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Progress in Cartography pp 319–338Cite as

GEOTHNK: A Semantic Approach to Spatial Thinking

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography ((ICA))

Abstract

Spatial thinking has lately been acknowledged as an important ability both for sciences and for everyday life. There is a clear need for enhancing spatial thinking in education and engaging both educators and learners in more critical, inquiry-based teaching and learning methods. In this context, GEOTHNK project is a European effort to propose a scientifically grounded, technologically sustainable, and organizationally disruptive framework for the development of learning pathways for enhancing spatial thinking across education sectors and learning environments.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Undertaken by the Center for Spatial Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, while supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation.

  2. 2.

    http://gistbok.org/#.

  3. 3.

    http://www.gi-n2k.eu/.

  4. 4.

    An example is the definition of longitude (http://www.itseducation.asia/geography/l.htm#Longitude), where underlined words indicate lemmas in the dictionary and the user is prompted to look up another reference as well by following a url.

  5. 5.

    GEOTHNK Website, http://www.geothnk.eu/.

  6. 6.

    GEOTHNK Authoring Tool and Community, http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/community/geothink-community-400866.

  7. 7.

    http://www.geonames.org/.

  8. 8.

    Examples include spicynodes (http://www.spicynodes.org/) and biggeplate (http://www.biggerplate.com/).

  9. 9.

    http://gmaps-samples.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/poly/puzzledrag.html.

  10. 10.

    http://www.planitgreenlive.com/en/build-your-own-city.

  11. 11.

    http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/edu-object/perceptual-image-urban-environment-830235 created by a Greek postgraduate student.

  12. 12.

    http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/edu-object/milky-way-backbone-night-834098 developed by a Bulgarian university professor for pre-service Astronomy teachers.

  13. 13.

    http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/edu-object/injectivity-surjectivity-bijectivity-properties-functions-graphical-recognition-830247 contributed by a secondary education Romanian teacher.

  14. 14.

    http://portal.opendiscoveryspace.eu/edu-object/platentektoniek-en-vulkanen-834837 uploaded by a Dutch science center educator.

  15. 15.

    http://opendiscoveryspace.eu.

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Acknowledgements

Research conducted and presented herein is partially funded with the support of the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Union in the framework of the GEOTHNK Project (Pr. no 543451-LLP-1-2013-1-GR-KA3-KA3MP).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Cartography Laboratory, National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece

    Marinos Kavouras, Margarita Kokla, Eleni Tomai & Athanasia Darra

  2. Cognitive Systems Research Institute, Athens, Greece

    Katerina Pastra

Authors
  1. Marinos Kavouras
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  2. Margarita Kokla
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  3. Eleni Tomai
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  4. Athanasia Darra
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  5. Katerina Pastra
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Marinos Kavouras or Eleni Tomai .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Inst Kartographie Geo-Medientechnik, Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria

    Georg Gartner

  2. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Markus Jobst

  3. Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Wien, Austria

    Haosheng Huang

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Kavouras, M., Kokla, M., Tomai, E., Darra, A., Pastra, K. (2016). GEOTHNK: A Semantic Approach to Spatial Thinking. In: Gartner, G., Jobst, M., Huang, H. (eds) Progress in Cartography. Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19602-2_20

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