Article Mapping

Temple Daily Telegram: Tuesday, November 30, 1999

by Clay Coppedge

Information-data in the shorthand of the electronic age-could be the country's most precious currency in the coming century.

With that in mind, the GIS School-to-Work project is training area intermediate and high school students as data collectors for Bell County on projects ranging from water issues to traffic to animals.

The project utilizes a geographic information system (GIS), which is described on the project's website as "a computer-based tool for mapping an analyzing things that exist and events that happen on earth."

The Central Texas Workforce Development Board awarded a $24,000 grant to BellNET to help pay for training consultants, stipends for curriculum development and the initial costs of digital cameras and global positioning systems.

The project started in July with three days of training for teachers who signed up to participate with their classes. There are a couple of slots left for the final training session beginning on December 20.

The project currently involves students from the Troy, Belton, Killeen and Rogers and Liberty Hill school districts, and is the first project of its kind to utilize students as actual field agents, according to Mary Ann Smith, Program Manager for BellNET.

"The project has been a tremendous success," Mrs. Smith said Monday. "Businesses have taken notice. They have stepped in and asked the students to speak to state, national and international organizations."

Some of the students' work compliments each other. For instance, students in Rogers are researching the lower end of the Little River watershed while Troy Students are conducting a study on the upper end.

While water and water issues have been a popular topic for the students, wildlife studies, population issues and a tree survey have also been marked for study by the classrooms.

The project involves between 700 and 900 students, Mrs. Smith said. The exact number is hard to pin-point because some teachers are using the project in all their classes and others are using it in just one or two. Many of the teachers, she said, have pulled other teachers into the project.

Students in the GIS School-To-Work program are eligible to enter a poster contest.

"This is not your basic fire safety poster that you usually associate with student posters," Smith said. "It's a scientific poster, very detailed, with specific requirements. Students might do it as part of a team or a classroom or as an individual."

Bell County and the Bell County Engineering Department serve as leaders on the project.

Additional sponsorship and support has come from the "Central Texas Council of Governments, ESRI's educational division, which provides participating schools with a copy of ArcView software from the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station at the Blackland Research Center and Magellan Network Systems.

Teachers interested in sighing up for the project who have not already done so can contact Mrs. Smith at the Blackland Research Center.

Http://bellnetweb.brc.tamus.edu/gis is the project's web site.