Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 15
GIS Specialists' Support for Geography
Education
Hideki Oshima
Abstract
Senior high school teachers in Japan are obliged to develop practical
applications of geographic information systems (GIS) to meet the new National
Curriculum Standards, although they have little formal education in GIS during their
undergraduate and in-service training. Therefore, GIS specialists have supported the
schools in choosing suitable GIS for their facilities and budgets, in training teachers
to manage GIS, and in the development of GIS teaching materials. These experi-
ences revealed that: (1) Reading GIS maps is a higher priority than editing them; (2)
delivering datasets via web GIS is the easiest method, as long as the school internet
can support the bandwidth; and (3) GIS training videos are required to demonstrate
how to create GIS maps in a classroom without the internet.
Keywords
Geography education GIS GIS movies Senior high school
Web GIS
15.1
Introduction
Senior high school geography teachers in Japan must develop practical geographic
information system (GIS) use to meet the new National Curriculum Standards.
However, they have little formal education in GIS during their undergraduate and
in-service training, because many of their professors also had little GIS knowledge.
Although some teachers have learned GIS through other means, they continue to
face diffi culties such as slow internet speed at their schools, which affects web GIS
use. Another issue is the compatibility of saved maps when shared across comput-
ers. Given these limitations, GIS specialists have been hired to support schools to
resolve these problems. This chapter reviews the roles of these specialists and how
this effort is supporting the spread of GIS use in schools.
