GIS/GPS Camp

The LSU CADGIS Research Laboratory held a GIS/GPS training camp for high students and instructors in January 1999. Three person teams from seven Arkansas high schools, two Louisiana high schools, and one Alabama high school participated in the weeklong event designed to instruct on the use of GIS and GPS. The camp is part of the EAST Program, a program designed by Tim Stevenson of Greenbriar High School and Jim Wells of Wellsco Graphics. These two gentlemen have created a teaching model that can transform "our teacher-centered Industrial Age classrooms into student-centered Information Age learning centers" (from EAST Program web site). The EAST Program aids schools in acquiring hardware and software, training instructors, and providing direction with specific goals. The program promotes and uses the natural curiosity of students in the learning of technology such as GIS, GPS, and 3d modeling. The EAST Program started at Greenbriar High School in Greenbriar, Arkansas. It has now grown to over thirty high schools in Arkansas and now two in Louisiana.

The camp was held at CADGIS Lab. Two members of each team trained on Geomedia in classes taught by Farrell Jones. The other member learned how to use Trimble GPS hardware and software from Michael Leitner of the LSU Department of Geography and Anthropology. While the GIS members were learning to make maps from a variety of data sources especially GPS, the GPS team members were recording point locations for features on the LSU campus. The teams reassembled at the end of the camp to plot the GPS data on top of campus maps. This LSU campus mapping exercise was only a "warm-up" to the project each school must complete on its own back at home. Each high school will make a land use map of its domicile and as part of the map-making project, team members are responsible for teaching the skills learned at the camp to others at their school. For examples of project completed by some of the high schools participating in the EAST program visit http://www.cast.uark.edu/east/project.html.

The CADGIS Lab is working with the EAST program and its supporters to expand to more high schools in Louisiana. By supporting this effort, the CADGIS Lab hopes to increase the talent pool for GIS in terms of the number of already skilled people headed for college or for jobs in both the public and private sectors. For more information on the EAST program, visit the EAST web page at Wellsco Graphics or The East Support Page at CAST

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