose a symbol system for object mapping.
Work with data and maps. Pupils can add data on a map as a separate map layer,
receive information for objects, find the object situation from a data list, etc.
Examples of the teachers' tasks can be the following according to Ormeling
(
1996
):
1. What is on a map (identifying);
2. What is where on the map (classifying);
3. Do you see a relationship on the map (relating);
4. Check if this relationship is valid for each region on the map (checking, monitoring,
validating).
This electronic atlas has a CD version and it is sold on the Bulgarian market.
This makes it difficult to be used by the teachers and pupils. The main users come
from the business field. The pupils use the free version of another Bulgarian web
based atlas. It can be found on
www.bgmaps.com
, but it is not adopted for pupils or
children use. Its main purpose is to give the possibility of finding addresses in a city.
17.3.3 Compromises?
Compiling and mapping Geography and History information, which we needed for
school atlases and wall maps, provided us with enough data that allow us to produce
electronic or virtual variants of these cartographic products. From the cartographer's
point of view, this will not be a problem. Also in these days many variants of
electronic textbooks were published. It is clear that this will be the future of school
cartography. However, the situation is still bad because of the poor computer
equipment in the classrooms. Only one room per school is equipped with computers.
This room is all time occupied by pupils studying computer science. There are no
chances for geography teachers to use this room for their lessons. For this reason, we
still propose producing only paper atlases and wall maps for Bulgarian market.
However, in outline maps and in some atlases there are tasks that require the users to
perform Internet research. Another reason is the open issues in terms of legacy. The
pupils will use their personal notebooks, but we cannot allow the usage of illegal
software. Unfortunately, the necessary software for cartographic applications is too
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