How GPS Works

From finding a place to eat in a new city to navigating a detour to geocaching, GPS is an amazing technology. But just how does GPS work? NASA's eClips channel on YouTube has a good student-friendly explanation of how GPS works.


Applications for Education
Geocaching is a fun activity for students to do to learn about latitude and longitude, to discover geological features, learn or relearn basic math concepts, and to practice good digital citizenship. Seven years ago Jen Lefebvre, née Deyenberg wrote a great overview of geocaching in an education context. You can read that blog post here. When Jen wrote that post you had to use handheld GPS units to go on geocaching activities. Today, you can simply use the Geocaching Android app or iOS apps.

Video - How GPS Works

In the past I've run a couple of posts about geocaching activities. This guest post by Jen Deyenberg outlined student geocaching activities. Geocaching relies on the use of GPS. On Friday The Atlantic's Picture of the Day was of the interior of a satellite. That picture as well as thinking about GPS got me to search for a video explanation of how GPS works.

NASA's eClips channel on YouTube has a good student-friendly explanation of how GPS works.

Art, GPS, and Geography Combine

Over the weekend CNET ran a story about a Swedish art student that claims to have created the world's largest self-portrait using GPS and the package delivery service DHL. Whether or not the story is true is highly debatable, but regardless of truth it makes an interesting story and sparks an idea for combining Art, GPS, and Geography. The Swedish art student, Erik Nordenankar, created a world's largest self-portrait by sending a GPS device around the world through DHL. Nordenankar claims that he planned the routes the package would take so that the path of travel would represent a portrait. Embedded below is a video of Nordenankar demonstrating the project.



Applications for Education
Nordenankar's idea represents a great synthesis of technology and art. There isn't a public art teacher or geography teacher that could afford to try what Nordenankar did, but there are some free methods for simulating a similar experience. Students could create drawings using Google Earth or Google Maps by plotting placemarks in artistic shapes. After plotting the placemarks students can play "connect the dots" to complete the drawing. To incorporate an element of Social Studies students can research and report on the places where they plotted their placemarks.
If you have access to GPS units, students could recreate a project like Nordenankar's on a local scale.

Update: Nordenankar has confirmed on his website that the drawing was a hoax. None-the-less it's still a good synthesis of art and geography.