Middle grades students learn content through adventures. The Partnership for 21st Century Skills (2006) calls for a new sort of learning than has traditionally been taught in school: to solve problems in real time, to access information, to work collaboratively, to be creative, to use media to communicate effectively, and to take learning beyond the walls of the classroom. How can educators engage middle grades students in these kinds of 21st century learning experiences? The use of global positioning systems (GPS) receivers in the classroom offers one option. The use of and other handheld digital devices has become common in our society (Bestwick & Campbell, 2010). Anyone who has recently ridden in a bus, a taxi or (for many) a private car has experienced the navigational power of GPS-with satellites in the sky above, maps on the receiver screen below, and possibly a pleasant voice telling the driver where to go. I have taken dozens of middle school classes on GPS adventures in their communities and have worked with many teachers and their students to support them in the use of geospatial tools, including GPS, in their instruction. I have found many teachers are initially hesitant and fearful of geospatial technology, but they are more than willing to give it a try once they see how excited and involved their students become. Soon they, too, get hooked and gain nicknames like geo at their schools. In this article, I share some of the many ideas developed by these teachers and me as we have taken this adventure together, with the hope that you will embark on your own educational journey with GPS. The power of geospatial technology Teachers know that young adolescents want to be a part of what is really happening in the world. A truly responsive middle grades curriculum meets the needs of its students and provides varied teaching and learning approaches that are challenging, integrative, and exploratory (National Middle School Association, 2010). Geospatial tools, including GPS, expand the scope of topics that students can explore, promote interdisciplinary learning, and change the way students learn to reason about and interpret data (Audet & Abegg, 1996). A first step for a teacher beginning to use geospatial tools might be to use online mapping, such as virtual globes (e.g., Google Earth, Virtual 3D Earth, WorldWind). These online tools have made a significant amount of geospatial data readily available and free through the Internet. Google Earth, the most popular of these visualization tools, features learning resources that are accessible through the software on the Google Earth Community website (http://bbs.keyhole.com/ubb/) and through the sharing of Google Earth files among users by employing Keyhole Markup Language (kml) or zipped kml (kmz) files. The technological capacity of the virtual globe software continues to increase rapidly, and many things are possible today that were not possible just two years ago. Any teacher with access to the Internet can use these geospatial tools. Using latitude and longitude or a physical address, teachers can digitally view their schools or their students' homes. Anyone familiar with receivers and digital photography can create geospatial stories, such as a Google Earth tour of one's school using a kml or kmz file. Using receivers in the classroom Teachers who are ready for a change of pace can instruct their students to use receivers to create and analyze their own data and share their findings with others. Middle grades students enjoy opportunities to use the environment around them as a context for instruction (Broda & Baxter, 2003), so teachers may help increase student achievement by going beyond the classroom walls (Lieberman & Hoody, 1998). The first step is to get students familiar with terminology and teach them how the handheld receiver works. If the number of receivers is limited, teachers should divide the students into small groups so that they can share receivers. …
Read full abstract