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A Publication Featuring The Information Services Technology of Maine State Government
| Volume IV, Issue 9 | September 2001 |
This past June, I had the good fortune of attending a Conference on Remote Sensing Education (CORSE) at Cayuga Community College in Auburn, NY. CORSE is a series of K-14 Teachers forums and workshops providing information on current resources and emerging trends in remote sensing. First held in Mississippi last year, the second conference focused on training K-14 teachers from the northeastern United States.
Over one hundred teachers from the Northeast attended the three day conference. Maine representatives included:
Arden Thompson from Wiscasset Elementary School,
Susan Lahti from Carrabec High School in Anson,
Pamela Partridge from Garret Schenck Elementary School in Anson, and
Tony Gordon, and myself from Southern Maine Technical College in South Portland.
The conference was sponsored by the International Center for Remote Sensing of the Environment (ICRSE), the Regional Applications Center for the North East (RACNE),Cayuga Community College, and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF).
Over the three days, participants learned more about Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Ground Positioning Systems (GPS) and Remote Sensing technologies. The conference included lectures, and hands-on activities associated with these areas. Teachers who currently use these technologies in their classroom taught the classes.
I was impressed with the range of levels and skills represented at the conference. Teachers who have been using GIS, GPS and Remote Sensing on a regular basis participated, as well as teachers who were interested in incorporating these technologies into their classes. I was struck, too, with how accessible these technologies are to all levels. There were multiple models illustrating how these technologies can be successfully incorporated into elementary through community college course levels.
One international program that provides a forum for the use of these technologies is the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program. GLOBE links students, teachers, and the scientific research community in an effort to learn more about our environment through student data collection and observation. The GLOBE program provides resources such as lesson plans and satellite images for use by teachers that participate in the program. More information on the Globe Program can be found at http://www.globe.gov/fsl/welcome.html
The conference was very well organized, and the staff provided all participants with easy to use lesson plans on ArcView, GPS and MultiSpec, a remote sensing software. MultiSpec was developed at Purdue University and is free and available for download from the following URL: http://dynamo.ecn.purdue.edu/~biehl/Mulispec/.
Information on the use of LANDSAT images in the classroom, including some great lesson plans, is available through NASA at the following URL: http://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/main/education.html.
Questions? Comments? Contact the author by e-mailing EJohnson@smtc.net or visit the CORSE website at http://racims.aubcom.com/corse/.
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