The 1990s marked a significant increase in the role of GIS in Germany. However, despite its prevalence in many parts of daily life, such as in weather forecasts on television, navigation systems in cars, German universities, and other public arenas, GIS in K-12 schools has not kept pace.

"Applying GIS in schools contributes to the development of essential skills for daily life," says Dr. Dirk Schaefer from the University of Mainz Department of Geography. "In the last five years remarkable progress has taken place in German schools, but we need to keep increasing its use in the schools."

To realize this goal, Schaefer served as a consultant to Esri Geoinformatik GmbH (Esri's distributor in Germany) and Westermann-Schulbuchverlag (one of the leading publishing houses for geographic educational materials in Germany), who, with ZEBRIS Geoinformation Systems and Consulting, developed a GIS application for German schools.

The resulting application is based on ArcView 3.x and called Diercke GIS, after a common German expression for maps.

Since its recent birth, Diercke GIS has quickly become the most popular GIS package in German schools, signifying a step closer to Schaefer's goal of complete GIS integration.

The functionality of Diercke GIS includes many components that were specifically created for the classroom environment. The software evaluates functions offered in ArcView and classifies them into four different levels of difficulty, giving teachers the ability to form GIS lesson plans around different ability levels. Students examine specific topics and corresponding subtopics with a set of specific functions at a defined difficulty level.

Diercke GIS's main menu includes teacher settings that are only available to the teacher at a predefined teacher computer. Full control is given to the teacher to change the software layout, levels of functional complexity, and modules available to the students.

Once the application was built, developers recognized the need to incorporate preset data packages. Diercke includes a host of packages composed of different themes including the United Nations human development index-gender-related development index (HDI-GDI), the European Union, Germany geography, and more. Teachers can use the data sets to prepare lessons according to the national geography standard for their grade level or to create unique projects with the individual data.

Into the Internet

Schaefer's quest to improve GIS in schools extends into the Internet. With major restrictions on school budgets, he recognizes the importance of using an ArcIMS-based Internet application. He develops training classes that train K-12 teachers on how to use the Internet application, in addition to Diercke GIS, in the classroom.

"Almost every German school has computers, enabling it to be connected to the Internet as well as to other schools," says Schaefer. Working with Lothar Pueschel, a teacher from St. Katharinen High School in Oppenheim, he adapts data on the free Web GIS application. Currently, the German site (esmeralda.zdv.uni-mainz.de) contains a map analyzing climate and climate changes in China (in English) and another map detailing data about the German state Rheinland-Pfalz. Both maps enable students to manipulate data layers, run queries, and zoom into specific areas. Schaefer plans to add more maps to the site including world climate patterns.

"The transfer of knowledge from universities to schools and vice versa is a crucial part of German culture," says Schaefer. "You have to go into the classroom and communicate with the students; it's the only way to learn how to teach them. GIS is a modern tool that can be used across the curriculum wherever there is a spatial question to be answered."

For more information, contact Dr. Dirk Schaefer, University of Mainz (e-mail: dirk. schaefer@uni-mainz.de, tel.: 49-6131-3924371), or visit www.dierckegis.de on the Web.