Abstract:

The teaching and learning process can be enhanced by Information and Communication Technologies which became a priority in the education process. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have the ability to deal with space and time information allowing, for example, to deeply understand location, relations or patterns. Geospatial technologies have seen an unprecedented growth in the last decade. Indeed fewer basic education schools are using them to promote spatial or technological skills. This text/research aims to discuss employability skills, attitudes and behaviours of 36 ten years old students coming from unstructured families of a deprived territory. The authors explore a practical example of the application of GIS in the teaching/learning process of primary education students. Simultaneously, the authors demonstrate the potential of those technologies to enlarge interdisciplinary analysis.

In the last decades computer and internet technology have grown rapidly in several sectors of our modern society. GIS technology permit describe the characteristics of specified locations on the Earth’s surface. Recent progresses on GIS tools simplify the process of acquire, store, analyze and share geographic information, namely through the internet [1]. Despite this growing it is recognized that there is an absence of the use of GIS in education context [2]. Yet GIS can promote interdisciplinary geography teaching and learning, since its capabilities can improve spatial analysis and spatial thinking and spatial problem solving. It is a sophisticated mapping system that can easily shift from desktop to web map representations. Education system can benefit from their capabilities to analyze several map layers to identify spatial patterns [3, 4]. It can be an important invaluable resource to implement interdisciplinary projects and enhance student learning.

In 2006 the Committee on Support for Thinking Spatially strengthen that spatial thinking should be highlighted at all levels of the education curriculum. During the last decade the relationship between spatial thinking and GIS has been actively investigated [5]. GIS can promote interdisciplinary teaching and learning facilitating an understanding of the nature of geographic phenomena and information [6]. Although GIS is recognized as an essential area to embrace in initial and continuing geography teacher education can also be important on History studies.

Bodenhamer [7] argue that geo-spatial technologies are better equipped to construct the spatial narratives and deep maps that permit, indeed encourage, the sort of reflexive, recursive, and collaborative environments that will mark history in the future. In this paper one illustrate how the webmap project, developed on master education, seeks to emphasize spatial analysis, encourage to explore and thinking how the time phenomenon (History) were influenced by the space (geography). The complex facts of the Portuguese History can be simplified and easily understood when time and space are learned together. This interdisciplinary approach between History and Geography through GIS science provides a framework for the knowledge acquisition through exploration, reflexive and research program.

Over the past four decades massive progress has been made in developing and implementing tools that acquire, store, analyze, and share geographic information—that is, information describing the characteristics of specified locations on the Earth’s surface.

Keywords:

Innovation, technology, interdisciplinary project, history-geography, GIS, WebMap.