THE NEW GEOGRAPHY

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Though we have had active discussion about application of GIS (geographic information system) to school education since the late 1990s, actual use of GIS in schools doesn’t spread well. The author say one of the reasons is that we don’t share common understanding on meaning and necessity of using GIS in geography education. To promote geography education with the use of GIS, it is needed to make clear the effect of GIS in geography education and to develop and indicate concrete examples of proper educational materials or programs. In this paper, the author defines the position of GIS in geography education by prior researches and shows the way of applying GIS to geography education. He also refers to the Japanese national guideline for education and makes clear where GIS is placed in the geography curriculum. Next, the author summarizes the usage and used function of GIS and form of GIS use from existing researches and practice reports, and reviews effects and problems. From this, we can find out the importance of clarification of the purpose and goal of using GIS in each lesson and the necessity of positioning of GIS in the class schedule for the year. Some proposals on how to use GIS in geography class are presented. It is effective to use GIS in the lesson of (1) getting information about study area by the internet GIS, (2) mapping from statistics, (3) supporting student’s reading of map by using the layer function and (4) understanding the world as a spherical surface (map projection).

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This study conducted a field research on the distribution of beverage vending machines in 41 school districts in Kashiwara city and Osaka city, Osaka prefecture, and analyzed the distribution patterns in relation to land use to examine the effectiveness of fieldwork for beverage vending machines in geographic education. Beverage vending machines were densely distributed in commercial and business areas, but were sparsely located in residential areas. Thus, the spatial distribution pattern of beverage vending machines in a school district depends on land use. The beverage vending machines show cluster distribution in the school districts in which commercial and business areas are clearly separated from residential areas, and random distribution in the school districts in which commercial and business areas are mixed with residential areas. Since the cluster distribution is easy to interpret, fieldwork for beverage vending machines is expected to be suitable practice for students to learn geographic skills in the school districts in which commercial and business areas are clearly separated from residential areas. For students in the school districts in which commercial and business areas are mixed with residential areas, ingenious selection of study area, intensive fieldwork for various factors and advanced analysis will be needed.

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