Retired Educator Deconstructs Geography Curriculum to Map a Legacy

To promote greater engagement in the classroom and help students learn problem-solving skills, retired geography teacher Jim Hanson was an early adopter of computer technology and maps. While computers and geographic information system (GIS) technology were not readily available in classrooms before he retired in 2000, Hanson quickly understood how interactive maps, surveys, and dashboards could provide students with real-world applications and the opportunity to learn in new ways. "It was obvious [to me] that sequential education wasn't working, kids like to create things on their own," he said. Students used hand-drawn choropleth maps to demonstrate how geography is used by planning commissions or city council members to make decisions. A choropleth map is a map where colored or shaded areas represent the magnitude of an attribute. 

“I used early computer technology to create databases students used to make by hand, the kind of maps that GIS technology can produce today with one click,” he said.

Students in Hanson’s class used choropleth maps to create urban environments with roads, rivers, residential and commercial buildings, schools, hospitals, and more. Then they added layers to their maps to visualize a variety of key factors that might impact residents. Scenarios included where a low-income housing unit would be built, or where a new public transit route would go. Thinking critically about these considerations in a simulated environment helped students to better understand the geography of cities and how a planning commission or a city council member might make a difficult decision. 

In his 35-year career, Hanson bridged textbook curricula, hand-drawn maps, and data sheets. "We deconstructed the curriculum and then reconstructed it, which became one of my passions. We studied places that were local to introduce geographic concepts, and then applied them to faraway places where those concepts made more sense to the students," Hanson said. 

By the mid-1980s, school district officials wanted Hanson to go back to using mainly textbooks for his classroom lessons. But the students were empowered to learn with maps and build city simulations that combined spatial thinking, creative problem solving, and technology. To support the continuation of the interactive geography lessons, Hanson enlisted the help of three other geography educators and together they developed a new method to teach without textbooks. "The students had flexible modular scheduling, so depending on the day, we'd have a small group discussion with 14 or 15 kids, 45 in a lab session, and 75 for a lecture," he said.

In addition to helping his students find success in the classroom, Hanson is passionate about more students accessing GIS tools for learning. “I was attracted to promoting the use of ArcGIS Online with students because it made the time-consuming process of making a choropleth map almost instantaneous,” he said. In 2016, Minnesota considered an idea for a GIS contest for students in grades 4–12. Hanson volunteered to draft a contest announcement, guidelines, and website. Supported by the Minnesota GIS/LIS Consortium and others, Minnesota on the Map, the ArcGIS Online Student Competition was built, and it transformed the way teachers have been able to apply GIS to their curriculum to enhance students' learning. 

The contest incorporated the ArcGIS Online school bundle account students used to do a research project based on a Minnesota topic. Students created digital maps and a story map to present their research project. "I've found that if you get digital mapping technology in front of students, they don't mind the fact that it’s technical," Hanson said. 

Hanson has remained active as a substitute teacher and as a member in the Minnesota Alliance for Geographic Education. Last year, a group of sixth graders used GIS to predict the best launch site for a high-altitude balloon (HAB). Students applied ArcGIS Online, Map Viewer, ArcGIS StoryMaps, and ArcGIS Survey123 to collect field data and create high-quality maps of Minnesota. For the HAB prediction, students created maps with the 40 miles of Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)-restricted areas for the Minneapolis/Saint Paul and Rochester International Airports, layering in parks, electric power lines, athletic fields, smaller airports, wind farms, highways, rivers, and more, as places to avoid launching or landing a HAB. The entire class traveled to the actual site to see the balloons launched.

In the future, Hanson sees GIS being incorporated into more areas of study beyond geography, science, and social studies. "Exposing middle school students to GIS provides them with problem-solving skills that translate to any workplace situation,” Hanson said.