GIS at Elementary Level

One of the many ways that teachers can get elementary school students interested in GIS is through the use of ArcView's Multimedia capabilities.

 Hyperlinking is a method of providing additional information on a map: a link can be set up between a map's features and external files. Once the Hot Links have been defined, the student can click on the map with the Hot Link tool, and the file associated with that feature will automatically be displayed.

In a classroom setting, almost any type of information can be Hot Linked: video files, sound files, text documents, word processor documents, HTML files and Web Sites, and other executables. In addition, you can also link to other ArcView documents, such as graphs and layouts.

Students can learn the process of Hot Linking with ease. The illustration is of an ArcView project created by some Grade 6 students. Once the initial steps towards creating a Hot Linked theme were done, the students then created text documents, containing video and sound files for each Canadian province. They then Hot Linked each of the documents to the appropriate province, and presented their project as a Canadian Tourism Kiosk. The students had a great time creating their project, and learned valuable facts about the country that they live in.

Hot Linking greatly enhances ArcView as a learning tool, as it allows students to learn information about places, along with their geographic place in the world. For more information regarding Hot Linking, please see Hot Linking: A How-To Guide.