What is the focus of this module?
This activity, "Strangers in Paradise," introduces the concept of what a digital image is and how it relates to the real world. It involves a simple training exercise on making linear and area measurements using NIH Image software.

What are some interrelated teaching opportunities? Aerial photographs of nearly any location in the United States can be obtained from your local Farm Service Agency of the Department of Agriculture for a nominal cost (about $20 for a 20" x 20" photograph). There is an FSA office in every county in the nation. Look in the government pages of your local phone book.

An aerial photograph of your school and the surrounding area can be scanned into your computer as a digital image that can be manipulated in NIH Image. Students can then physically measure distances between features on the ground and compare those measurements to the ones they make on the photo using NIH Image.

As an extension, students can compare distances to stores, parks, amusement centers, and theaters in their community to distances in Honolulu.

A map of your area can be used with the aerial photo to introduce the idea of maps as representations of real places and as travel guides.

Finally, the Honolulu image and landmarks could serve as springboards into discussions of geology, Polynesian history, economics, and even race relations. Hawaii has had a fascinating history.

What is the compelling problem that students will face in this activity? The problem is to measure distances using image processing software. The "Strangers in Paradise" activity provides a fascinating training context for NIH Image Processing software but is not considered by the designers to be a good example of problem-based learning.

What tasks will students encounter as they work through this activity? Students will need to learn how to locate the NIH Image program on their machines and open an image of Honolulu. The situation will challenge them to determine distances using the Honolulu image and the measuring tools in the NIH Image processing software. They will be asked to complete the following tasks:

• find the distance from the Royal Hawaiian Hotel to the Ala Moane Shopping Center
• measure the distance to the golf course along the beach front
• measure the area inside the rims of the Diamond Head and the Punchbowl volcanic craters.

Preparation Checklist--have you thought of everything?

What abilities and skills will students encounter as they work through this activity?
In addition to helping your students use NIH Image, and a computerized aerial photo of Honolulu, this is also a good activity to introduce students to learning in teams. Learning tasks that encourage interactions in which everyone participates will lead to greater learning gains than tasks in which one person takes over and does the work (Cohen,1990). This "Team Approach" as described in Project 2061: Science for all Americans states:

The collaborative nature of scientific and technological work should be strongly reinforced by frequent group activity in the classroom. Scientists and engineers work mostly in groups and less often as isolated investigators. Similarly, students should acquire experience-sharing responsibility for learning with each other. In the process of coming to common understandings, students in a group must frequently inform each other about procedures and meanings, argue over findings, and assess how the task is progressing. In the context of team responsibility, feedback and communication become more realistic and of a character very different from the usual individualistic textbook-homework-recitation approach. (p. 202; AAAS, 1990).

Resources for this module

Teacher to Teacher
HTML Remote Sensing Report

Many of the features in the Honolulu image can be made more real to students by having them visit Virtually Hawaii, where ground and aerial photos of many features in the image can be found.