Elko students’ remote learning boosted by Maptek
Friday, September 4th, 2020
Maptek has helped provide students required to learn from home during COVID-19 lockdown with insight into the maths and science behind the mining industry.
Maptek worked with the Elko City Council and the Elko County School District (ECSD) to deliver an online lesson to students in years 7-12 demonstrating how geometric concepts are applied to real-world mining industry examples.
Maptek provided video and written content to help educate Elko students.
Students learnt about using LiDAR scanning to collect the coordinates that make up geological features, generate a topographic surface from the data points and calculate its surface area.
ECSD Superintendent Todd Pehrson told the Elko Daily the program was a valuable initiative.
‘On behalf of the Elko County School District, we would like to thank Maptek for their educational outreach,’ he said.
‘Community partnerships such as this have allowed the Elko County School District to extend instructional practices for students into the real-world applications that Maptek works with on a daily basis.’
‘It is through strong curriculum integration with real-world applications that will allow our students to forge ahead in these unprecedented times.
‘We look forward to a continued partnership with Maptek and are excited about how we can continue to work together to provide the students of the Elko County School District with these learning opportunities.’
Maptek has strong ties to Elko, having had a presence in the town for more than 30 years. It opened a new office on Idaho Street in October 2019.
The 2019 Nevada Day Parade passes the Maptek Elko office.
General Manager of Maptek North America Rob Hardman said the company was proud to be part of the Elko community and committed to helping its people.
‘We have amazing people on our team that perform technical training for our clients every day and it is exciting to see those same strengths be put to use for a great cause like this one,’ Hardman said.
‘Students in Elko are now able to connect the math and science principles they learned in school to real-world applications in the mining industry.
‘With so many families already involved in this industry in Elko, our hope is that these additional learning resources will resonate with and inspire students to explore the many ways in which math and science are used at mining operations around the world and close to home.’
The idea to create a distance learning course for Elko students was first outlined in a conversation with members of the city council.
‘Maptek reached out to my office asking how they could help the Elko community during the shutdown,’ Elko Mayor Reece Keener said.
‘During a brainstorming session, the idea of creating video learning content for homebound kids came up, and Maptek took the ball and ran with it.’
