NDSU Distance & Continuing Education (DCE)

Course Description:

North Dakota is a place which is part of a kaleidoscope of regions, ever changing in spatial patterns and connections locally, regionally, statewide, nationally, continentally, and globally. Because of these changes, this five-day, three-credit workshop has three themes. The first facet of the workshop for one-third of the three credits is how the regional exploration of North Dakota as a place must be in the context of the updated and revised National Geography Standards (2012), the  2009 Skills Map for Geography Initiative in geospatial technologies, and the national work on Common Core in social studies and STEM. The second facet of the workshop for the next third of the three credits is promoting curriculum development with more attention to issues of human-environment interaction through using geospatial technologies. There will be hands-on practice of classroom integration of the 2009 Skills Map for Geography Initiative in geospatial technologies and the national work on Common Core in social studies and STEM. The third facet of the workshop for the final one-third of the credit will emphasize field work and applications of historical geography. Central to this facet of the five-day workshop will be usage of the State Historical Society of North Dakota traveling exhibit, “Discovering North Dakota: 250 Years of Mapping”. This and related materials will help participants will learn how cartography and related map-making has changed to record the kaleidoscope of regions of the Peace Garden State. Thus, by combining a mixture of hands-on activities with different types of mapping to a set of inter-connected learning modules about the state’s historical geography and participating in this type of face-to-face setting there will be the best use of the instructional strategies that gives the most flexibility to teachers in preparing end-products for incorporation into their own classrooms. Woven together through the five-day workshop, these three facets will be the vehicle in which North Dakota Studies will be transformed in a kaleidoscope fashion to be a an integrative way of using geography to study North Dakota as a place this is part of an ever-changing set of spatial connections within the state and outside the state in time and space.