Educational uses of Cartography. An example on the use of GIS to deal with depopulation by skill processes

Abstract. This paper analyses the use of Cartography made by Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in K 12 education levels with these two objectives:

1. Get students familiar with this type of Geographical representation.
2. Achieve that students get skill learning on Geography and Cartography.

To achieve these main objectives, the paper develops and shows some educational resources about depopulation processes in the Spanish region of Aragon. The choice of this topic is based on its cartographical possibilities and to the capacity of these processes to shape land. These educational resources are publicly and freely available to be used with students between 12 and 18 years old.

This paper begins justifying the choice of this topic and analysing the pedagogical and educational possibilities of GIS. Second, it is studied the current and past depopulation processes that took place in Aragon, along with the ways of cartographical representation commonly used in education and, the ones used to create these materials, reasoning our choice. Then, the paper describes the materials and resources and provides free downloading links. Fourth, we conclude with the evaluation of the initially proposed objectives, with a focus on the quality and advantages of the use of GIS as educational resource. The paper concludes with some future research suggestions.