General Field Exercises

There are a wide variety of field-based activities, in addition to mapping, which are often integral educational components of field science curricula, that can benefit from the use of GeoPads. One way GeoPads can help improve the overall learning experience for students is by eliminating the potential disconnect that can occur when data is gathered in the field, but not analyzed until later and in a different setting.

Since the GeoPad is a Microsoft Windows computer after all, it can run any software you would run on any other Microsoft Windows computer, such as standard data analysis software like Microsoft Excel or specialized software for collecting and processing data from field instruments. This means you can often combine the previously desperate steps of data collection, analysis, and interpretation that typically occur in a field exercises; one collects data in the field on paper, returns to a classroom, enters the data, and processes it, and then one finally analyses and interprets the data.

Processing data in the field is generally only advantageous, however, if seeing the results in the field as opposed to the classroom is not a terminal activity; rather the experience can be used to promote further discussion or support real-time planning and decision making components of the exercise.

For student project examples, follow the link below:

• MIT Center for Digital Geology (MCDIG) Example Student Projects - This website provides student project examples from five years of MIT digital field camp.