December 06, 2005

Understanding Spatial Relations (or Not)

Kim Kastens and Toru Ishikawa at Columbia have a brief, online tutorial describing problems students (and people in general I assume) have with maps and spatial representations. It's written primarily for teachers in the geosciences, but it would be useful to anyone studying how people understand spatial relations. Here's the short table of contents:

  • What are spatial abilities and how do they pertain to geoscience tasks?
  • How do people learn about large-scale spatial relations by direct observation of the environment?
  • How do people use and interpret topographic maps?
  • How do people comprehend 3-D phenomena?

[via The Map Room]

Posted by johndanseven at December 6, 2005 08:05 AM