Expanding GIS use throughout educational institutions
Typically when people reflect on the incorporation of GIS technology in education, the picture that comes to mind is framed by classroom instruction and research—for instance, a high school world geography class, a community college GIS certificate program, a university urban planning course, and basic scientific investigation that advances knowledge. These and other areas of academic and career instruction and research do, in fact, represent the lion’s share of the GIS activity occurring within educational institutions, and which is vital to fostering successive generations of geospatial leaders and problem solvers. However, these are not the only settings where GIS is providing an essential service within educational entities.
While learning is the goal and learners are the manifest stakeholders, there is typically a place where they intersect: the learning milieu—the physical world of campuses; schools; districts; and associated components; such as buses, emergency plans, and demographic analyses. As we consider the use of GIS in education, we need to include the environments, places, and things connected with these learners and their experiences. Visible brick-and-mortar components are quickly apparent. However, the less evident aspects of our educational organizations are equally vital to the planning, development, operation, and sustainment of them.
On this administrative side of education, the mission is not unlike that of a local government—keeping people and property safe; conducting key studies to support the larger mission; transporting people and goods efficiently; maintaining current facilities and managing resources well; and being wise planners and decision makers, especially in times of lean finances. It is in these areas where GIS is on the rise, but it seems that GIS is still viewed through a lens of niche use or silo placement when, in fact, it can be pervasive and foundational and ultimately serve an array of mission-critical functions within these organizations.
School districts and school administrators tend to focus their efforts on the documentation of learning that is or is not taking place. Generally, they are less concerned with the effective management of the entire system until such time as the financial aspects of the operations somehow become a limiting factor. At this point they begin to look at ways in which they can reduce “costs” by outsourcing various parts of the systems operations in favor of a more directed focus on the “core” function of higher academic achievement. While much energy is given to “data-driven decision making” at the academic level there is very little energy spent on making effect “data-driven decision making” at system maintenance and the infrastructure improvement level.
GIS is the perfect tool for strategic planning and facilities resource analysis issues. This, I believe, is the doorway to more use of geospatial tools and analysis by educational institutions and school districts. It is necessary for a directed outreach to occur within the geospatial industry that truly focuses on those organizations that school administrators and school leaders follow. Organizations like the Association of School Business Officials (20.132.48.254/ERICWebPortal/search/recordDetails.jsp?ERICExtSearch_Descriptor=%22Criticism%22&_pageLabel=RecordDetails&accno=EJ918599&_nfls=false), the National Association for Pupil Transportation, and Phi Delta Kappa, with all of their state affiliate organizations, need to be targeted. Articles that depict case study activities of school leaders using geospatial tools to better understand student population dynamics, facilities resource needs and utilization studies are needed to engage current school administration leaders so they can learn how and why they should be using GIS within their areas of responsibility (for example, www.esri.com/news/arcnews/fall05articles/earning-all.html)
Much like the GIS education effort with the NSTA (National Science Teachers Association and NCGE (National Council of Geographic Education), these organizations have great influence among school business leaders. They need to know how GIS is being used and how it can help them in all phases of school district operations. Student population dynamics within any community need to be a focus of analysis at all times not just in periods of financial stress or outside pressure for more school choice. Every school should be a center of educational excellence that is striving to meet the needs of the school community. GIS is the best tool to understand and inform the community that the best education choice possible happens in the neighborhood public school at the most effective and efficient cost to the community.
I am trying to work on a project where GIS can benefit the school system in Newark, NJ. The goal is simple but the task is will require some regulations to change. For years the community based organizations have been working with the school system. But the school system and the community has not been able to improve the kids education or be able to make a bigger impact. The task is to share information between the school and the CBO's that will give additional education resources after school to help the kids who needs additional tutoring.
EX: The Principal has five students who needs additional tutoring on Math in the fifth grade. The school should be able to go to a database look up after school tutors that can help. The students address is put in the arcgis online the map then shows the volunteers who are near that students home. The principal then generate a list of tutors who are near the students home. The parent is contacted to setup a tutoring scedule with the volunteers to help the student with his math.
What I found is the principal do not have a community resource system in place. The school system do not share information with the community organizations.
Millions of dollars each year goes to safe heaven programs in the city but the two sides do not share information or have a system in place to help both sides.
So I am creating a community based resource system based on GIS community online map.I think this is the best approach. GIS is the best tool to understand and inform the community that the best education choice possible happens in the neighborhood public school at the most effective and efficient cost to the community.
Bill, I love that idea of a community based resource system. A group of us have been working for years to bring together training and public assistance programs together in once location in Belgrade and Bozeman, MT. We have observed so much duplication of efforts and lack of knowledge about what a large number of non profits are trying to do for youth as well as adults. The same applies to school districts working together. Career Workforce Community Training Center, Inc. recently leased a large building and have begun to bring organizations together to share resources and collaborate on serving the communities needs. The sharing of knowldge and resources is in many cases a foreign concept and is not always easily accomplished nor accepted. We are forunate that the local Superintendent and School Board have bought into the concept and are very supportive. As a result we developed a good working relationship with the school and have students and the school taking advantage of the resources we have pulled together. This was not with out opposition from the businesses in the area. A community based resource system based on GIS community online map should be helpful in large as well as in large land mass school districts with sparse student populations.
HI Bill, I think you are on the right track. "So I am creating a community based resource system based on GIS community online map.I think this is the best approach." One way to get a jump start on this project would be to find some students that would be willing to work with you on the creation of your Online Community GIS Education Resource System. I have found working with students to be a very successful endeavor. As the GIS Systems Analyst for the City you could approach the schools to identify interested students that would be willing to learn GIS and help you create the system. The ESRI Virtual Campus ( training.esri.com ) has a number of courses that the students could take online that would prepared them to assist you. This type of outreach is exactly what is needed in 21st Century education. This would leverage your desire to engage the system and help the system at the same time. Most Principals will not know how to go about this type of activity. You need to contact members of the local board of education and the superintendent's office so they can support your efforts. You also need to contact the local news media in your area and let them know what you are trying to accomplish. This makes for excellent press coverage and will draw out support from other GIS users in your community that will give their support to this project. I would be glad to provide some support as I have worked on a lot of these types of activities.
Howdy all you educational map makers.
For the past 2 years I have been doing GIS work for Garland ISD. We are a fairly large district with over 58,000 students, primarily serving the cities of Garland, Sachse, and Rowlett in the north east corner of Dallas County Texas. Our primary GIS project has been an ongoing project to convert CAD data to GIS features for school floor plans and usage analysis. We have also used GIS for some demographic analysis and to produce our own series of printed transportation maps saving the district the cost of having them out sourced.
In addition to working on these, one of my current projects is the development if a browser based GIS portal built In Adobe Flex for the use of our student services and other departments. Unfortunately, this project is only hosted on our internal network so there is no link for me to post.
I am interested to see how some of the other educational organizations are leveraging GIS tools. Hopefully we can all inspire each other with new and interesting ideas to improve our positive impact on our organizations.
James Walker
James, I too am working on converting CAD data to GIS features. We have over 50 years of Architectural plans from board pencil drafting to CAD, Revitt, and 3D. It is a monumental task to migrate all this data into a common GIS platform, and than correct it for proper georeferencing. I'd be very interested in learning your techniques and any lessons you can pass on.
The simile with local government is very appropriate, and the challenges and barriers are much the same to effective use of technology and data within our school systems. That is after all what GIS really is, it's a powerful, visual tool for analyzing and communicating data, and it's a highly technology driven tool. If a district is struggling to adequately implement and leverage good tech and creative uses for data then GIS implementation is going to be tough also, let alone strategic use of GIS tools.
What we've been doing so far with schools (mainly Oakland Unified) includes:
* analyzing chronic absence levels across the city at a school and neighborhood level- helping to guide the pilot projects to reduce chronic absence and using maps to communicate the disparities in outcomes to exec staff.
* Examining enrollment patterns in conjunction with proposed school closure locations.
* Analysis of suspension patterns across the city for African American male students.
I'd also suggest that school districts could benefit heavily from considering GIS in these ways too (I've done these in other places):
* Analysis of teacher residence v student/school locations, considering both the implications of local community involvement/engagement and also for retention analysis- teachers that are part of your local community with shorter commutes are more involved and tend to stay longer.
* Track public health birth data by tract/zip to plan for future changes in school populations
* Gap analysis for after school programs to make sure kids in neediest neighborhoods have equitable access to quality after school programs.
A group I'm part of also built some very cool tools for Boston public schools last year, one is a great geographic school selection tool for parents: discoverbps.org/
So many places that GIS can add value to and help improve our struggling schools!
Looking forward to more ideas that I don't have time to implement ;-)
Spike
Steve, I like what you have added especially: "* Track public health birth data by tract/zip to plan for future changes in school populations" and want to include the information below for consideration as well. This work is a result of the City of Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion wanting to use more GIS. There are just so many different ways that GIS can be used in education!
Blood Lead Poisoning, Student Achievement and Environmental Health
For some time now I have been involved in research that examines the impact of elevated blood lead levels on student achievement. This falls into a category of problems that are related to the impact of environmental health on student achievement and school success. I think it is critical that this area of investigation be given more attention. In many cases these environmental health issues are generational in that the parents of the students affected were also affected by these environmental factors as were their parents. Until more attention is given to these issues large numbers of high poverty, urban students will continue to be left behind while we close schools due to poor performance. Our research shows very clearly, with high significance, that the higher an individual's blood lead level between birth and 5 years of age the lower they score on all education assessment tests as they grow. Unless we begin to address these conditions through more intensive early childhood education programs these students will continue to struggle and potentially drop out of the education system.
This is a landmark study of great significance. This project resulted from collaboration between the City of Detroit Department of Health and Wellness Promotion (DHWP) and the Detroit Public Schools Office of Research, Evaluation, Assessment and Accountability. It took 18 months to work out a memorandum of understanding that allowed us to take all of the venous blood lead testing data for individuals living in the City of Detroit from DHWP, 169,301 records, and match that data with a Detroit Public Schools (DPS) student database. The data is from 1992-2008 so it is longitudinal. We were able to identify over 45,000 currently enrolled DPS students in the blood lead testing database. You will find more information at:
proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/health10/docs/gis_collaboration.pdf
Most large cities with Health Departments have this type of data available as they are required to keep the records. The key to better understanding is the development of the memorandum of understanding that makes it possible to combine the data from the schools and health department so a better understanding of the educational impact can be explored. I believe that this is one of the greatest educational achievement problems that exist in eastern US urban centers of high poverty. More than 25% of the current school population of DPS had elevated blood lead levels (EBLLs) between birth and 5 years old. When the data is examined by school enrollment, DPS has over 40 schools where the more than 35% of the school population had EBLLs. Under no child left behind, declining enrollment and the financial conditions in DPS schools have been closed because they do not make AYP when a high percentage of the population performs poorly due to past environmental health related issues.
Douglas,
If you can standardize the input data, then you can save a lot
of work on the backend by automating the conversion process using
model builder. A lot depends on what you want to do with the data and
what format you want to use as your master repository.
In our case we have several CAD people and I was brought in to work on
the GIS end. The decision was made that the master data would be
maintained in CAD so one of our major project concerns was to
establish and keep standards so that the GIS import could be automated
and repeated as changes are made.
We have 7 High schools, 12 middle schools, 47 elementary schools, and several administrative and special use facilities many of these have 2 floors and or ancillary buildings. Much like your situation our data has been accumulated over many decades and although when I came in everything was digital, the drawings had been produced in various versions of CAD by different firms over the years.
We started with 1 elementary school and worked
out the layers we wanted; these layers were defined in the CAD
drawings and are converted to a series of feature classes through
structured queries that are set up in Model Builder. We have building
outlines, corridors, rooms, building history, and roof plans.
Annotation layers in the CAD drawings are read in as points and joined
to the various polygons to make the attributes such as room numbers in
the GIS database.
A lot of planning and some trial and error went into
getting all of this just right for our needs. The girl who does most
of the CAD work is not a GIS person and I am not skilled with CAD, but
with a lot of work we are getting where we need to be. Each of our
locations has a 3 digit number that is used by the district and the
State education agency to identify that school, so in our GIS data base
the location for each room is that 3 digit code followed by a “.” And
the room number which is unique within the particular campus so
004.213, indicating room 213 at location 004. This way we can build
district wide locators that can be run across the whole district
instead of separately for each school.
At this point we are still validating room numbers for some of the schools so we have not yet been able to make full use of this data but we are getting closer all the time.
One of the layers that was surprisingly challenging was
adding the graphics for door swings, millwork, plumbing fixtures and
such. When these little lines are just brought strait in out of CAD
and laid on top of the other data and that is published as a web
service, 30 – 50,000 little polylines on top of some drawings, over 1.6
million for the entire district was bogging down the server. The final
solution was that I added a few steps to the import model so that it
takes all of these graphic lines as it processes them for a particular
drawing and makes them into a single multipart line feature. This
allows us to have all that CAD artwork that people spent so much time
creating with only a few hundred features across the district. This
runs a lot better on our server.
Several months ago we did gather detailed usage data from the administrators of three of our high schools that are preparing for additions. Maps made using this data were given to the administrators and architectural firms to help them visualize the actual usage of those campuses and help them optimize their proposals for the additions.
You also mentioned the Geo-referencing and that is a whole other can of worms that will depend to some extent on exactly how you plan to use the data and from what data future updates will originate. 1 option is to use the geo refinancing tools in arc map. If you use a simple 2 point matching on building corners from an aerial, this is the easiest solution, but the
scaling of your drawing is not exact and the resulting square footage
will be affected. If that is not important then go with that method.
In our case knowing square footage for rooms and buildings is critical
so we had to scale the drawings by a calculation. The default unit of
measure in most of our drawings was inches and our local state plane
coordinate system that we work in is in feet so by scaling the
drawings by .08333 we were able to maintain the CAD established
geometry accurate to several decimal places. Then just drag the
drawing into position and adjust the declination manually to match the
imagery. This is the work flow we have used for our floor plans and it
has worked well for us but we have another option. Using the ArcGIS
for AutoCAD extension to our auto cad software we are able to consume
our ArcServer services as base layers in AutoCAD. We recently obtained
current 6 inch imagery for our district and are using this imagery as
a service to apply spatial coordinates to our data in AutoCAD. If I
were to restart our project today I would chose this last option for
our floor plans as well since it alleviates the issue of keeping up
with world files that become invalid if the CAD technician changes the
name of a drawing. When that happens the program reads the data in and draws the school out in the pacific ocean.
I hope I haven’t rambled too much, If you have any particular
questions feel free to write me at JVWalker@GarlandISD.net
James
How do we advance the use of GIS within and across mission-critical areas of educational institutions?
Revive the study of ‘Planning for a GIS’ which Dr. Roger Tomlinson advocated in 2001.
Tomlinson’s Thesis: The success of any organization’s GIS implementation depends on thoughtful planning.
In the Course Overview for ‘Planning for a GIS’ Thomlinson stated “Over the years, many GIS systems have been implemented by organizations at great cost, only to end up being disappointing or underutilized and failing to meet the organizations expectations.” Then he asked “How does this happen? Is there a common reason why GIS implementations don’t always work?” The common reason is, most often, “Lack of Planning.”
The GIS’s in existence at educational institutions probably have ad hoc architectures which are the result of technological and administrative evolution.
The use of GIS within and across mission-critical areas of educational institutions can be advanced by assisting these institutions deal with the ad hoc architectures and introducing them to map resources i.e. the ESRI on-line base map gallery.
Vivian A. Wasson, M.S., LSIT
Springfield, Missouri
GIS is an immerging Technology in India. Only Govt. Sectors and some leading private sectors are working on these technology. As an Educationist i observed that only 1% students aware of GIS technology.To innitiate and motivate the students of India, there is a need of various basic programs on GIS at minimum cost.
Randall E. Raymond, thank you for providing the links to the articles published in School Business Affairs and ArcNews and the ESRI User Conference Proceedings.
I think others in this roundtable seeking information about the use of GIS in education should take time to review these articles.
Vivian A. Wasson, M.S., LSIT
Springfield, Missouri
My primary role is a certified facility manager for the US Marine Corps in New Orleans. Working with the Louisana Department of Education, Communities in Schools of Greater New Orleans, and ESRI, Louisiana just signed a state license with ESRI. In addition we in Louisiana just assembled a team of professional from many areas to forward the cause of GIS in education; from non-profit, industry, education and ESRI. We're excited to begin this bold new joint venture. Louisiana GIS in schools is on the "map." Please stay tuned.
Hello Vivian Wasson, your welcome!
Hello Ashish Sasankar, I have used the ESRI Virtual Campus ( training.esri.com ) with all levels of students. It is an excellent online education resource to introduce GIS to students. I would encourage you to take a look at this site. I am certain students in India would benefit from the GIS courses available.
Hello Forrest Lamb, CFM, the State of Michigan also has a statewide K-12 license of ESRI GIS software. You also will have Unlimited access to all ESRI courses on the ESRI Virtual Campus ( training.esri.com ). You will find this online learning environment an excellent place to introduce a wide range of students and school administrators to the power of GIS. I would be glad to be of assistance to you and your team as you move forward with this wonderful opportunity. I have worked extensively with the Virtual campus in a wide range of training activities in the K-12 education area. Feel free to contact me:
Randall E. Raymond,
Geographic Information Specialist
1425 E. Warren
Detroit Public Schools – OREAA
Support Services Complex - Building A
Detroit, MI 48207
Cell Phone: 248-910-7830
Office Phone: 313-576-0063
Email: aerraymond@aol.com or
randall.raymond@detroitk12.org
Authorized ESRI K-12 Instructor
For many years the focus of GIS professionals in education was to grow geospatial technologies within instruction. However, we now have resources and benefits that reach far beyond instruction. At Brookhaven College, students have produced consumable tables, maps, spatial data sets and increased understanding of our campus to yield value beyond instruction. This is a value for the students given that their goal is to become prepared for highly skilled careers.
The potential value of geospatial data became clear to the campus once we included campus staff and administrators in our proposal of student projects. The first time we contacted the college director of facilities it was clear we could help. He needed an updated ADA accessibility map and we were able to create it. That led us to create a routing solution that could be used by all students. From that we recognized the need for interior space routing and mapping which, once created, enabled us to route room-to-room, point-to-point. We then joined a committee charged with developing a new exterior signage plan. Student data were used to visualize the campus, to determine sign placement and sign content. The committee plans to install 6 “You Are Here” maps at strategic entrances to the campus. The college director of institutional effectiveness approached the GIS program to inquire about demographic studies for our service area which resulted in the use of online business analytic tools. Knowledge of campus detail is also of value to our city emergency responders and thus our data have been shared with the city GIS staff.
The question: how does one grow the use of GIS across a campus? The simple answer: utilize a campus basemap to visualize the spatial and temporal relationships that exists among the faculty, administrators, staff, students, the campus and its assets.
I am one of George Dailey's colleagues on the Esri education team, but I also teach GIS to international students on a university campus in Castellon, Spain. On campus we are experiencing many of the same issues mentioned earlier --institutional support, CAD to GIS conversion, etc.
Two comments: First, we won over our vice-rector of infrastructure, who now supports the "campus GIS" project, by showing how other schools have applied GIS to manage building spaces, and therefore energy consumption. He said "I want that; tell me who I need to get trained in GIS".
Second, I really recommend you have a look at the Esri "Community Maps" program. blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/communitybasemap/default.aspx
Designed to help local governments to prepare and serve their data to the world (via ArcGIS Online) WITHOUT losing intellectual property rights, it has become a popular vehicle for schools and universities to get the same job done. Related to this, are the campus templates (Placefinder and editing) which help you to create smart campus maps that support search, navigation, etc.:
blogs.esri.com/Dev/blogs/localgovernment/default.aspx
The Community Maps team is eager to help get more schools (+districts) and universities "on the map".
Hope that is of use to you.
Michael Gould
Wow, there’s a lot of really good information here. I would like to chime in on the topic of expanding the use of GIS to all facets of the school system. Bridging the gap between academic and business units in an educational institution can be quite a challenge. This applies to both K-12 and the university model. In Palm Beach County School District, GIS was primarily used in the Planning department for demographics, attendance boundaries, student enrollment, etc. In an attempt to broaden the uses of GIS a project charter was developed and approved by the Chief Academic Officer and the Superintendent. As the GIS Coordinator I spearheaded this effort and gathered folks from various departments and units such as Curriculum Planning, Choice Programs, Transportation, Educational Instruction, etc. Espousing the benefits of GIS both operationally and educationally, in addition to showing a cost benefit analysis won over the group. The overall project was rolled out in phases and included tasks which benefited school centers, students and the public at large. Some included items similar to the ones mentioned here, on this site, like CADD conversion and special projects using health data for teen pregnancies, dropout prevention locations and other well-being student analysis projects. One phase included teacher training, and setting up classrooms so that GIS could be taught to middle and high school students as an elective or part of the science/social studies curriculum. The overall project has been successful on both fronts as GIS has expanded to assist additional operational departments such as Research and Evaluation, Information Technology, School Police and we are currently looking at integrating Esri GIS for Transportation routing and bus stop development. In addition web based GIS applications have been developed that benefit school centers, staff/management and the public. From the academic standpoint, a study conducted in Palm Beach County 2010 indicated that middle school students who had GIS instruction significantly outperformed their counterparts who did not. The goal here is to have a champion, and upper management support – with vision and a little persistence the GIS application can provide countless benefits for both sides of the educational house.
Michael Gould | Professor and Esri education manager, University Jaume I | mentioned the CAD to GIS conversion issue.
Please describe the difficulties being faced today. What do clients want to do with the CAD information after it is migrated into GIS?
Vivian A. Wasson, M.S., LSIT
Springfield, Missouri
Wasson2008@live.missouristate.edu
Vivian,
James Walker (above) spoke to some specific and more technical CAD conversion matters, but in general we are talking about an institution which normally has loads of CAD files from their architects and engineering department, but who have not even heard of GIS. To move the files (drawings, after all) into GIS format they need to create polygons to create building features, properly connect roadways for connectivity, and add attributes describing each feature....beyond the mere tag associated with typical CAD files. Nothing groundbreaking, but it requires some retraining and then some time to get the job done. Administrators need to understand this necessary component of the "campus GIS" project, because often they ask only how much the software costs.
So like any sizable GIS project one needs to clearly describe the problems to be solved, the estimated total cost, and the expected ROI.
cheers,
Mike
Hello Vivian Wasson "I | mentioned the CAD to GIS conversion issue. Please describe the difficulties being faced today. What do clients want to do with the CAD information after it is migrated into GIS?" In my position with Detroit Public Schools I have converted a lot of CAD to GIS layers. In fact I am currently working with the Detroit Public Schools Police Department on a project where the CAD drawings containing the locations of the video security cameras being installed in 9 new schools are being converted into GIS video camera layers. These GIS video camera layers are being used to enable the individuals