Training Of Geospatial Thinking Ability Of High School Students Based On Web GIS

Geospatial thinking is one of the core thinking in the field of geography,and its level is an important factor affecting the formation of high school students’ core geographic literacy.One of the reasons why students have difficulty learning geography is the lack of spatial thinking ability,and traditional teaching methods are unable to achieve ideal results in cultivating students’ spatial thinking ability.It is urgent to develop new teaching technologies for breakthroughs.Web GIS is a geographic information system based on the Internet,which can provide massive geographic teaching resources and powerful space technology means.It has great potential and technological advantages in breaking through spatially rich content.Therefore,conducting systematic exploration and research on cultivating high school students’ spatial thinking ability based on Web GIS is a topic of significant theoretical and practical value in the field of geography teaching and research.On the basis of reviewing literature,this article defines the concepts of geospatial thinking ability and Web GIS,clarifies the inherent relationship between the two,and organizes the Web GIS platform that is currently more suitable for high school geography classrooms.Through a questionnaire survey,it was found that the overall level of geospatial thinking among high school students was lower than the expected value.The reason for this is that there are many difficulties in cultivating geospatial thinking abilities,such as the fixed length of paper maps,which makes it difficult to carry out spatial positioning at different scales;Abstract geographical content and insufficient spatial imagination of students;There are numerous geographical elements,making spatial comprehensive analysis difficult;Geographic data is complex and difficult to compare spatially.Therefore,under the guidance of relevant theories,this paper systematically expounds the strong advantages of Web GIS in cultivating high school students’ geospatial thinking:geographic data visualization can simplify students’ cognitive process,geographic event virtualization can enhance students’ intuitive experience,and platform operation popularization can cultivate students’ information literacy.Based on the teaching principles of pertinence,operability and development,this paper puts forward the teaching strategies of using Web GIS to cultivate high school students’ geospatial thinking: using global location query to cultivate spatial positioning ability,using geospatial data visualization to cultivate students’ spatial comparison ability,using simulation of the dynamic process of geographical events to cultivate spatial imagination ability,using layers to overlay different geographical elements to cultivate spatial comprehensive ability,etc.On this basis,two typical cases based on the Web GIS platform and highlighting spatial thinking-"low pressure(cyclone),high pressure(anticyclone)and weather" and "China’s population distribution and its influencing factors" were developed,and the former was selected for empirical research according to the teaching progress.After the empirical study,a self-designed spatial thinking test question was used to test the learning effectiveness of students.The test data showed that the experimental class performed better than the control class,which to some extent indicates the significant effect of using Web GIS to cultivate high school students’ geographical spatial thinking ability.Through the above research,the basic conclusion of this paper is that there are many difficulties in the cultivation of high school students’ geospatial thinking ability.It is feasible to cultivate high school students’ geospatial thinking ability by using Web GIS,and Web GIS can effectively improve high school students’ geospatial thinking ability.Finally,this paper puts forward the shortcomings and prospects,in order to provide some reference for related research.