Curriculum Materials
  AGSSS will begin by building upon several existing spatially rich projects to expand the cadre of Teachers who can develop students' spatial thinking and who can use geospatial technologies and observational science with their students.

These projects are all linked to and support the National Geography Standards.

Teachers will select one or more projects to implement in consultation with the PI and Fellows. Each project is described here.

Curriculum materials and projects developed by AGSSS Fellows and teachers that support spatial thinking and technology include:
  • ISS EarthKAM (Observational Science, Remote Sensing)
    ISS EarthKAM is a project funded by NASA and directed by the former astronaut Dr. Sally Ride, University of California, San Diego. ISS EarthKAM engages students in grades 4-12 in an inquiry-based learning “mission” to target, acquire, and analyze images from a camera on the International Space Station (ISS). EarthKAM also facilitates explorations of EarthKAM students' collected images both before and after the “mission” through a user-friendly online Datasystem. ISS EarthKAM is a spatially-rich experience consisting roughly of three parts: a preparation phase where students learn how to target, read and interpret remotely sensed images, and to ask and answer significant inquiry questions; the actual Mission, and an analysis/reporting/reflection phase in which the students analyze and annotate the image they requested.
  • Community Atlas (GIS, GPS)
    Community Atlas sponsored by ESRI, a GIS vendor, is a project in which teachers and students across the U.S. explore one of three aspects about their community and post descriptions and GIS-produced maps about it. The three topics suggested for study are 1) community description, in which students make maps and provide other visuals like pictures describing the community in which they live; 2) community conservation in which students portray a threatened community resource; and 3) community history, in which students use GIS-produced maps to compare the way the community has changed over time. These presentations are combined on a web server and can be searched by characteristic and explored for similarities and differences. The potential for this experience is enormous as students typically become aware of the characteristics of their community in one project, then explore significant community issues in subsequent years.
  • Mission Geography (Observational Science, Remote Sensing)
    Mission Geography is a curriculum support materials project funded by NASA that links the content, skills, and perspectives of the National Geography Standards as well as the National Standards in mathematics, science, and technology, with NASA's missions and results. The modules at K-4, 5-8, and 9-12 use existing NASA data and images to engage students in active, hands-on inquiry, in modeling the scientific method, and in developing students' understandings of environment-society relations, Earth science, and spatial thinking.
  • Pathfinder Science (GIS, GPS, Observational Science)
    Pathfinder Science is a virtual collaborative research community that uses technology to facilitate communication between participating schools through a web site. Pathfinder Science features a number of projects in which classes can participate, including Global Warming in which students track changes in greenhouse gases by counting the stomata of leaves, a Monarch Butterfly watch, a winter bird survey, a project on African American migration, and amphibian biomonitoring. Each project includes a strong spatial component. The web site features threaded discussion areas, organizing protocols, data submission and retrieval from interactive databases, background information on the research areas and a publication area for students to submit their own research work. The data are analyzed with tools that include GIS, Systems Modeling technologies, spreadsheets, and statistical applications.