Summer’s here! School will be out and the time abounds when many kids take on new learning experiences. Have you ever wanted your child to understand what it is you do all day long? It’s difficult enough to elucidate to an adult layperson what Geographic Information Systems are; knowing where to start explaining GIS to kids is even harder. Listed here are a few resources both online and on the ground to point you in the right direction to teaching your kids about GIS and mapping.
Maps: Tools for Adventure
If you can’t take your children in person to see the new exhibit in Washington D.C., you can still engage them online with the companion web site produced by the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis. The web site has several mapping and GIS themed games as well as introductory text about maps. The site is a great way to introduce children to map making and GIS.
Camp Internet
This online learning experience is hosted by Rain.org (The Regional Alliance for Information Networking), an organization dedicated to public education in technology. The online materials are mostly aimed for high school level students.
Helping Your Child Learn Geography
This dated but still valuable online publication provides instructions organized by topics to guide you in teaching your child about geography and mapping concepts. The materials are aimed at children aged between five and ten years of age. The U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Educational Research and Improvement created the site.
Tasty Mapping
Here’s a fun mapping project from the Democracy Project hosted on the PBS site. The exercise combines a tasty treat with map reading skills.
There is a wonderful initiative caled GIS4Kids that provides interactive maps to teachers and students to support research and learn in and out of the classroom.
It’s very easy to use and there is no need to load or maintain any software.
I love GIS4kids.com!