Building Skills for the Future: Teaching High School Students to Utilize Remote Sensing of Wildfires
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
R1: My changes seem to have been made where I could find them. A few issues that were not addressed and one new minor change are below.
NEW: text wrapping problem “introduction” (Table 2)
I’m still not sure the authors have defined “EO”
Line 192 There is a period after “Cohort 2” which doesn’t match style in other headings
Figures 3, 4, 5 Text is too small to read
Author Response
Reviewer 1
My changes seem to have been made where I could find them. A few issues that were not addressed and one new minor change are below. Thanks
NEW: text wrapping problem “introduction” (Table 2)- In the submitted version this looks fine
I’m still not sure the authors have defined “EO” Line 127 done
Line 192 There is a period after “Cohort 2” which doesn’t match style in other headings done
Figures 3, 4, 5 Text is too small to read- Increased font size
Reviewer 2 Report
Abstract line 11-13, when was the data on Italian students which you refer to collected?
Table 2 is difficult to read.
Line 152, power point –> PowerPoint
Data and Methods,
Here we need a more thorough description of the three cohorts, size, selection process, male/female students etc.
Results, Line 146onwards, very little is said about the cohorts themselves, correct in Data and Methods.
Line 173, cohort 2 has three students, but nothing has been said about the other cohorts.
Line 178,
students were provided with precise practice to look at the images,
Now what is precise practice, please correct sentence.
Line 180, on the Latium, Marches, Umbria and Tuscany regions during, perhaps a map would be informative, showing schools, and test areas, just to heop the reader.
Line 210, figure 3, why do you show only cohort two2? it would be interesting to see also the same answers for the other cohorts.
Line 231, siz day period, to what does tis refer? was the course a siz day period? this should have been explained in the methods.
Line 242, complained to have wait for the images to be saved, please correct English.
Line 263, selection requirements, please explain the selection criteria in the methods section.
Line 267, attending a conference, this looks rather high flying, what conference exactly?
Line 278, One student of Cohort 2 was consistently less engaged, possibly due to diverse aspects such
Now we do not know the size of cohort 2 (correct Methods) but this could be interesting, how can we engage students like this. Or did he/she just mistakenly take the course?
Line 282, for a good English, à for good English (remove a)
Author Response
Reviewer 2
Abstract line 11-13, when was the data on Italian students which you refer to collected? year is present in bracket near each cohort name in table 3
Table 2 is difficult to read. DONE Made readable increasing spacing between rows
Line 152, power point –> PowerPoint DONE
Here we need a more thorough description of the three cohorts, size, selection process, male/female students etc. DONE See Iines 148, 164, 176,
Results, Line 146 onwards, very little is said about the cohorts themselves, correct in Data and Methods. See Iines 148, 164, 176,
Line 173, cohort 2 has three students, but nothing has been said about the other cohorts. DONE
See Iines 148, 164, 176,
Line 178, students were provided with precise practice to look at the images. Now what is precise practice, please correct sentence- DONE Corrected practice with procedure. We mean precise steps to follow to assure consistency in the processing
Line 180, on the Latium, Marches, Umbria and Tuscany regions during, perhaps a map would be informative, showing schools, and test areas, just to heop the reader.- The schools are based in Rome- this information has been added. The satellite images were acquired over the 4 regions (Latium, Marches, Umbria and Tuscany).
Line 210, figure 3, why do you show only cohort two2? it would be interesting to see also the same answers for the other cohorts. - Good question! The QUIZ was done with the cohort 2 only. The reason for this is that the ASL program does not ask for assessing the outcome of the work experience in term of knowledge assessment but more in ability to do the job and acquire new skills. With the cohort 1 it was first year for me and I stayed on what was required by the ASL program. With cohort 2 students were asked about their availability to undertake the quiz and they were happy to do that. With cohort 3 the students were so pressurized from their final exams that I choose to avoid to put more pressure on them.
In the future experience we would be please to conduct the Quiz as we are interested to see more the student’s answers as well
Line 231, siz day period, to what does tis refer? was the course a siz day period? this should have been explained in the methods. - DONE See Ines 148, 164, 176, we specified the location of the schools in the text to make it clearer.
Line 242, complained to have wait for the images to be saved, please correct English.- Line 235 DONE Thanks. We have corrected this.
Line 263, selection requirements, please explain the selection criteria in the methods section. DONE. Added reference to table 2 and explained the method section
Line 267, attending a conference, this looks rather high flying, what conference exactly?- Yes, we agree, it was; both students and teacher were very excited to attend. The conference was the Observation Open Science 2017 conference ESRIN, Frascati, 25-28 September 2017. It is mentioned in the Figure 1 caption and reference number 19.
Line 278, One student of Cohort 2 was consistently less engaged, possibly due to diverse aspects such.Now we do not know the size of cohort 2 (correct Methods) but this could be interesting, how can we engage students like this. Or did he/she just mistakenly take the course?- The student (male) had a tablet not a laptop and this didn’t help as the SNAP software failed to work on the laptop. He was encouraged to work in team. However, he was often on the mobile. Size of cohort 2 is 5 students. This can be found the table 1 and added in line 164
Line 282, for a good English, à for good English (remove a) DONE Thanks!
Reviewer 3 Report
The article is of little interest to the readers of this journal. It is a local example of remote sensing teaching that would make more sense in an educational journal.
Author Response
Reviewer 3
The article is of little interest to the readers of this journal. It is a local example of remote sensing teaching that would make more sense in an educational journal.
Final Paragraph added:
Remote Sensing resulted in high potential impact in terms of work experience and education. Looking at Earth from space provided students a different perspective and gave them an understanding of the size of the impact of natural hazards such as wildfires. In addition, it offered the opportunity to link concepts of Math and Physics they had in their curriculum and make sense of them beyond a classroom context. In the future we would like to engage students over a longer time period that connected them with Remote sensing centers at universities
Round 2
Reviewer 3 Report
The article is of little interest to the readers of this journal. It is a local example of remote sensing teaching that would make more sense in an educational journal.
This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This manuscript presents an interesting remote sensing education story, but it does not fit the image and scope of the journal remote sensing.
- High school students do not have a strong background related to remote sensing, it is required to give them an introduction about remote sensing and why remote sensing is an advanced way to study wildfires.
- Why do we need to teach high school students to utilize remote sensing of wildfires? Is it important for their career? The purpose of this study should be well addressed.
- It is better to submit this manuscript to an education journal.
Reviewer 2 Report
Title: Building skills for the future; Teaching high school students to utilize remote sensing of wildfires
Overview: This was an interesting paper about using remote sensing to teach skills to students that connect to possible future employment. I don’t have any major concerns, but see editorial comments below.
Other comments:
Line 22 Why is “College” capitalized?
Lines 23-33 appear to be in a different font
Line 59 There appears to be a quote started with “‘cultural and..” but I don’t see an end quote after that.
Line 62 Should “with” be after “reported”? Or another word?
Table 1 Footnote might be better as “...students have final exams.”
Line 74 and elsewhere. It would be good to clarify what is meant by “college students”. In the USA, for example, “college students” = “university students”. From the other information, these students appear to be in what Americans would call high school students.
Line 84 Remove “the” before “global”
Line 94 Be consistent with having a space or not between a number and units. It’s currently written as “10 m - 20m - 60m”
Line 98 Change “use” to “used”
Line 122 Change to “For Cohort 3…”
Line 124 Should “learnings” be “lessons”?
Table 2 caption Insert “how” before “it has evolved”
Table 2 Seems to be missing a blank line between the first two entries
Table 2 Text in lower right corner of this page is larger than other text “To support and mentoring the students”
Line 139 Change “cohort 2” to “Cohort 2”
Line 144 EO is never defined, but I would assume it means “earth observation”. If so, this heading is redundant to use “EO Observation”
Line 147 In other places, there is no space between “Sentinel” and “2” so make consistent
Line 148, 150 I would not put a space between figure numbers and letters. Use “Figure 1a, Figure 1b”
Figure 1 caption is confusing with a), b), but also referring to images on the left and right
Lines 180-182 A word seems to be missing- what are “direct” and “indirect” referring to? Methods?
Line 192 There is a period after “Cohort 2” which doesn’t match style in other headings
Line 193 Should “base” be “basis”?
Line 195 Change “point” to “Point”
Figures 3, 4, 5 Text is too small to read
Line 207 Add “,” after “Earth”
Line 211 Change “havimg” to “having”
Line 232 Add “.” after “skills”
Line 233 Add “s” to “Suggestion”
Line 238 Add “s” to “logistic”
Line 239 Change “Figure 1” to “Figure 5”
Line 247 Change “on” to “in”
Line 249 Should “recension” be “retention”?
Reviewer 3 Report
The manuscript submitted by Amici &Tesar “Building skills for the future; Teaching high school students …" presents a short report on a specific experience conducted for three years with students of secondary schools.
The didactic approach adopted in this experience appears as a traditional one, being organized by different type of lectures and home work by students (Line 66-67 “experience consisted in 40 contact hours complemented by additional hours managed by the students ….”).
The context provided for this study in the Introduction is limited to a school-work interchange program endorsed by Italian Educational Ministry (MIUR) and in general references to Literature are inadequate (e.g. “ … Greenland experienced its first recorded wildfire in 2017 and a second in 2019”; “... multispectral MDI (MSI) sensor on board of Sentinel2 satellite”; “ … ESA provides an open source software (SNAP) “).
The limited number of subjects in each group (5, 5 and 3) it is unlikely to be a base of any statistical analysis. Moreover the use of term “cohort” in the sense of “statistical study group” is not correct.
Manuscript preparation appears in an approximate way, with many typos errors and several uneven definition for the same concept
e.g.
Line 144 “EO OBSERVATION from space project outcome”
Line 156 “approach to characterize it as presented in the as presented in the Open science”
Line 211 “They valued havimg gained …”
Line 239 “Figure 1. Cohort 3 Cohort 2 didactic evaluation …”
