GIS Skills from Southern Athabascan Classificatory Verbs Skills

The problems being addressed are the following:

1. There are Native American languages at risk of becoming extinct.
2. The need for information technology job skills in remote, isolated regions.

The proposed solution is a free, online course that teaches how classification verbs can be applied to understand topics in Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

VECTOR AND RASTER IN GIS:

Vector

 Polygons which can be created with points from important locations on a map, a pathway or line connecting the dots on the map.

In the Southern Athabaskan languages, Chipewyan and Navajo make use of shape as well for the classificatory verb. For example, a round object like a stone would be given a specific form of the verb taking the action, such as picking up the rock.

RASTER

Raster in GIS refers to data that is changing continuously in the data mapping process, like rainfall or elevation over a certain distance.

The language family mentioned makes use of animate for the classification of verbs. Creatures which also change over time.

-Manner/Control

Raster also can connect to Manner/Control in this language, which is rather similar to the adverb in English. 

Raster shows how the wind was blowing and how the temperatures were changing in the GIS framework, of which Manner/Control does as well.

ATHAPASKAN CLASSIFICATORY VERBS, Eung-Do COOK, The University of Calgary, AMERINDIA n°11, 1986 

The goal is to assist the communities that speak the Southern Athabaskan languages, which are mostly Native American communities from the area of Arizona, New Mexico, and West Texas.

The proposed solution is very technical and appears to be a new idea.

I have created the free, online course. However, I do not have any students for the course at this moment.

The solution could help a lot of people.

At the moment, there is no official connection.

It makes use of a component in a family of languages and applies it to learning key parts of Geographic Information Systems (GIS). At the same time, it prevents the languages from becoming extinct. 

The expectation is that the free, online course will provide information technology jobs skills to the students as the course encourages them to learn more about the languages on one community in the Native American community.

The impact goal is quality education, primarily. This can be measured by offering a test at the end of the course.

The core technology is Geographic Information Systems (GIS) which is presented to students in terms of a free, online course that ties in key concepts by means of analogies to one family of languages in the Native American community.

It is a free, online course and accessible to all parts of the US and Canada.

Only one person at the moment.

I have been working on the solution for less than one year.

The greatest need in terms of staffing is for staff that can speak this language.

The goal is to create a successful, free, online course that would be funded by grants.

The operating expense for the existing online course is a relatively low cost self-finance and financially sustainable.