TeachSpatial: A Portal to Instructional Resources on Spatial Concepts for STEM Education

加州大学圣巴巴拉分校（UCSB）的研究人员正在解决美国教育中的一个盲点。在数字时代，信息越来越多地以地图、图表和示意图的形式呈现出来，许多教育工作者现在认识到需要通过强调空间思维来补充传统的数字/语言素养。空间思维整合了对概念的理解，如距离、方向、规模和模式识别，并有效利用视觉表征和空间技术，如GPS和地理信息系统（GIS），以解决社会问题和推进科学。该项目通过一个新的门户网站（http://teachspatial.org）解决了将空间思维嵌入教育的需求。TeachSpatial是一项小额资助的国家科学数字图书馆（NSDL）路径项目，旨在促进教育工作者对空间素养的讨论，并提供相关NSDL学习资源的指导，帮助教师将空间思维融入科学和数学学科的课程中。TeachSpatial项目明确了中学现有科学和数学标准中隐含的空间学习目标，并为新本科生掌握空间概念制定了基准。TeachSpatial使作为空间思维先驱的教师能够在NSDL中找到资源（课程大纲、练习、关联数据集和范例应用），访问和贡献促进空间思维和空间计算推理的学习模块，交流经验和教学策略，并提供特定学习资源的评估。

Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) are addressing a blind-spot in American education. In a digital era that increasingly represents information visually as maps, graphs, and schematic images, many educators now recognize the need to complement traditional numerical/verbal literacy with an emphasis on spatial thinking. Spatial thinking integrates an understanding of concepts, such as distance, direction, scale, and pattern recognition, with the effective use of visual representations and spatial technologies, such as GPS and geographic information systems (GIS), to solve societal problems and to advance science.This project is addressing the need to embed spatial thinking in education with a new portal(http://teachspatial.org). TeachSpatial is a small-grant National Science Digital Library (NSDL) Pathways project that promotes discussion of spatial literacy among educators and provides guided access to relevant NSDL learning resources to help teachers integrate spatial thinking into course curricula for science and math-based disciplines. The TeachSpatial project is making explicit those spatial learning objectives that are implicit in existing science and math standards at the secondary level and is documenting a baseline for mastery of spatial concepts by new undergraduates. TeachSpatial is enabling instructors working as pioneers for spatial thinking to find resources (course syllabi, exercises, linked datasets, and exemplar applications) within NSDL, to access and contribute learning modules that promote spatial thinking and spatial computational reasoning, to exchange experiences and pedagogical strategies, and to offer evaluations of specific learning resources.