Teacher Aides & Ideas

The following links and ideas are designed to help you develop the lessons needed to participate in MISSION:ILLINOIS project. We will be adding to this as things develop.

   

Task 1A under the Process page - Getting to Know HAARGIS.
"In order to understand how this is possible, you need to know how to use the site. Go to the Help site and go over each of the following sections: Getting Started, Map Tools, About the Layers, Searching, and Reports." You are welcome to use the handout as a classroom resource to help understand how to use. The first three pages are the most important ones in using HAARGIS.
Right-click on: Getting Started with HAARGIS - MS Word format and save the file to your computer.
or
Right-click on: Getting Started with HAARGIS - PDF format and save the file to your computer.

Task 1B under the Process page - Locating your county on a map.
Several students might not know the county they live in. Since there are 102 counties in Illinois, it might take some time to find their town. Also in some cases, the town could be in more then one county. To make things easy, go to Living in Illinois State Page to help students with this procedure. There are two ways of locating your county. Students might know the name but they might not be sure of its location on a map.

If they know the county name, choice Option 1:

Select a county from the "Counties" pull-down list. Selected county will be highlighted.
Select a town from the "Towns" pull-down list. The list displays towns that fall within the selected county.
Additional information of interest will be provided starting at the county level. Students will find some of this information very interesting about their community.

If you don't know the county name, choice Option 2:

Enter a portion or full city/town name in the "City Search" field. Click on "go".
A list of possible matches will appear below the "City Search" field.
Click on the desired community link to highlight the community.

I also have two Illinois county maps that can be downloaded to use with the class in their search for their county. These maps came from the Illinois State Library and can be reproduced for classroom use. The first map is:
The Illinois County map with names:
Right-click on: Illinois County map - and save the file to your computer.
or
The second map is;
The Illinois County map with county seat name:
Right-click on: Illinois County Seat map - and save the file to your computer.
Also you can get additional maps from the state. If you want a state map of Illinois, go to the Illinois Department of Transportation and request them on-line.

Task 2A - Working with HAARGIS

Now you need to explore and investigate the data that has already been collected for your community. Locate the different triangles that represent recorded data and using the Select button, click on the one that you want to check out or rubberband a group of triangles to look at several at a time. The link to the "Report" of that location will appear in the middle window, below the map. One of your assignments to to check the validity of the information collected.

Is it mapped correctly?
Is it missing any information that you could add to the report?
Does it have a picture to identify it?
Does it have a link to a "View Background Documentation" which is usually a detailed document about the location? In most cases, they are a PDF file that can vary in length from three pages to twenty pages.
Try finding a "View Background Documentation" link to see what information you can find.
Also check out the "Property Details" about the location. In some cases certain information is missing that could be updated after checking out locally the location.

Task 2B - Looking for Additional Places

Your team now needs to decide what additional places should be added to the IHPA informational database. This could be buildings, historical markers, roadside attractions, special types of buildings, unique advertising items and any other feature that make your town special.

Let your students decide what they want to report on their community. Also have students print out and check on the information that is already posted. Some students might want to update the present sites by adding information or pictures.

Task 3 - Reporting Information

After deciding on what your team is going to investigate and report on, go out and do the fieldwork. Remember to follow the Agency's guidelines and teacher's directions as related to the process of collecting data and reporting the metadata about your unique find. Also if possible, take several digital pictures of the item to enhance its importance.

 

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