Land Use and Land Cover:    
Using GIS to develop a Sense of Place.
 
Action Research:
A process by which change and understanding can be pursued at the same time.
 

Introduction
The 1997 Woodrow Wilson Environmental Science Institute provided this research team with a vehicle for three levels of learning:  1) personal, 2) to teach students, and 3) to teach teachers.  To benefit from this opportunity our team devised three levels of action research to correspond with these levels of learning.   Each level involved the action research cycle to promote change and understanding.
                                   < -- observe -- reflect -- plan -- act -- >
 

The Big Picture
Clearly, humans impact the environment.  Until a few centuries ago, the human population was small, and even though humans were changing their environments, this small population caused changes so slowly that the Earth systems were not thrown out of  balance.  Today, there are so many people, that we are changing the Earth just by being alive and going about our business.  Our collective activities have become so pervasive that there is no place on the Earth we haven't changed.

Not all change is negative.  However, it is important for us to investigate how the collective actions of the human population are impacting our environment and what the consequences of this impact will be.

Reality:        Humans impact the environment.
Question:    Can this impact have integrity?

Essential Question
The essential question "Can humans impact the environment with integrity?" is the basis for all three of our action research projects.  At learning level one (personal) our plan is to learn the content and skills that will increase our personal knowledge base.  At learning level two (to teach students) we will reflect on our level one experiences in order to transfer them into our classrooms.  Learning level three (to teach teachers) will require reflection of both levels one and two to develop a learning environment that will promote the first two levels of learning for participants in our workshops.

Central Theme
Our essential question really focuses on a central them --  change -- understanding the changes that have occurred to date and predicting the changes that will occur in the future.  These future changes can be looked at from two perspectives:  1) the changes that will occur if we maintain our current path, and 2) the changes that will occur if we choose a path with integrity.  Whereas the essential question remains the same, the route to find answers may very well be different for each learner.  This provides the vehicle for an Inquiry Based Learning environment at all learning levels.

Learning Level One:  Personal
Our personal learning experience took the land use/land cover route to help us begin to answer the essential question..  Our research project set out to answer the following question:  What is the relationship between land use/land cover and human population?  A detailed description of our learning experience is detailed at the following site:  (Just click and go!)
 

Land Use and Land Cover:     
Using GIS to develop a Sense of Place.
 
Learning Level Two:  Teaching Students
Our next step is to transfer what we have learned to our classrooms, ideally creating a dynamic student-directed learning environment.  We have established the following steps to direct us:
    1.    Looking at where we are.
    2.    Determining what we need to change
    3.    Learning what we need to know.
    4.    Developing/Implementing a plan.
    5.    Monitoring the plan.
    6.    Determining what we need to change.
    7.    Developing conclusions.
    8.    Reporting results.
We hope that you will continue to access this site to track our progress.  Your insights, comments, and suggestions will prove most useful as we continue on this educational journey.

<<Links to be established>>

 
Learning Level Three:  Teaching Teachers
This final level of learning pulls together the learning from levels one and two.  Our personal learning and the insights we gain from creating a dynamic Environmental Science learner-directed environment for our students will provide the foundation for establishing our workshops.  The following "systems" web outlines the major components of our workshops.  Again, this is a working document with future links to be established sharing our progress.

<<Links to be established>>
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