YELLVILLE - Teachers from the Yellville-Summit School District recently participated in a workshop to learn how to incorporate Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Global Information Systems (GIS) into their classrooms.

The EAST (Environment and Spatial Technology) Initiative, a non-profit collaboration between education and business that provides advanced technological applications to schools in order to promote a problem-based and community-service learning environment, sponsored the week-long workshop.

The workshop was centered on the Central Ozarks Nature Area (CONA) in Yellville, a 421-acre site along Crooked Creek, which was recently donated to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission to be used as an outdoor classroom.

Teachers in the workshop mapped the CONA with their newfound skills, and then combined the data they collected in the field with digital map data available online from GeoStor at www.cast.uark.edu/cast/geostor.

Scot Simon from the Arkansas Nature Conservancy met with the group at CONA to give the teachers some ideas about what kind of mapping was needed for the area and what their students can do to help.

He shared with the teachers an extensive species list he had compiled of the area and showed how the geography of the area influenced what species would be found where.

Ken Shirley of the Arkansas Game and Fish met with the group to explain the forces at work that change the creek over time and how students might set up stations to carefully monitor this change. At the end of the workshop, teachers developed plans to incorporate GPS/GIS into their own classes.

These ideas included a lesson for a math class whereby students would collect position data with a GPS unit and then try to figure out the distance between these coordinates using spherical trigonometry.

Another plan involves showing middle school geography students how to download their own topography maps, and using the GPS units, find specific points at the CONA to compare how topology in the real world compares to a printed map.

In addition, an ongoing plan was developed for the CONA for Yellville-Summit EAST students to coordinate mapping and monitoring of the area with Forestry and Conservation classes.

A plan was also developed for the Yellville Environmental Awareness Club (YEAC) to use the GPS units to survey the Cabin Creek (Lafoon) Cemetery on the Buffalo National River, in order to make the site more accessible and monitor the river's intrusion on the area. A major goal of the workshop was to show teachers that they did not have to be experts in technology to teach technology.

The "teachers" for this workshop were EAST students that developed tutorials for the teachers and then guided them through the lessons.

These students have volunteered to be available throughout the academic year as the teachers try to incorporate what they have learned into their own classes.