GPS/GIS Integration: In the Hands of Babes
Students at Cass Technical High School in downtown Detroit have embraced GPS and
GIS with impressive results.
By Michael W. Michelsen, Jr.

Put the right tools in the right hands and amazing things can happen. Practically anyone, except, of course, for assorted cave dwellers would know that. There are hundreds of examples. A brush in the hands of a Picasso. A need to create great music in the mind of a young Beethoven. The burning desire to fly like eagles in the hearts of two Dayton-born brothers. Today, under the leadership of their amazing teacher, Randy Raymond, students at Cass Technical High School in downtown Detroit have embraced GPS technology with almost equally impressive results.
      Raymond, who left a promising career as a scientist for the National Park Service, became a teacher because of his belief that given the right tools, as well as an opportunity to use them, inner city students can accomplish great things. GPS is one of those tools.
      "I think GPS is too valuable a technology to trivialize as a textbook subject," said Raymond. "Furthermore, a lot of people say that you get exactly what you expect from students. I agree with that. When we expect great things of students, they deliver-and sometimes in greater measure than we expected in the first place. With a powerful technology like GPS, students can learn things that are not only more valuable but more relevant than the stuff they could learn from textbooks."

A Not-So-Textbook Example
Raymond and his team of technology superstar students have been on the forefront of technology education for several years since Raymond purchased a Trimble GeoExplorer GPS mapping system as well as ESRI's ArcView software for use in his classroom. Since that time he and his class has been recognized with many awards for their work with GPS and GIS technology. And if that's not enough, they have been used by some of America's largest corporations such as the Ford Motor Company for their technology prowess.
      Cass Technical High School is the largest high school in the state of Michigan, and the only high school in downtown Detroit. Cass Tech is populated by 99 percent African-American students. A vast majority of the students are from single-parent families, often living at the poverty level.
      Two years ago Raymond and his students were asked by Beverly Hunter of BBN Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.), and a principle investigator on a National Science Foundation/Department of Defense Education Activity Education Reform project if they would work with students at Aviano High School, located on Aviano Air Force Base in northern Italy. How, they asked, could GPS and GIS be used to better connect more than 11,000 Air Force personnel and their families with the base that was their lifeblood?
      "When I was first contacted by Beverly Hunter and traveled to Aviano Air Force Base I was intrigued by the situation," Raymond explained. "What could be a better example of a geo-based problem that could be solved with geo-based technologies? I also saw an incredible opportunity to reproduce a lot of things that I had created in my area someplace else."
      Aviano Air Force Base is one of the largest foreign-based military installations in the world. It is the center of much of current operations in Bosnia, not to mention the home of many military members.
      "Aviano Air Force Base is a choice assignment for military members," Raymond said. "But it has its problems. Fortunately, it also has a base commander, Brig. Gen. Charles Wald, who is very interested in the welfare of his personnel. Wald has embraced GIS and GPS technology as a means to solve a lot of problems associated with the base."
      When Aviano Air Force Base was created after World War II, it was built to accommodate approximately 1,200 Air Force personnel. It now has more than 11,000 personnel, as well as their families-and there is no base housing. What this means is that everyone stationed there must find their own housing, frequently in the tiny towns and villages that dot the northern Italian countryside.
      "This creates a lot of problems," said Raymond. "Nobody on the base knows where their personnel are living. There are also other problems, such as the lack of bus transportation that brings students from their homes to American schools located on the base. Students routinely travel up to two hours, one way, to get to school.
      That's when Raymond and his students at Cass Technical High School got involved. "This is exactly the kind of program that ours started from," said Raymond.
      "This kind of connection to the community always stirs a great deal of excitement."
      Raymond met with General Wald, SSgt. George Waring of the base's Civil Engineering Command, and other representatives of Aviano Air Force Base, as well as Dr. Bill Reed, the technology teacher at Aviano High School.
      "We came up with a lot of exciting ideas about how to help their situation," Raymond said.
      "The basic problem is that road level data is not available, and if it were made available it would be at a cost that would be prohibitive," he said. "Furthermore, the Italian addressing systems are different than ours. Something purchased there would be of little use."
      The problem was solved by purchasing Trimble's GPS for ArcView, and installing it in six 100 MhZ Pentium laptops. These are carried by students for direct readout mapping activities on school buses on their routes. High school students from Aviano High School were responsible for creating the maps in their classes.
      Address level data is being obtained by students from Aviano Elementary School carrying GeoExplorers to their homes and those of their friends. Names and address information is added after the positions are taken. "These elementary school students go to their homes, take a position reading where they live, then download that data onto a GIS generated map created for the street level data that is put together by the high school students. This mapping is ongoing, but should be completed soon. Whenever I hear someone complaining about how hard GPS is to use I think of these little elementary school aged children out there getting positional data by pushing a button," Raymond said. "It really makes you wonder what they're talking about. GPS couldn't be easier to use."

At the Center of the Buzz
"When we got involved in the project at Aviano Air Force Base, we should have known what was going to happen-the same thing that happened in Detroit," Raymond said. "It creates a lot of excitement."
      Raymond should know. After Raymond started the technology education program at Cass Tech, business as well as government leaders from all over the city began asking students for their assistance on a wide variety of problems that could be solved with the use of positional data. "We had some very influential members of the business community show up at our class to see what we were doing," Raymond explained.
      Now to make the same thing happen at Aviano Air Force Base.
      "Thanks in large part to the cooperation and enthusiasm of General Wald, we got what we needed to accomplish some very important results," said Raymond. "When he saw what we were doing on the bus transportation program, he invited us to take a look at how the mapping was done in the base civil engineering office. Little did the civil engineering people know that to start with we had laptop computers under our arms that had more computing power than the 486s that they were doing their mapping with everyday."
      Prior to the introduction of geo-based data, all buildings and other structures located on Aviano Air Force Base were maintained on a CAD system. "General Wald's enthusiasm for the GPS and GIS programs now being introduced in the on-base school system doomed the CAD-based system," Raymond said. "This summer there will be high school students employed in the base's civil engineering office to help with all of the geo-referencing of the base's buildings."

The Net Effect
"GPS and GIS has accomplished a lot of purposes at Aviano Air Force Base," Raymond said. "Aside from building a database that will allow the base to build a better bus transportation system, as well as an evacuation plan for those who live in outlying areas, military dependents are terribly isolated, especially in an area where there are cultural or language differences. This project has given students at Aviano Air Force Base a good reason to interact with military personnel on that base in a meaningful way-over the common fence of technology."
      General Wald has also given approval for a new tutorial and activity program based on the new mapping system. Whereas before the program students were so isolated from other American families, the new system allows dependent families who might be able to interact with others to identify each other. "For example, if a child lives two hours from school and depends on the one and only bus trip to get home from school it's difficult for that child to stay after school for extra tutoring. With a geo-based mapping system that identifies another military member or family member that lives nearby, a child who is isolated and needs help can get that help."
      "There are many uses for GPS beyond what might be considered the obvious," said Raymond. "The recently approved Presidential Technology Initiative provides $20 million for the improvement of technology education in on-base schools around the world. Purchasing GPS and GIS technology for on-base schools to upgrade the quality of education will make appealing to the best military members very attractive."

About the Author:
Mike Michelsen is a writer in the Marketing Communications Department at Trimble. He may be reached at 408-481-8658 (phone), 408-481-8488 (fax), or via e-mail: [email protected]

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