PUTTING SOCIAL STUDIES IN ITS PLACE:
Using GIS to Enhance the Social Studies Classroom
More than a Dot: Telling the Story of Place and Identity using Geospatial Literacy is a structured three-day professional development institute for up to 24 teachers who work with ESL and first generation students. Recruitment will focus on developing a cohort of teachers who can implement the training and who can develop an interdisciplinary approach to project-based learning. The audience will be content teachers, curriculum support staff, ESL specialists, tech support specialists.
Our goal will be to immerse teachers in the design and development the integration of geospatial tools in their instruction model with a particular focus on teaching first generation students. With this training, teachers will develop a program that provides their students with an authentic, experiential opportunity to construct cultural identity maps that illustrate their community. This work will be on-going and sustainable in that future classes of students will be able to add and modify the map, and connections will be made between school and community and between secondary and middle grade students.
PARTNERS: New Philadelphia School District (Ohio)
FUNDING & SUPPORT: Funding by Battelle Foundation International
