After attending Orton's six-day Community Mapping Institute in Steamboat Springs Colorado, my head was spinning with ideas, with questions and technology. Yikes. As I thought of the middle school kids I taught, I realized that they would understand GIS technology. And I was excited to try. In my current position as Extended Learning Coordinator for a grades 5- 8 middle school in Antrim, New Hampshire, I have ample opportunity to collaborate with others to make things happen. As fifth grade teachers Ann Kenney and Barbara Black and I stood in front of a poster of the town's watersheds at an Old Home Days celebration, an idea began to take shape.
Great Brook School (GBS) has a long history of developing community-focused, project-based curricula. From building a Quebec-style bread oven to constructing trails and writing trail guides and landscaping the schoolyard, GBS has been well versed in the concept of "it takes a community to raise a child". In 1998 students and community worked to build a boardwalk over the Great Brook wetlands, which run behind the school and for which the school was named. A year later students worked with a local artist in residence to design and build a gateway to the boardwalk. Students from all grades now use the outdoor study area for everything from studying aquatic characteristics to a place for reflective writing or nature drawing. Students have kept records of the biological, chemical and physical parameters of the waterway since that time. The Great Brook watershed has influenced much of the curriculum and consciousness of the school community. So when the opportunity came up to integrate both GIS and watershed studies further into our middle school curriculum, the ground was fertile. In addition to a strong interest in community collaboration, Great Brook students (especially the fifth grade) have learned a lot about the mills along Great Brook (an extension of their studies of the industrial revolution). In the short run from the source at Gregg Lake to where it meets the Contoocook River just east of town, Great Brook drops almost 500 feet making it an ideal location for the 23 water-powered mills built between 1770 and 1910.
The goal of our Community Mapping project was to create an interactive link to the web page for the town of Antrim which defines the watershed of the Great Brook, looks at statistics and water flow and identifies the historic mill sites in town. In an integrated project, fifth grade students would learn the basic GIS technology; understand how to use GPS and gain a thorough understanding of watersheds, maps and the old mills of Antrim and finally build a giant 3-D map of the watershed for display in town. Our community partner would be the local historical society, although Southwest Regional Planning Commission, NH Fish and Game, and many other community members would ultimately become involved. To begin with, students defined the watershed by marking the direction of stream flow and surrounding mountain tops. They outlined and calculated watershed area while gaining valuable basic GIS skills. They imported aquifer and wetland data, amazed at the quantities of water moving through our area. They were able to obtain data from the Southwest Regional Planning Commission placing points on the brook where dams were located. In order to verify the results and to learn GPS skills, we took field trips to GPS points and photographed the old mill sites. The historical society provided us with old photos and primary source information about each mill. The final objective will be to hotlink the sites to old and new photographs of the mill and to a brief historical description written by the students. This project gave students a valuable opportunity to gain not only technology skills, but real world understanding of math, science, history and geography. It is experiences like these that make learning real. These projects provide one answer to the "why do we study math (science etc.)" questions that children invariably ask. Fifth grader Drew Sullivan says, "I really like computers and I really like maps. It was cool to see how the watershed looked on the computer and then how our big 3-D map looks. It's an awesome way to learn about the area." Ashley Mantini adds, "The best part was figuring out how to add our own data to the project. It makes you learn it that way." Teacher Ann Kenney commented that, ".GIS opens a new avenue to learning geography. it gives it hands on meaning that really motivates kids". As we reach the end of the school year, we have just begun to recognize the potential integrating GIS into our curriculum has. As the community learns about our projects and the skills the kids have gained, the opportunities for further collaboration continue to emerge. We can't wait to begin! Who says 10 year olds can't learn GIS..
Beth Frost is the Extended Learning Coordinator at Great Brook School in Antrim NH. She has a background in Biology and Environmental Studies and has taught science / environmental studies at the elementary, middle, high school and college levels. Her focus for the past five years has been to develop community and place-based curriculum using the environment as an integrating context. She is new to GIS technology (Orton's Community Mapping Institute, summer 2003, Steamboat Springs, Colorado) and is excited to continue her own education.
