LYN MALONE: AWARD WINNING TEACHER & AUTHOR

BIOGRAPHY

Lyn Malone, a former high school and middle school teacher, is an educational consultant specializing in the classroom application of spatial technologies such as GIS, GPS, and Remote Sensing. Lyn was a pioneer in the educational use of these technologies in her own classroom and has been widely recognized for the extraordinary success of these initiatives. Lyn was Rhode Island’s Social Studies Teacher of the Year in 1995 and was given a Distinguished Teaching Award by the National Council for Geographic Education in 1998. In 2000 she was awarded a grant from the National Geographic Society Education Foundation to implement a community tree mapping project across Rhode Island and, in the same year, the Community Atlas project created by her students was selected as the national “Model Project.” In 2003, American Forests presented her with a Global ReLeaf Award for her educational work in community forestry.

Lyn is the Coordinator of the Rhode Island Geography Education Alliance and has served on the executive board of the National Council for Geographic Education. In 1998, Lyn attended the National GIS Institute for Teachers and in 1999 she became an Authorized Trainer in ESRI’s K-12 Education Program. Since that time, Lyn has co-authored two books, Mapping Our World: GIS Lessons for Educators and Community Geography: GIS in Action, A Teachers’ Guide. She recently completed a Guide for the Geography Network – an online data and mapping service. Lyn also served as an advisor and white paper contributor to the National Academies of Science report on “the Incorporation of Geographic Information Science Across the K-12 Curriculum,” Learning to Think Spatially. In addition to writing, Lyn travels widely to conduct professional development workshops and institutes for teachers and other educators in the educational use of GIS and other spatial technologies.

Lyn attended the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a bachelor’s degree in History, a master’s degree in American Civilization, and a master’s degree in Social Studies Education. She also earned an Advanced Certificate in Scientific and Technical Illustration from the Rhode Island School of Design. During her teaching career in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, Lyn taught History, Sociology, and Anthropology in high school and World Geography in the middle school. In addition to teaching, Lyn also worked as a freelance cartographer in the 1980’s and 1990’s.

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PROJECTS (CURRENT & RECENT)

CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT & WRITING:

U.S. Census Bureau: Curriculum designer for CENSUS IN SCHOOLS 2010, a set of lesson plans and educational resources for teachers and students to be distributed nation-wide prior to the 2010 Decennial Census.

Worldlink Media:  Curriculum designer for INTERACTIVE EARTH, version 2. a multimedia project funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. INTERACTIVE EARTH explores contemporary global issues through the visualization of satellite imagery and other global data.

ESRI K-12 Education Program: Author of Everyone’s Guide to the Geography Network, a three part guide targeting teachers and other users outside of the professional GIS community. The guide provides sample exercises, user tips, and lessons.
http://www.geographynetwork.com/

ESRI K-12 Education Program: Curriculum designer for Mapping United States History: GIS Lessons for Educators, a collection of lessons that use ESRI’s free software ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education to apply spatial analysis to the investigation of key issues in US history.

Ford Partnership for Advanced Studies: Data, lesson development, and teacher training for Course 3 (Managing and Marketing with Data), Module 9 (From Data to Knowledge) in the Ford PAS Curriculum
http://www.fordpas.org/overview/default.asp

American Forests: CITYgreen@school Curriculum: a series of lessons to introduce basic ArcView GIS skills and the use of American Forests’ CITYgreen application for ArcView
http://www.americanforests.org/productsandpubs/citygreen/school.php

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Technology at the Crossroads: Providing training in GIS and GPS technologies for participants in the Technology at the Crossroads initiative. This NSF-funded ITEST project for middle school students employs GIS and GPS to investigate urban ecology issues and raise awareness about careers in technology and science.

Newton (MA) Public Schools: Providing training, customized data, and teaching materials for sixth grade social studies teachers in a series of half day GIS training workshops during the 2005-2006 school year.

Keynote Speaker: “21st Century Education: You’re Way Ahead of the Pack,” Conference on Remote Sensing in Education (CORSE), June 27, 2005, Auburn New York.
http://www.iagt.org/corse/

The Narragansett Bay Coyote Study: Project advisor and GIS teacher trainer for twelve schools participating in a coyote monitoring project on Conanicut and Aquidneck Islands under the direction of The Conservation Agency in Jamestown, RI. The coyote project will use GIS to analyze data about the coyote population and coyote behavior patterns in order to determine if these animals pose a threat to human interests and to recommend appropriate management strategies.
http://www.theconservationagency.org/coyote.htm

American Forests CITYgreen@school Program: Providing training and classroom materials for teachers in Texas, Washington, DC, and North Carolina in the use of ArcView GIS and American Forests’ CITYgreen application for ArcView.
• H-E-B Stores statewide Community Forestry Education Project
http://www.heb.com/aboutHEB/EA-treesIntro.jsp
• Casey Tree Foundation’s GreenTech Education Program
http://www.caseytrees.org/programs/greentech.html
• Dale Earnhardt Foundation’s Environment/Wildlife Preservation Program http://www.daleearnhardtinc.com/content/legacy/foundation_facts.aspx

Bristol-Warren Regional (RI) School District: Providing training, customized data, and teaching materials for middle school social studies teachers in a series of one day GIS training workshops during the 2003-04 and 2004-05 school years

Coventry Summer GIS Workshop, 2004 and 2006: Six-day summer GIS and GPS training institute for middle and high school teachers in Coventry, RI. Teachers receive graduate credits from the University of Rhode Island’s Department of Natural Resources Science, teaching materials, and customized data sets.

Roger Williams University: A series of classes in GIS and GPS providing training, customized data, and teaching materials for preservice science teachers in the RWU elementary education program.

Montgomery County (MD) Public Schools: Training AP Environmental Science teachers from Montgomery County public schools in the use of ArcView GIS and American Forests’ CITYgreen application for ArcView for county-wide implementation of an Environmental Sciences Education Grant

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