GIS

This week was on GIS/mapping technologies. I had been interested in experimenting with GIS in R, so I took my chance and created a lesson using r5r. While this took a lot longer than expected, I’m pretty happy with the outcome.

Technology: GIS - r5r package in R, Github, R language, quarto notebooks 

Link to Proficiency: https://github.com/katherine-taylor/transit-lesson

Targeted Learners/Content area: Geometry (8-10th grade)

Lesson objectives: G.3 The student will solve problems involving symmetry and transformation. This will include investigating and using formulas for determining distance, midpoint, and slope (a)

Lesson context: Students would have previously learned about the distance formula in their geometry class. This lesson serves to help students understand the difference between the distance formula, and how long it might actually take to get between two locations in the real world. Students would also be introduced to the career opportunities of urban planning or transportation planning, as this lesson uses real tools both of these jobs use. Students will also create isochrone maps, which show how far away you can get from a location in a certain amount of time. 

Goal of technology use: The goal of the technology use is to have students use R to do math, and teach them about actual models that people use in the real world. Students would also learn about tasks that would be challenging for them to complete by hand, and require computers to make them easier. 

Brief description of how technology will be used with students: Students would access the quarto notebook on RStudio cloud (I didn’t set that up for this tech proficiency since it would likely cost money), and work through the code alongside a worksheet. I created custom functions to abstract out some of the more complicated code, and give custom error messages that let students know when they should get help from me. Students would be able to work at their own pace, and play with the code to produce different isochrone maps. If students wanted to get deeper into the code, I included some sample analysis in R. I would assume for this assignment that students would be introduced to RStudio Cloud and coding in R in previous lessons.