I was reading this morning's story about a new GIS exhibition at USM'S Osher Map Library. GIS is an acronym for Geographic Information System. To really over-simply things, GIS takes local information in combination with GPS coordinates and/or map to give people a sort of enhanced map view of a particular area.

My kids' 4-H club did a GPS/GIS project last year for a national 4-H website Youth Favorite Places. (It was actually one of the initial reasons I started this blog.)

The kids made a list of their favorite places then took a GPS unit to each location, marked the coordinates and took a photo. Then the kids submitted that information along with a street address and why they chose the particular place as a favorite to the website.

It was a fun project and quite educational. I had heard about USM's Osher Map Library last year and have been meaning to get there to learn more about cartography.

Since we started geocaching, the kids have really enjoyed learning about maps. Nothing like some techy geeks to get this generation of kids interested in something that was quite a dry subject for me in middle school social studies class.