Co-sponsored by:

"Putting Social Studies in its Place: Using GIS to Enhance the Social Studies Classroom" 

Project Team

Chris Bunin – Virginia Geographic Alliance, Albemarle High School and Piedmont Virginia Community College
Sarah Glova – President and Owner, Reify Media; http://reifymedia.com/
Andy Mink –President and Founder – Mink’ED; www.minked.org
Julie Stavitski – Virginia Geographic Alliance, Jack Jouett Middle School, Charlottesville VA

 

The grant-winning ‘Putting Social Studies in its Place: Using GIS to Enhance the Social Studies Classroom’ proposal from the Virginia Geographic Alliance and Charlottesville City Schools envisioned enhancing the geographic literacy of teachers and students at the classroom, district, and statewide levels by developing and implementing a 5-week online course focused on incorporating GIS in the social studies classroom. Course content would be modeled and taught as both instructor-led instruction and student-centered expeditions. In addition, a digital repository of the “best of the best” instructional activities and “how-to” media to facilitate the use of Geography for Life Standards in the classroom, would be created. This course would be offered in subsequent years and would incorporate components of the course in future VGA workshops and division-level professional development.

At the 2016 NCSS Annual Conference in Washington, DC, John C. Bunin, Andy Mink, and Julie Stavitski from the Virginia Geographic Alliance, Farmville, VA presented  a session on the implementation and outcomes of their proposal and modeled how teachers can use GIS to complement their existing instruction; map and analyze simple data sets; and create community-based project based learning activities.

About GENIP.

About the NCSS Grant for the Enhancement of Geographic Literacy in honor of James F. Marran.