🚀 go-pugleaf

On Fri, 12 Nov 1993, J.A. Castleford wrote:

> > What about "What is the use of GIS?"
> [...]
> > Marco
>
> Agreed. As a UK based centre which has a remit for promoting the use
> if IT in teaching, I asked members of the GIS-L community for
> information about acutal instances of people using GIS to teach
> geography. We know there's a lot of teaching ABOUT computers, but
> seemingly little teaching WITH computers. We're seeking contributions
> of instances of good practice of teaching geography with GIS. ........

John Castleford's post is an important one. We at Stillman College, a
small undergraduate school, are exploring ways to incorporate GIS in
our teaching labs for students with little or no background in computer
science. We would also like to provide very basic GIS skills for future
teachers in elementary and secondary schools to enable them to prepare
visual materials in geography for classroom presentation. The problem we
are having to confront is that the learning curve on most GIS software
is too steep for someone with limited computer expertise to handle.

I suggest that it will be necessary for GIS software developers to make
their user interfaces less intimidating if GIS methods are to be used
successfully in undergraduate elective courses. I would be interested
in learning about software which has already been designed for students
with limited computer skills.

I have found one GIS application which is a major step in the right
direction. IntlPop, developed by the GeoSim Project, has a "friendly" user
interface and will run on most machines. It is available by ftp from
<geosim.cs.vt.edu> in the /pub/msdos/intlpop directory. While the scope
of IntlPop is limited to population comparisons, the interface concept is
something that I think other GIS applications could benefit from if their
developers wish non-technical students to use them effectively.

Morris Simon <msimon7@ua1ix.ua.edu>
International Studies Program
Stillman College