Geoscience Australia Celebrated International GIS Day 2005 on October 26th at Kambah High School

Once again a very successful GIS Day event was held in the Australian capital by Geoscience Australia with the assistance of ESRI-Australia. Geoscience Australia has held an event in Canberra for the last 6 years.

GIS technicians, lead by Gayle Young from Geoscience Australia, took their personal computers and handheld computers with GPS units to Kambah High School on October 26th to celebrate GIS Day with 25 students from the Year 8 Science class and their teacher, Brad Wilken. The spatial information experts from Geoscience Australia's GeoHazards GIS Group, lead by Neil Corby, instructed the students in the methodologies of gathering information about their school buildings and surrounds using the ESRI software application ArcGIS.

The Year 8 class had a great time assessing the heights, building materials, and taking digital photographs of their school and each other. The outlaying playgrounds and trees were also captured on the handheld computers. The students were then informed as to procedure to assess the natural hazards that might effect their environment in the event of a natural hazard. The day was topped off with a practical demonstration given by Neil of the day's data collection and photos, followed by a 3D fly-through of the school created using the ArcScene application.

The students all received certificates of participation [free download], and many free give-aways from ESRI-Australia to help remember the day.

I hope everyone else has as much fun as we did. We also had our traditional GIS Day cake to finish off the morning's workshop.

Submitted by Gayle Young, Geoscience Australia