GIS Day Resources and Support

"It was a blast! The kids picked up the GIS concept right away. Who had more fun—the kids or the GIS Day presenters? It's hard to say!"

Materials for Activities

The activities are designed to make learning about GIS and geography interesting and fun for students. All of the activities are broken down into categories entitled computer-based, noncomputer-based, or Internet links.

Noncomputer-based activities do not require the use of a computer. The majority of these activities are hands-on, interactive, and appropriate for elementary schoolchildren.
Computer-based activities teach students basic ArcView skills and require ArcView or ArcVoyager software (the School Bus activity requires the Network Analyst extension as well). Prior experience in ArcView or ArcVoyager is not necessary. However, a brief explanation of basic ArcView functions would be helpful. Each activity includes a teacher's guide, student activity handout, a project file (.apr file extensions) if necessary, a Read Me document, and all required data sets. Additional lessons can be downloaded from the ArcLessons Web site.

The higher education Crime Queries activity is an in-depth GIS project consisting of three parts. Prior knowledge of ArcView software is necessary for completion.
Internet links to activities are documents that link directly to the National Geographic Society's Xpeditions lessons Web site. Each document has a brief description of each lesson with its corresponding Internet Web address link.

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