Bob Kolvoord

James Madison University | JMU · College of Integrated Science and Engineering

Current debate surrounds the promise of neuroscience for education, including whether learning-related neural changes can predict learning transfer better than traditional performance-based learning assessments. Longstanding debate in philosophy and psychology concerns the proposition that spatial processes underlie seemingly nonspatial/verbal reas...

Creativity often requires envisioning novel connections and combinations among elements in space, e.g., to invent a new product or generate a work of art. A relationship between spatial cognition and creativity has been demonstrated at both the behavioral and neural levels, but the exact neurocognitive mechanisms that bridge this connection remain...

Assessing whether learning in one domain is transferable to abilities in other domains often eludes traditional testing. Thus, a question with bearing on the promise of neuroscience for education is whether neural changes that accompany in-school curriculum learning can improve prediction of learning transfer. Separately, debate in philosophy and p...

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs) represent the consensus of the global community on the most important issues facing our planet. A major challenge is embedding the UNSDGs in primary and secondary education and providing the tools needed for students to explore and analyse data relevant to the UNSDGs. The Geospatial Semester...

The goal of the present study was to characterize high school students’ (n = 338) exposure to geospatial technologies and investigate factors predicting enrollment in a GIS course. Students who reported using GIS were almost 10 times more likely to enroll than students without experience using GIS. Males were more than 3 times more likely to enroll...

Background: Prior research has revealed positive effects of spatial activity participation (e.g., playing with blocks, sports) on current and future spatial skills. However, research has not examined the degree to which spatial activity participation remains stable over time, and little is known about how participating in spatial activities at mul...

In the present study, we investigated whether parents’ beliefs about their high school aged adolescents’ spatial abilities (i.e., spatial visualization, mental manipulation, and navigation abilities) differed based on their child’s gender. We also examined whether these beliefs related to parents’ encouragement of their child to pursue a Science, T...

Geospatial technologies, such as geographic information systems (GIS), remote sensing, and GPS have been used in a variety of educational settings to help improve student learning. A sample of 53 high school seniors was recruited from the Geospatial Semester (GSS), a course that emphasizes the use of GIS for problem-solving and students in AP Physi...

Geospatial technologies are becoming more ubiquitous in our society; however, efforts to sustainably and effectively bring these tools to secondary education have proven challenging. An innovative program in Virginia, the geospatial semester (GSS), is described. The program offers high school students the opportunity to learn about geospatial techn...

The use of location-based services and mobile technologies is increasing in K-12 classrooms. In this article, we describe the history and the current use of these tools in the innovative Geospatial Semester project in Virginia. We share a number of examples where students are creating projects of their own interest that use editable feature service...

Do high school seniors who complete a community-based GIS project demonstrate evidence of recognized 21st Century thinking skills when assessed by GIS capable faculty? Projects were completed in a semester-long high school course in which students used geospatial tools daily. 21st Century Skills were defined using two prominent frameworks and appli...

In an effort to better prepare students for collegiate work and the workplace, James Madison University (JMU) has created a unique, mentored dual enrollment program to help build high school students’ spatial and critical thinking skills, as well as give them in-depth experience with geospatial technologies. The Geospatial Semester, now in its 10...

Knowledge around geospatial technologies and learning remains sparse, inconsistent, and overly anecdotal. Studies are needed that are better structured; more systematic and replicable; attentive to progress and findings in the cognate fields of science, technology, engineering, and math education; and coordinated for multidisciplinary approaches. A...

Case studies illustrate teachers implementing geospatial technologies, such as geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning system (GPS), and remote sensing in the classrooms. Each of the teachers had participated in one of a series of professional development workshops at James Madison University. We analyze the classroom implementatio...

We present the analysis of video case studies of students using geographic information systems (GIS) software to address sophisticated, locally-based problems in a secondary school course. Students show evidence of complex problem definition, hands on resolutions to conceptual and technological issues through the application of advanced geospatial...

Scientific visualization tools have shown tremendous promise in drawing today's increasingly visual learners into in-depth inquiries in mathematics and science. But there is little data that describes how successful teachers are in using these tools with their students in the chronically under supported technological settings of K-12 education. Thi...

The Education and Public Outreach Panel for the 2003-2013 Decadal Survey has generated this report to assist NASA and the planetary sciences community with planning and prioritization of E/PO activities. We recognize the significant achievements of the NASA Office of Space Science (OSS) E/PO efforts in recent years which address many of the issues...

Visualizing data is a great gateway to exciting mathematics and science content for many students and teachers. However, all too often, training and professional development focus on all the details of a single tool, forcing the learners to wonder what happened to the forest while they were learning all about the tree. In Project VISM—Visualization...

Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) activities are an integral part of NASA's mandated mission and detailed in its Strategic Plan. The Office of Space Science Solar System Exploration (OSS SSE) E/PO program has made great strides in defining priorities and achieving its goals in the last five years. The Education and Public Outreach panel for NASA...

The “Image Processing for Teaching” (IPT) project provides a powerful medium to excite students about science and mathematics, especially children from minority groups and others whose needs have not been met by traditional “coded” ways of teaching these subjects. IPT offers open-ended opportunities for exploration, discovery, and quantitative anal...

The probability distribution for impact velocities between two given asteroids is wide, non-Gaussian, and often contains spikes according to our new method of analysis in which each possible orbital geometry for collision is weighted according to its probability. An average value would give a good representation only if the distribution were smooth...

Interpretation of the impact record on Asteroid 951 Gaspra requires understanding of the effects of collisions on a target body of Gaspra's size and shape. Recent hydrocode models show that major impacts on Gaspra may leave craters larger than previously thought possible and that they can create substantial regolith and produce global jolting capab...

The Image Processing for Teaching (IPT) project provides a powerful medium to excite students about science and mathematics, especially children from minority groups and others whose needs have not been met by traditional coded ways of teaching these subjects. Using professional-quality software on microcomputers, students explore a variety of scie...

Interpretation of the impact record on Gaspra requires understanding of the effects of collisions on a target body of Gaspra's size and shape, recognition of impact features that may have different morphologies from craters on larger planets, and models of the geological processes that erase and modify impact features. Crater counts on the 140 sq k...

In order to better understand the effect of collisions on short-term features in narrow planetary rings, we have developed a model to investigate how particle-particle collisions might modify some consequences of satellite perturbations. To mimic the effect of collisional scattering, we use a Monte Carlo-like simulation that alters the velocities o...

Planet formation models and simulations appear to be converging toward a consensus on how growth may have occured, at least up to the emergence of a few dominant planetary embryos from the vast swarm of planetesimals, which is similar to the scenario described by Greenberg et al. (1978, Icarus 35, 1–26). The various approaches to simulation differ...

In an effort to understand the observed complex form of Saturn's F ring, we have used Gauss' perturbation equations to numerically model the short-term, three-dimensional dynamics of narrow rings. We consider ring particles that are perturbed by local moonlets orbiting with small (i ≤ 0°.1) inclination; collisions are ignored. We confirm that, as e...

The intermediate stage of protoplanetary accretion, where sub-km sized bodies accrete in 500-1000 km diameter bodies, is critical in determining the character of subsequent evolution. Greenberg et al. discovered that, at least through the formation of 500 km planetary embryos, the small particle dominate the population and control the velocity dist...

Discoveries over the past fifteen years have revolutionized our understanding of planetary rings. Until recently, the only known ring system was Saturn's elaborate one, first spied by Galileo in 1610, but in 1977 rings were detected about Uranus. Shortly after that, rings were found about Jupiter (1979) and Neptune (1984), demonstrating that all of...

The Saturn F ring's shepherd satellites, Pandora and Prometheus, have been suspected of causing the periodicities observed in the ring. To test this idea, a selection of the best available Voyager images of the ring were examined by applying an FFT technique to azimuthal profiles from spacecraft ring images. Only a few distinct periodic signals, in...

The narrow width of Saturn's F ring belies its dynamical complexity. The kinks, clumps, and braids discovered by the Voyager spacecraft give the ring an ever-changing appearance when viewed at different times or from different orientations. In an attempt to quantify the longitudinal variations of the F ring in detail, a suite of Voyager 1 and 2 ima...

The availability of bigger and more powerful computers has been a boon to the study of dynamical simulations. Models can now be extended both in size and time with a concommitant increase in output. This plethora of data has inspired the development of new methods for analysis and display of results. Animation has proven to be a very useful tool in...

Scientific visualization tools have shown tremendous,promise in drawing today's increasingly visual learners into in-depth inquiries in mathematics and science. A critical question associated with these relatively advanced tools is how successful teachers are in using them with their students in the chronically undersupported,technological settings...

For the past three summers, we have run the Great Outdoors, Digital Indoors* project helping students combine field study in Shenandoah National Park with data analysis using ArcView 3.3. During last summer's workshop, we developed a set of activities to help teachers (and their students) evaluate risk of fire harming any of the many buildings/stru...

The newly released ArcExplorer--Java Edition for Education offers new opportunities to introduce younger students to using GIS to improve spatial thinking. The simple interface and limited command set make it ideal for both younger students and their teachers. We've developed a suite of activities using ArcExplorer--Java Edition for Education to te...