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Exposing GPS and GIS technologies to High School Students (December 6, 2007) Using GPS units and learning with GIS have engaged a group of young students from Caribou High School and Caribou Technology Center in some exciting real work for the 21st century. Recently, as part of the proposed class room activities for both the Central Aroostook Math & Science Partnership (CAMSP) funded by the Federal Mathematics and Science Partnerships Programs (MSP or Title IIB ), and the Caribou/UMPI Partnership for College Success funded by the Nellie Mae Education Foundation, two well-prepared GPS/GIS project workshops have successfully been conducted at Caribou High School and the University of Maine at Presque Isle GIS Laboratory. On November 30, 2007, UMPI CAMSP GIS Specialist Mr. Bertrand Pelletier, Mr. Mike McCormack, the Director of the Caribou/UMPI Partnership for College Success, and UMPI GIS professor, Dr. Chunzeng Wang, went to Caribou High School to conduct a GPS workshop for a group of freshmen and senior students. Students collected a number of coordinates of snow banks around the campus parking lots with Garmin GPS units. They were highly amazed with the sophisticated GPS technology. The data collected was later input into Excel spreadsheets by the students themselves. On December 6, 2007, the same group of students came to UMPI GIS Laboratory to work with the collected data with ArcGIS to create an informational and geographical map - a visual representation of the coordinates collected. Students were first awed and inspired with their own hands-on work how data collected with a GPS was imported into GIS software to create visual maps. The following pictures show the above mentioned activities. More similar activities and projects have been planned and will be conducted in the rest of the school year for more schools in the region.
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