GIS Day is an international grassroots event designed to promote geographic literacy in schools, communities, and organizations.
To celebrate Geography Awareness Week and GIS Day 2009 FRI teamed up with the Town of Hinton, AB Sustainable Resources Development and Hinton Wood Products and held an Open House at the Hinton Municipal Library on Monday, November 16. It was an afternoon of education for grade 8 and 9 French Immersion students from nearby Harry Collinge High School who stopped by to learn about the world of GIS. They saw how Foothills Research Institute and some of our partners use GIS at work: to track grizzly bear use of the landscape, to map points of historical importance and interest, to capture and map new roads, for an online interactive mapping tool, MiTown , or to map all streams and tributaries in a watershed.
On November 13th and 20th, a total of 40 students from two grade 7 classes in Hinton, AB, came to FRI’s office in the Hinton Training Centre to learn about Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The students spent the first hour outside learning that GPS is about satellites and math and compasses and not just about pushing buttons. A game of GPS BINGO really helped them grasp the concepts of marking a waypoint and then navigating to a waypoint. The second hour was spent in the computer lab for some hands-on experience with our geographic information system. Here the students saw how to upload the GPS points into the GIS and hyperlink the points to photos of each location. Very Cool!
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