to guide your reading. You should endeavour to answer the guiding questions as you go along in your reading. If you make notes as you read, you will be able to answer the relevant questions more accurately.
Your notes will assist you to focus on what you are reading. They will also provide you with the summary of what you have read that can be re-read or revised later on in life, especially during examinations.
SELF-ASSESSMENT EXERCISE
As you read the passage entitled ‘Using Geographical Information Systems in the Management of Education’, use the following question
as your guide. Try to form notes as you read along. Use the notes to answer the question after reading the passage.
Guiding question: what is the value of geographical information system?
Using Geographical Information Systems in the Management of Education
Space is one of the key dimensions of our lives. In some places, space is rigidly controlled by such clear features as fences, political borders, walls and school districts; and people arrange what they do and where they go according to these barriers. These kinds of boundaries may not have been erected in other places, but space remains equally important.
Where can water be obtained, where can crops be planted, and how far must a child walk to school? Space is both an important resource and constraint for everyone. It also has a substantial impact on education.
What does someone working as an education planner or manager do about considering the effects of space on education? How does this person quantify, analyse and display the relationships between geography and education? How does he or she determine just where education should happen? How does he/she answer such questions as:
where are new schools needed?
where can pupils move after completing their primary schooling?
where are school facilities duplicated?
where is there a need for new teachers, or where is in-service training most urgently required?
where should inspection circuits be created?
The tools described in this book will make it easier for the planner to obtain answers.
A Geographical Information System (GIS) comprises a set of tools useful for processing spatial information. As is true to any set of tools, much of its effectiveness depends on the paradigm in which it is used.
Educational planners and managers with a strong interest in the details of education, in local conditions and local solutions, and in having their efforts translated into tangible products, will make good use of GIS.
Those with broader interests in policies, processes and central control will also use a GIS to highlight, among other things, regional disparities, problem area, and schools in need of immediate action.
This book has been designed to find something of a middle road between those with a strong interest in education and those with a greater
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interest in the technology of GIS. The book seeks to bridge that gap by showing how modem computer technology can be 'user-friendly' in a discipline that often hesitates to use technology when searching for solutions. Hopefully, it will convince educationists who wonder whether a GIS can be useful that there is much to be gained. For those embarking on the actual development of a GIS, this book provides a clear introduction to the methodological principles and broad products which can be expected from such a system.
And, for those who know a good deal about GIS, but wonder how to apply the technology in an education setting, examples of spatial issues and questions in education should illustrate the potential value of the applications. The book describes the planning and development of a geographical information system, explains the components necessary for a GIS and presents a variety of examples of how a GIS map can be used in educational planning and management. Parts of the book will be published in a series of training modules on school mapping and micro planning. But given its wider perspective it was felt necessary to make it available to a wider audience.
While this book is intended for those who might wish to develop and use a GIS for education planning and management, it should also be of interest to people working in other social sectors. Many of the principles important to education are relevant to other services and processes involving people. This book was compiled with the kind assistance of staff in the Ministry of Education and Culture in Namibia.
Source: I1EP Newsletter, October-December (1996). Paris:
International Institute for Educational Planning.
If you have gone through the passage carefully and taken useful notes, you will be able to answer the guiding question posed at the beginning of the passage. You will discover that the first two paragraphs are not to be read with seriousness. This is because they do not answer the question posed at the beginning of the passage. The values of Geographical Information System come more clearly from the third paragraph. Compare your answer with the one I present here:
The values of Geographical Information System are in its use in processing spatial information; its ability to highlight regional difference, problem areas, and schools in need of immediate action of the educational planners and policy makers.
Once again, guiding questions can assist you in locating the important thing you need from the reading materials, the proper focus to be given to the material and what is relevant and irrelevant.
4.0 CONCLUSION
If you put everything that is suggested in this unit into practice as you go through the subsequent units under reading-comprehension, I can say that you will read efficiently. Let me warn you. You will sooner or later find out that you have a lot to read and only a limited time to read them.
If you know this, it is important for you to read as quickly as possible.
Part of the training in this course is how to increase your reading speed without loss of comprehension.
5.0 SUMMARY
This unit has exposed you to the following:
the importance of reading
how to read efficiently which includes- deciding the purpose of reading; deciding what to read; getting the overview of what is to be read; asking yourself a guiding question to guide your reading as you read along; and forming notes on what is read.
As you move along in subsequent units, you will be practising some of the suggested effective reading strategies discussed in this unit.
6.0 TUTOR-MARKED ASSIGNMENT
“The requirements of effective reading are diverse and of great importance”. Discuss.
7.0 REFERENCES/FURTHER READING
Adkins, A. & Mckean, J. (1983). Text to Note. London: Edward Arnold.
Anderson, A. & Lynch, T. (1988). Listening. Oxford: University Press.
James, K., Jordan, R.R. & Matthews, A.J. (1988). Listening-Comprehension and Note-Taking Course. London: Collins ELT.
Olaofe, I.A. (1991). English and Communication Skills for Academic Purposes. Zaria: Tamaza Publishing Co.
Olaofe, I.A. (1993). Communicate English Skills. Zaria: Tamaza Publishing Co.
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