Environmental education by GIS: Supporting system for environmental education using GPS and PDA

"Periods for Integrated Study" has been introduced to the elemental school in Japan since 2002 by Ministry of Education, Culture. Sports, Science and Technology. The environmental education was adopted as the part of this class in some schools. We developed the supporting system for the environmental education in the elementary school. The objectives of this system are to support the direct experience (observation) in the natural field and to support the indirect experience (class room session). This system has the aspect of geographic information system (GIS) by means of attaching the positional information to the observation notes and photos made at the natural field. This system consists of some parts listed as follows; 1) The appropriate information is displayed on the personal data assistance (PDA) at the spatial location to encourage the observation in the natural field (teaching materials display system) and making the observation note easily at the natural field (observation note making system). 2) All observation notes and photo images created at the natural field are browsed by classmates and every student shares the information in the class room (information shearing system). 3) Every student creates HTML documents using observation notes and photo images which have the positional information (teaching materials creating system). The distinctive features of this system are 1) students can create the observation notes attached the positional information freely, 2) these observation notes are easily utilized as the GIS data, because these observation notes has the positional information. 3) appropriate information which accumulated the previous lesson can display the special location in the natural field, so these information lead to student's attention to the objects and encourage to the observation in the special points.