Description
The increased prevalence of location based services has created a boom for Geographic Information Science (GIS) programs and applications. A particularly popular GIS tool is the availability, on an institution's web site, of a campus map along with the ability to pinpoint places of interest for visitors. This is a commonplace feature in the sites of larger universities, but smaller colleges or secondary schools [high schools in the United States] tend to lack the resources and time to generate and update such data as part of their Information Technology (IT) setup. The High School Campus Map Creation Toolkit (MCT) was designed as an efficient solution to allow these educational institutions a framework to inexpensively aggregate and display such campus geodata by leveraging their existing GIS curricula and engaging their students to collect, update, and prepare the data. The toolkit then provides a simple way for the institution's IT personnel to post the data on a regular basis, therefore making the process sustainable without further intervention from the original software developer. This project documents the inception, proposal, analysis, design, implementation and deployment planning of the first iteration of the MCT using the GIS curriculum at Helix High School as a pilot program. In Chapters One and Two, the backgrounds of the MCT concept and Helix High School are explored. Chapters Three through Seven document the various stages of crafting the software and presenting it to the stakeholders. Chapters Eight and Nine cover post delivery considerations and possible future work for the next generation of the toolkit. The appendices include reference materials ranging from a GIS course syllabus to the complete source code for the project.
