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GIS Workshop on Gulf of Maine for Teachers By Chris Polloni June 2002 in this issue:  previous story | next story Chris Polloni holds a starfish presented as a gift by participants in the Massachusetts Marine Educators' workshop at the USGS Woods Hole Field Center. From left to right, Erin Gordon, Barbara Belanger, Chris Polloni, Howard Dimmick, Amy Holt Cline, Charles Saulnier, and Brandy Moran. Staff from the USGS' Woods Hole Field Center (WHFC) led a workshop entitled "Data Integration of the Gulf of Maine: A GIS study of Land and Sea" as part of the Massachusetts Marine Educators annual weekend meeting at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on April 27. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is a relatively new topic for public-school teachers. While many have heard of marine GIS, most teachers have not used it in the classroom. Because of its location, Massachusetts provides an ideal landscape for using marine GIS in environmental studies. The USGS workshop explained how GIS has been used in public schools to study terrestrial and marine topics, with emphasis on the Gulf of Maine watershed. The Massachusetts Curriculum Frameworks (Massachusetts Department of Education guidelines for developing curricula) have recently included GIS as a skill to be taught in schools across the State. This workshop acquainted teachers with ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute) ArcView software. WHFC also provided USGS data disks and take-home, hands-on activities that have already been used in local classrooms. Each participant worked with a copy of the USGS quadrangle map of Woods Hole and a detailed contour map of WHOI's Quissett Campus. Charles Saulnier, an environmental-science teacher at the Essex Agricultural School, led the first session of the workshop by providing an extensive overview on how to work with a topographic map. He introduced the group to roamers (measuring devices that combine features of a protractor and a ruler to assist more accurate map reading and plotting) and the use of meter sticks with mapping. Chris Polloni led the second session with an overview of the Massachusetts Bay GIS CD-ROM (USGS Open-File Report 99-439) and the USGS East Coast Sediment Analysis (USGS Open-File Report 00-358), both of which were provided as part of the teachers' handouts. Amy Holt Cline, an environmental-science teacher and GIS specialist at the Essex Agricultural School, led the third session. Amy gave examples of the successful use of GIS in the classroom using maps that her students had created as part of her mapping curriculum based on the Massachusetts Bay CD-ROM. Erika Hammar-Klose and Glynn Williams (WHFC) assisted with the workshop. Woods Hole Field Center U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in this issue:  previous story | next story

June 2002 Mailing List: Sign up to receive monthly email updates: print this issue in this issue: cover story: Mapping Lake Mohave Delmarva Coastal Bays Glen Canyon Dam Career Options for Jr. High School Girls Coastal Hazards Lecture Earth Day at Lowry Park Zoo Practical Applications of GIS Gulf of Maine GIS Workshop for Teachers MarineQuest 2002 Florida Caribbean Science Center Open House CMGP Knowledge Bank Communicating Science in a Virtual World Continental-Shelf Territory Rights Kvenvolden Honored Student Employees New Woods Hole Chief Scientist Two New Employees at WHFC University of Minnesota Visitor Special Issue of Marine Geology on USGS Monterey Bay Research Timely Publication for Gulf of Mexico Mercury Concerns June Publications List

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