YCHANGE

This remote sensing curriculum is a methods guideline for teachers, helping them to select appropriate learning activities for their students in remote sensing.  You can freely decide which approaches and competences you want to pursue. The curriculum provides guidelines for teachers which remote sensing methods are suitable for different class grades. It also includes thematic examples, but these are far from exhaustive.

This curriculum is based on the national curricula of the YCHANGE project partners and their expertise in teaching and developing remote sensing materials, remote sensing education research (e.g. Kollar 2012).  This curriculum does assume that you are using standard desktop software (e.g. LeoWorks) or an online tool (e.g. BLIF).

This curriculum describes a learning progression towards a professional use of remote sensing and digital satellite images in different job fields. It starts on a basic level introducing basic functionalities and methods. It moves step by step to more advanced applications that provide access to a professional use of remote sensing in science, business and public administration. Understanding remote sensing is also useful for contributing in public initiatives such as citizen science.

Download the English curriculum as PDF file

Stáhnout učební plán v českém jazyce ve formátu PDF

Die Deutsche Version des Curriculums können sie hier als PDF herunterladen.

Lae alla eestikeelne versioon õppekavast

Vous pouvez télecharcher la version française du curriculum en cliquant ici.

Puoi scaricare la versione tedesca del curriculum qui come PDF.

Recommendations

Ideally, 

• by the end of grade 6, students should reach level 1

• by the end of grade 10, students should reach level 4

• by the end of grade 12, students should reach level 5

But you can start on any level in any class grade, depending on the skills/ pre-experience of your students. Please also base your decision on which level to target on your students’ individual competences.

You freely decide to combine either competence level with either approach (e.g. I-1, II-2, I-3, II-5). We highly recommend creating own student projects. After having worked with guided materials as an introduction, student projects help students to individually learn competences in methodological areas such as asking geographic questions, selecting appropriate methods, etc. which are demanded by many curricula.

Level of Remote Sensing Approaches for Grade 5-12

Level of Remote Sensing Competences for Grade 5-12

These competences define different levels of skills in analysing satellite images in a progressive way.  In some cases you can already move to the next level before having completed all parts of the lower level, e.g. you need to be able to read true color before comparing two images, but you can do classification without having to know how to measure distance. The specific YCHANGE sample projects indicate requirements and target competencies.

The colors indicate:
- competencies that could be reached with suitable printouts, Google Earth, or BLIF
- competencies that could be reached with Google Earth or BLIF
- competencies that could be reached with BLIF

Beyond Grade 12

The following competences can also be worked towards in BLIF, but they are suitable more for university students than school students:

… read TerraSAR-X images

… use advanced methods such as scatterplots to select band combinations (e.g. for classification) or pan-sharpening for better spatial resolution

There are also other competencies that will be acquired in university that are only available in advanced software (e.g. advanced corrections, create composites).

Further reading to extend general skills in remote sensing

• Canada Centre for Mapping and Earth Observation: Tutorial: Fundamentals of Remote Sensing. Available online: http://www.nrcan.gc.ca/node/9309 (last access: 2018-01-23).
• Schott, J.R. (2007): Remote Sensing - The Image Chain Approach. Oxford University Press.

References