Denver International Airport terminal, photograph by Joseph Kerski.

In previous blog entries, I considered the importance of spatial thinking in education and in society, reasons for the recent increase in attention to it, and how we might conceptualize spatial thinking. According to the Learning To Think Spatially report from the National Research Council, spatially literate people need to have the “habit of mind” of knowing where, when, how, and why to think spatially. In this and the following blog, let’s explore how these habits of mind might manifest themselves in 15 different ways in a typical day in the life of a spatial thinker.

Let’s say your day will include a flight on a commercial airline. [1] You board an airport shuttle that picks you up at your home, and are faced with a spatial task: You must arrange your luggage so that it at the same time conserves space but also allows you to easily pull it out once you arrive at the airport. You also have to take note of its appearance and location relative to the luggage from the other shuttle passengers. Once underway, you drive past a street that is adjoined by many used car lots, apartment buildings that look like they were formerly old motels, and gas stations. [2] Because of this type of land use, you hypothesize that the street was, before the advent of limited access freeways, the main route into your city during the middle decades of the 20th Century. [3] Once on a freeway near the airport, you pass a rest area and wonder how long the typical person spends there, what the typical walking route would be from parking lot to rest area buildings, and what the influence of a visitors center inside the rest area and traveling with a dog might have on the time spent and the route taken by each visitor.

- Joseph Kerski, ESRI Education Manager