About the Geospatial Virtual Camp

The EAST Geospatial Virtual Camp is a cooperative project of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies and EAST, Inc.

The Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies (CAST) was established at the University of Arkansas in September of 1991 in order to bring together the considerable expertise of a network of researchers with a long-standing history of GIS development at the University.

CAST is dedicated to applications in GIS, remote sensing, digital photogrammetry and interoperability and has been selected by the Intergraph Corporation as a Center For Excellence for the Mapping Sciences, by the Oracle Corporation as its first Center of Excellence in Spatial Data Management, and by the Trimble Navigation Ltd. as a Center of Excellence for GPS Mapping Systems: Training and Research.

As a multi-college organization, CAST unites personnel from the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences and the School of Architecture in the common goal of introducing and making GIS technologies available to a wide variety of researchers and professionals and to furthering the field through basic and applied research. CAST focuses on research, technology transfer, data development, undergraduate and graduate education, service to communities and local governments, and professional training in GIS and related technologies. Much of CAST's research efforts involve new approaches to spatial data and the development of new methodologies for analysis of these data, providing products to a variety of different audiences. Cooperative programs developed by CAST are designed to bring together the benefits of academic research and development, the resources of state and federal agencies and the private sector to provide the state and region with effective spatial technologies, trained practitioners, and low-cost digital data.

The Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies, 12 Ozark Hall, Fayetteville, AR 72701, 479/575-6159(phone), 479/575-5218 (fax)

EAST, Inc., is dedicated to providing students with the opportunity to develop competencies consistent with the realities of the Twenty-First Century. This is accomplished through a dynamic operational model of symbiotic alliances and relationships among education, business, and government that create student-centered learning environments driven by local communities but supported by national companies. This powerful educational model help to produce students equipped to be productive, contributing citizens.

EAST Philosophy is based on the following educational principles:

• All students have value and deserve the opportunity to demonstrate their value to their school and community.
• Educational experiences must be relevant, challenging, purposeful, and Student Centered.
• The physical educational environment must include state of the art, real-world tools and reflect a work-like setting.
• Educators should serve as resource guides, managers, and learner facilitators.
• Learning should be self-directed as much as possible and oriented towards real-world projects that engage students in independent and interdependent roles.
• High expectations must be individually established for all students and must drive their efforts to achieve their potential.

Based on these principles, the EAST model has been recognized nationally as an innovative, relevant, and successful approach to education. EAST students are experiencing an individualized self-directed, service-oriented project-based curriculum that is providing value to local schools and communities.

The EAST Initiative is helping educators recognize, create, and maintain a learning environment, which requires students to take the initiative in creating project solutions that produce measurable and tangible results. Students are exposed to strategies that help them move from the traditional self-centered approaches of learning into a more realistic (and more relevant) interdependent environment that stress understanding, collaboration, and team approaches to problem resolution.

Through an extensive professional development process, EAST teachers (facilitators) develop the capacity to stay focused on the intellectual development of their students and learn to evaluate student progress on actual performance in creative and problem solving areas. Teachers provide students with opportunities to experiment while using relevant tools. They allow students to make and profit from mistakes, which fosters the students' ability to become self-reliant problem-solvers.

EAST Initiative, 8201 Ranch Blvd, Suite B-3, Little Rock, AR 72223, 501/371-5016.