Learning topography using an interactive topotrainer - Esri Education Conference, July 2014, San Diego
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A GIS web app using ArcGIS Javascript API was created to help teaching topography to primary and secondary school students in The Netherlands. The application lets students practice their knowledge in a interactive topography trainer and gives teachers the ability to generate nicely formatted tests for their students. The reactions from teachers were very enthusiastic after http://topografieindeklas.nl was launched, and so where the comments from students, which where the most important ones.
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Learning topography using an interactive topotrainer - Esri Education Conference, July 2014, San Diego
- 1. Learning Topography Using an Interactive trainer Dennis Hunink Founder and developer Topografie in de Klas Geography Teacher at DevelsteinCollege, The Netherlands
- 4. Curriculum: every student should master the basic topograhy of the Netherlands, Europe and the World
- 22. 2. Easy to use
- 23. 3. It’s FREE (thanks to Esri and Byte)
- 25. Explore the world! (and keep doing that, forever)
Notes de l'éditeur
- Good morning to you all. Thanks for having me here, it’s an honour.
- So, I’m a geography teacher in the Netherlands and honestly believe I have one of the best jobs that I could wish for. Nothing makes me happier than working with young adolescents every day.
- Watch them exploring their own world, expanding the boundaries of that world and struggling with all the issues of puberty. It’s awesome to be able to guide them now and then and to help them out with all those questions they face.
- That being said, let’s focus on the subject of my talk: learning topography. In the Netherlands the government has created a curriculum for every subject in primary and secondary education. One part of the Geography curriculum is the so-called ‘basic topography’, with is a list of 300 geographic locations, like cities, countries, rivers etcetera, that every student should master. Sure, it’s not the most important part of Geography. But it is a fundamental part. Knowing where places are located and having some sense of place is important when discussing geographical topics.
- When I first started teaching, about six year ago, I just used the material that my fellow Geography teachers had been using for years. But after my first two years, I started to wonder it this really was the best material available.
- Sure, there were some websites where students could practise. But those website were not that easy to use and almost always used other maps than the paper maps used in their exams. And more importantly, I believed the vast majority of the material out there, lacked a real didactic vision, nor were they cartographically correct.
- So, since I had some experience in web development and had been educated in cartography at Utrecht University, I started to wonder if I could provide some sort of solution. After talking to some experts in the field of Geography Education it turned out there was actually a need for an integrated teaching method for Topography among geographers, a need which commercial publishers had obviously not filled in yet. So, to cut a long story short, I decided to take up the task. During 2011 I took the time to think everything through, made sketches and decided how I could create a teaching method that would really help my students to master the mandatory topography. When I thought I had a clear idea of how I wanted things to look, I started developing and in January 2012 I launched the website topografieindeklas.nl.
- Let’s highlight some of the features that were available right from the launch date.
- It featured free PDF booklets with correct maps….
- a possibility to order those booklets at low cost….
- practise the topography in an interactive trainer and a way to create random exams with maps and marking forms for teachers. Since time is limited right now I would like to demonstrate just one of those features: the interactive topotrainer. As the Internet connection, as I was told, may not be so stable, we’ll use screenshots for now. But feel free to try it yourself afterwards.
- On the website, we select the Topotrainer from the menu. Let’s say we want to practise with The World.
- When viewed for the first time, the student will be prompted with some explanation about the way things work. Special attention here for the way they have to spell names and how to use special characters.
- Next up is the selection of the content a student wants to practise. He or she has the possibility to select only places, only rivers, only cities etcetera, or make a combination of those. By doing so, it becomes possible to increase the amount of questions asked, starting with smaller chunks first. As soon as they hit the ‘start’ button, the magic starts to happen.
- They will be presented with all the topography types they’ve selected in the previous step, placed in random order. A red symbol will highlight what’s asked.
- When the right answer has been given, a green bar will be shown. But if the answer given isn’t correct, I try to determine whether or not it’s just misspelled or if the answer really is wrong. And if the student really has no clue, there’s always a button called ‘I don’t know’, which reveals the correct answer.
- When all questions are done, a student has the ability to share his result by Facebook or Twitter, giving them a bit of competition with friends. But more importantly: there’s an option to save the result when they register a personal account.
- And that last option is one that’s very important for me. I want to give students insights into their own learning process. It encourages them when the see how they are progressing and they will then personally experience how repetition is so powerful when committing this type of knowledge to memory. I want to stimulate them for what they’ve done well and thereby give them an internal motivation to keep on practising.
- So, that’s the interactive topotrainer. Although a crucial step in mastering topography, it’s just one of the three steps I designed in the concept behind the teaching method. Filling in a booklet, PDF or hardcopy, and making a final exam are essential as well.
- I started by using it with my own students, who had been working with other materials in the years before. As they have been really positive about it, I started to introduce it to more colleagues throughout the Netherlands. What happened after that was amazing. Looking back, I still feel very overwhelmed. By the end of 2012, just a year after launch, the website had 50.000 pageviews every month. Over a hundred schools had already started using it, which was over 15% of all Dutch primary and secondary schools. And these numbers just kept on rising in 2013 and 2014. To find out why all of this happened, I started to talk with educators by surveys, email, phone calls and meet them at conferences. They mentioned they appreciated three things the most.
- First of all, the fact that the maps where exactly the same in the booklets, the interactive topotrainer and the exams.
- Secondly, they appreciated the ease of use of the website as a whole and the topotrainer in particular.
- And last but not least, the fact that it’s free, thanks to Esri for hosting the maps and providing support and to Byte, a premium-hosting provider, for sponsoring the scalable super-reliable hosting.
- Speaking about Esri, although creating this website may seem like rocket-science for some of you, things aren’t that complicated when you take a closer look. All is driven by the Javascript API, which actually uses ArcGIS Online Webmaps. The whole interactive topotrainer is just an example of the Javascript API making queries to ArcGIS Online webmaps. In essence everyone with a bit of knowledge of Javascript and ArcGIS could make applications like this.
- So, let’s wrap things up here. Thanks to the outstanding technology of ArcGIS Desktop and ArcGIS Javascript API, I have been able to create a teaching method that makes mastering topography easier for students. I believe that if everyone uses their own qualities to provide just that little bit of extras in education, we all can give a quality boost to the content and tools available in Geography. I did my bit and experienced lots of joy when receiving all those positive reactions. I would like to encourage everyone here to do the same. Just share all the awesome stuff you’ve made over the years with your fellow Geography enthusiasts, and enjoy seeing your materials being used by students. For me, that’s been what it all boils down to. That’s why we do the things we do in Education. Seeing young people exploring and expanding their world. So let’s get out there, and help them explore!
- Thank you very much and have a wonderful conference!