'A Bank on Every Corner': Students' Sense of Place in Analyzing Spatial Data

This paper describes the role of sense of place in students' analysis of spatial data toward understanding the distribution of financial services in their city. High school students participated in a 10-session module about their city's two-tiered financial system of banks and alternative financial institutions. The paper analyzes two class sessions organized around the use of ratios, or intensive variables, to understand the distribution: an embodied distribution activity atop a large floor map and individual exploration of scalable, data-rich digital maps. Analysis investigates the role of students' sense of place as they grappled with these ratios. Students drew on their senses of place to interpret data and generate their own sets to associate in ratios. Abstract measures and data visualizations contained in the digital maps were less accessible to students in this iteration of the module. [For the complete proceedings, see ED583608.]