Bringing GIS (geographic information system) to Irish Schools, Jennifer Stack

What is your own background briefly?

Prior to teaching GIS, Digital Media, Coding and Art at CBS The Green Secondary School in Tralee. My early background both academic and professional was in Art, Film, Computer Graphics and Coding/website design. I focused the early stage of my career on documentary Film production and editing, this took me all over the world, America, Europe and Africa.

I have to say my film work for the Shoah foundation filming interviews of all remaining Holocaust survivors in Frankfurt, Germany the area I was assigned is some of my proudest work, these visual stories document the experiences of the survivors can be viewed online here.

I returned to New York and set up a studio in Williamsburg Brooklyn creating and teaching Art, I freelanced working on website design. I decided to focus on part time work to supplement my income and began working for a Marketing Company Andrea Rubin Marketing in New York, managing large databases of subscriber lists, this was the early days of GIS in the Direct Marketing Industry.

I found that I really enjoyed the work, it was fast paced, the technology was advancing, and this intrigued me, I did not realise at this early stage I had stumbled upon GIS and would end up building a career in GIS. This was the mid 1990’s the early days of using GIS for marketing, research and Analysis. In the 2000’s I returned to Ireland and began working in Kerry County Council in the GIS Section within the IT department. I completed a Dip in GIS at UCC to strengthen the Geography aspect of my GIS knowledge.

The work at Kerry County Council was very challenging and ensured I was using my GIS and IT skills to full capacity. I had the opportunity to work with mobile and RFID technology, data collection and management. I trained staff on the use of GIS technology and realised I really enjoyed training staff. I decided to return to teaching. I currently teach Secondary Level Students at St Marys CBS The Green Secondary School, Tralee County Kerry, teaching Art, Coding, Digital Media. In 2019-2020 I began teaching GIS to Transition Year Students.

Does it seem like a logical background to what you do now?

Absolutely. I qualified to teach Art earlier in my career and later studied CS and GIS at Post Grad level, I decided to work in industry and local government developing my own skills in graphic design, website design, data management and Geographic Information Systems. I know GIS is a great career choice, we are now witnessing the importance of GIS as a tool to monitor collect and analyse data during the Covid 19 pandemic.

Organisations such as the WHO and governments worldwide are relying on GIS to make important decisions as well as monitor this outbreak. I wanted to introduce the subject at secondary level to encourage or at minimum have students aware of GIS as a career option. I feel my experience in industry gives me the insight to prepare my students in a practical manner. When teaching GIS I can design my lesson plans and project work, as currently there is no official GIS course for National and Secondary level.

GIS is so broad, and students can gain insight into the many career opportunities GIS offers.  I feel students at secondary level who gain some knowledge of GIS will thrive at senior level and third level, GIS secondary level students are learn to think creatively, to problem solve, to have confidence in their digital skills, rely on research using GIS software the same software the student will encounter at third level and at career level.

It is vital that students leaving secondary have computer literacy skills and the understanding of how to access data and analyse data, GIS is the element of computer science that will teach these skills. My background knowledge allows me to introduce students to all the dataset that are available to them and how to access accurate data for research and project work.

How was the last 12 months? What were your big wins?

First School in Ireland to Timetable GIS as a Subject for TY students

CBS the Green is the first secondary school in Ireland to Timetable GIS as a subject of study for a full year for our TY students. Below are some of the projects these students worked on while learning the subject GIS and to use Esri Irelands ArcGIS software.

CBS The Green Students conducted Research and developed a Peer Teaching program to introduce and teach GIS to National School Students in Kerry.

CBS The Green created a peer teaching and research program with the support of our principal Ms. Anne O’ Callaghan. This involved taking my own GIS students to National Schools in Kerry. CBS students and I visited the National Schools teaching both 5th and 6th class students about GIS and how to use GIS software and Apps, The National School Students learned to use Esri Irelands’ ArcGIS for Schools software.

We introduced these young students to the 17 SDG 2030 goals and encouraged the students to use their new GIS skills and take one SDG as inspiration to create projects to investigate issues in their own communities using GIS, one NS school project focused on cutting down on food waste, another investigated the sustainability of their local fishing industry focusing on the oysters fishing community, while another investigated gender equality in education. These national schools have submitted their projects proposals to ESB Science blast. CBS TY Students are currently compiling their findings from their research on teaching GIS at National School Level.

BTYoung Scientist, CBS students received a third place award using GIS – Esri’s Survey123

Science department students used GIS for their submission to the BTyoung Scientist 2020 competition in the behavioral sciences Category. The students used Esri’s Survey123 to collect and analyse data on the subject “HPV Vaccine Hesitancy in young Males in Ireland”

Dingle OceanWorld Ecology Project

GIS Students created a web presentation on their research and analysis on The Ecology of a Rocky Shoreline with Dingle OceanWorld, the students had created a web presentation of their findings using GIS and planned to present the web based presentation to Dingle OceanWorld at a launch day for May 2020.

webwise.ie Safer Internet Day and Youth Ambassador Project

GIS students collaborated with digital media students to create a web presentation using GIS software StoryMap to reach a large number of students and families in Kerry to get the message of Safer Internet Use out to the community. Here is link to this project

Which is featured on Esri Irelands website schools spotlight section, GIS students added mapping and data on the following online behaviour, broadband usage and computers/devices per household.

If you had a magic wand what aspects would you like to do differently to speed up its roll out?

I would have GIS as part of the Computer Science curriculum for the leaving cert, and have the subject GIS offered in schools all over Ireland for Transition year students. I would love to see National School Students have access to learning how to use GIS  to enhance their learning in existing subjects.

I have witnessed this age group 11 years to 12 years learn to work with Survey123 to collect and analyse data in their communities, the same students have used StoryMap to then publish their findings and project work…. we will be publishing all the National Schools project work towards the end of May this year.

Our research and work with National School students has proven this age group already have a good understanding of GIS because of the apps they use in their daily lives. I would like to have secondary schools TY students and teachers take CBS the Greens GIS Peer teaching program using our lesson plans, teaching material and research findings to roll out the same program in their schools.

There is so much data available to schools for use from OSi, Geohive and Esri Ireland offer software for free to schools along with support and training. Our program will show teachers at National school level how to best use these recourses.

Ultimately, I would like to see GIS as a recognised stand-alone subject taught at secondary level.

1 min pitch for what you are doing now? / Tell us more about GIS?

The reason I decided to request teaching GIS at CBS is Students rely on their mobile phones for all aspects of their lives. I often asked if they realised how GIS is the technology behind many of the features within the apps they use, and that their parent use.  I found that all students of both Post Primary and Primary schools are completely unaware of GIS and its impact on their lives.

This made me realise when students enter third level GIS may not have been a consideration as a choice for a course of study simply because they are not aware of it potential and the career prospects. Some third level students will eventually have exposure to GIS as a module, in my own opinion a module is not enough to gain the required skills to have a career in the field.

I discussed the possibility of offering GIS as a subject at CBS, and Principal Anne O’ Callaghan agreed based on the schools digital learning strategy and the potential skills our students would gain we should offer it to TY students, that was May 2019 and together we set out to create a yearlong course in GIS to offer our Transition Year Students for the 2019 2020 academic year. The students have achieved so much in terms of learning, academic awards, and industry recognition.

How can people find out more about you personally & your work?

CBS The Green Secondary School (jstack@thegreen.ie)

Twitter @jenniferburke00

Esri have created a case study on their website detailing my  GIS teaching program at CBS the Green.

Who and where do you get inspiration from?

Anne O Callaghan Principal CBS The Green.

My Students

Aideen Croasdell Lifelong Learning Esri Ireland

Joseph Keriski and Michael Gould Esri America

OSireland

Copernicus EMS and CopernicusLand

Anything else you’d like to add / we should have asked? 

I added this as its something I spent a whole summer trying to achieve and am very proud of the fact I found a way to get teachers in Ireland learning how to use GIS software and how to integrate GIS into their digital teaching  plans and enhance learning in all subjects:

Anne O’ Callaghan and I organised the first ever GIS in Post Primary and Primary Schools seminar for teachers and students from Post Primary and National Schools, guest speakers were Ms. Aideen Croasdell from Esri Ireland, Tony Murphy and Eamon Clinton from OSi. The event was a great success. After this event I developed a training relationship with the Tralee Education center and Esri Ireland to provide CPD for teachers both Primary and Post Primary to train teachers on how to use GIS to enhance student digital learning in all subjects.

This GIS training of teachers has now gone nationwide and the teacher CPD is offered in all Education centers in Ireland. Tralee Education Center was the first to deliver the online teacher training webinar in April, May 5th we will have the third webinar in the series, (I will provide you with the link if you wish) Teachers can check with an Education Center in their area to get the dates for webinars. Teachers who complete the course will receive a CPD GIS Certificate and CPD hours.

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