USING GIS IN THE TEACHING OF HISTORY

Place, space and time studies

Article by Malcolm McInerney, GTASA

GIS is a wonderful tool to enhance learning in the classroom. This article sets out to explore the
potential of GIS in the area of historical studies in particular. In essence we need to focus on the
concept that time studies have a spatial dimension that can be highlighted by the use of GIS
processes and field studies. Such a premise is nothing new and has always been at the core of our
treatment of many historical topics. What is new is that we have a resource and technological tool in
the form of GIS that can bring place, space and time studies alive for the students. GIS processes
such as area, point and line representation and tracing, image/feature/script hotlinking and thematic
representation are perfect to trace and display historical data across space.
In the excellent book, “Past time, past place: GIS for History (ESRI Press2002), Anne Knowles
succinctly states that “Geography is the study of spatial differentiation and history the study of
temporal differentiation. GIS provides the tools to combine them to study patterns of change over
space and time”. Such an association is resulting in GIS becoming the meeting ground for historians,
scientists, anthropologists and geographers, to name a few. Historical GIS is proving to be a valuable
research method, a framework for digital archives and a means to bringing a geographical/spatial
sensibility to our view of history. The use of GIS in space and time studies could be summarized as
“historical data having the z factor of time and GIS adds the x and y factor of place.”

The literature1 on historical GIS suggests that GIS processes employed by students in the classroom
could involve:
! Analyzing change in space over time.
! Attaching sources/data/images to location.
! Tracking movement over space.
! Searching databases over space.

1
“Past time, past place: GIS for History”: Anne Knowles. (ESRI Press2002) and
“A Place in History”: Ian Gregory (2002) (http://hds.essex.ac.uk/g2gp/gis/index.asp)

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In the newly released book,”Historical GIS: Space+place+time”2 a range of simple GIS applications
are described and demonstrated to highlight the use of GIS in historical studies. These achievable
historical GIS starters described in the book include:
1. The spatial arrangement of graves in a cemetery and associated hotlinked image/script
data and thematic characteristics
2. Tracing of explorers routes with associated hotlinked mage and script data
3. World War 1 battle movements, data searches and hotlinked image links and data
representations.
4. Map digitizing of aerial photographs to show change over time.
5. Polygon representations of a suburban block with associated created data tables showing
feature thematics and hotlinked images and information.
To undertake these varied historical GIS activities a wide range of GIS skills were employed. All of
these skills can be obtained by students undertaking the GIS skill development course in the book
“Getting going with GIS in the classroom”3
The skills employed by students through the historical Geography applications are:
1. Adding data files to create a base map.
2. Using scanned maps to create a base map.
3. Creating Thematic maps of represented data.
4. Creating original maps with points, lines and areas on pre-existing maps.
5. Creating and customising data bases
6. Selection maps involving searching databases.
7. Hotlinking scipt, chart and image files to point, line or area themes.
8. Using GPS to plot features on a map.
To demonstrate the huge potential of GIS for our historical teaching and fieldwork activities an
abbreviated description of the “Suburban heritage” activity of the book follows. For copyright reasons
the instructions below make no attempt to show in detail the process to create the final suburban
heritage map. The “Historical GIS” book however explains in detail the project development process
for students and teachers to follow with minimum difficulty.

An historical geography field example:

The mapping of suburban heritage

2
”Historical GIS: Space+place+time” by Malcolm McInerney, available from Techgeog
(manning@chariot.com.au)
3
“Getting going with GIS in the classroom” by Malcolm McInerney, available from Techgeog
(manning@chariot.com.au)
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Stages of Project development
1. Adding the base Theme of a suburban block to a View
" This Theme could be an imported Shapefile or a created polygon Theme using the draw tool.

2. Adding fields (columns) and information to the databases (Theme table) of the pre-
existing polygon database contained in the Vector “Street.shp” Theme.

# Select the street Theme.

# In the Attribute table that appears add the require fields. The fields are to be: House
number, Street, suburb, Year Built, Building type, Roof type, Name of owner,
Occupation, Authenticity, Heritage value and state of repair.
# Add fields by going to “Theme’ on the top menu and select “Start Editing”.

# Open the Theme table via the “Open Them Table icon:

# Add Fields via the “Edit” menu and select “Add Field”.

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# After adding the fields, the table should look as follows:

3. Entering data into the “Street” Theme table.

# Highlight the “Street” Theme and then open the Theme table via the “Open Theme Table”
icon and begin to edit after going to the “Edit” menu and selecting “Start Editing”.
# Note that the Themes Building type, Roof type, Authenticity, Heritage value and State of
repair are coded fields. That is a code will be entered for a range of characteristic. This
has been done so that we can make Thematic maps of these Themes. The codes are:
" Building type
1. Single fronted cottage
2. Villa
3. Veranda Bungalow
4. Bungalow
5. Tudor
6. Cream brick
7. Post 1970 design
" Roof type
1. Metal sheet
2. Metal tile
3. Masonry tile
4. Asbestos

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 " Authenticity
1. Significantly changed/modified
2. Moderate changes
3. Minor moderations
4. Very little change
5. Significant heritage renovations
" Heritage value
1. Poor
2. Possible
3. Essential
" State of repair
1. Poorly looked after
2. Moderate upkeep
3.Well looked after

# Now enter the data as determined from the fieldwork.

# The table could look as the table below. Note that as in the other exercises the pathway
field contains a pathway to the required image in Windows Explorer i.e. C:\History course
data\History of buildings\Tudor.tif

4. Setting up the hotlinks.

# Select the “Streets” Theme in the Table of Contents.

# Go to “Theme” on the top menu and select the “Properties” tab

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# In the “Theme Properties” dialogue box, scroll down to the Hotlinks box and select.
# In the “Field” section select the “Pathway” field and in the “Predefined Action” section select
“Link.ImageFile”.
5. Using the hotlinks
# Go to the “Hot Link” icon on the top menu and check the links. When you click with the
hotlinks cursor on the created symbol, the hotlink image should appear. Naturally have
the Theme highlighted which you which to hotlink to.

# Testing the Hotlink using the hotlink icon

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6 .Thematic maps of the data
# A way to show data differences across an area is by Thematic mapping. Lets make Thematic
maps of several of the coded themes on heritage, authenticity etc to show differences in the
nature of the blocks.

# After going through this process for all of the Themes the resulting active View should look as
follows:

o To view the required Theme just drag to the top of the “Table of Contents or add and
remove the vision ticks.

# The final inter-active View for the suburban street is shown below. It has the potential to
contain enormous information in written and visual form, as well as an interactive interface of
images, thematic representations and photographs.

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 7. Preparing a Layout of your Inter-active image
# Whilst the main point of this exercise is to provide an interactive interface in the active View.
Even so a Layout may be useful for presentation purposes for the project.

The other historical geography examples from the book

• CEMETERY STUDY

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• EXPLORERS STUDY

• WORLD WAR 1 DATA SEARCH

• CHANGE OVER TIME: Adelaide parklands greenery change

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 Conclusion

Historical GIS is an attempt to show that GIS is relevant to the teaching of history in the
classroom. In particular it is an attempt to inject a sense of spatial perception into the exploration
of historical content and processes. What GIS can do is involve students in creating their own
unique and original maps of an historical event or landscape. Such spatial literacy development
and student involvement in the creation of spatial representations of historical events and/or
landscape can only make geography a more practical and relevant subject to students.
The use of the high level spatial technology that GIS provides opens many opportunities to
develop creative and innovative problems for students to solve via the development of spatial
representations in the form of data linked maps or images.
You will find that the students will come up with endless ideas that they can apply their newly
acquired GIS skills to for the purpose of exploring place, space and time.

Bibliography
1. “A Place in History”: Ian Gregory (2002) (http://hds.essex.ac.uk/g2gp/gis/index.asp)
2. “Getting going with GIS in the classroom” by Malcolm McInerney.
3. ”Historical GIS: Space+place+time” by Malcolm McInerney.
4. “Past, past place: GIS for History”: Anne Knowles. (ESRI Press2002)

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