Interdisciplinary Teaching Using Satellite Images as a Way to Introduce Remote Sensing in Secondary School

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

It is an outstanding paper that deals with a current subject and incorporates an interesting vision to introduce remote sensing in secondary education. The article responds adequately to a scientific structure and provides relevant results. Nevertheless, it could be improved according to the following recommendations:

• The article is supported by extensive scientific literature that allows contextualizing and evaluating its degree of innovation. However, the different steps of the project methodology (section 2) and the project verification (section 3) could be justified on theoretical arguments and teaching principles to be more scientifically sound.
• This experience could be contextualised by comparing it with other examples of similar characteristics. It would be advisable to provide an international perspective.
• The description of the results is mainly qualitative. It is also advisable to include quantitative data reflected in tables and graphs that provide a greater level of detail and development than in figure 4.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 2 Report

This manuscript introduces the role of remote sensing in high school education. Compared to most of the published remote sensing papers which addressed the issues of techniques and sciences, this manuscript’s contribution is very special and interesting – the high school education will bring more talented students to the domain of remote sensing in future. I don’t have many comments to this manuscript, however, some suggestions are provided: 1. The figures and table should be reformatted. For example, [nm] in Figure 3 should be corrected to (nm) which is more frequently used, and scale bars should be used in Figure 2. And what does the number above the bars in Figure 4. The authors should respond but not limited to these problems. 2. I also suggest the teachers use night-time light remote sensing which captures very colorful photos at night and is very attractive to students, and they can discuss this in the Discussion section, some references are provided as followings: Levin, N.; Kyba, C.C.M.; Zhang, Q.; Sánchez de Miguel, A.; Román, M.O.; Li, X.; Portnov, B.A.; Molthan, A.L.; Jechow, A.; Miller, S.D., et al. Remote sensing of night lights: A review and an outlook for the future. Remote Sens Environ 2020, 237, 111443. Li, X.; Levin, N.; Xie, J.; Li, D. Monitoring hourly night-time light by an unmanned aerial vehicle and its implications to satellite remote sensing. Remote Sens Environ 2020, 247, 111942. Li, X.; Li, X.; Li, D.; He, X.; Jendryke, M. A preliminary investigation of luojia-1 night-time light imagery. Remote Sensing Letters 2019, 10, 526-535.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

It is very important that young people's interest in Earth Sciences is aroused since high school, and the proposal to use remote sensing to contribute to this objective is pertinent. In the present study, the authors introduce a method for using remote sensors in high school as a learning tool. The study is well conducted and has the potential to be replicated. However, I have some recommendations to improve the manuscript.

Materials and Methods

Could you mention in which country the project was presented and if the schools belong to a single city or several?

Line 109: SAT? Include the meaning of the acronym

Line 207: Did the students prepare any field excursion reports, for example,  photographs of the land cover types observed in the field and related with the pattern observed in the Sentinel image, if not, could this be considered in the future?

Line 217: Could you mention example of the “extended profiles”?

Line 220: Why didn't you use a Likert-like scale for the teachers' questions as if you did for the students?

Results

Line 235: Could you indicate how you made the assessment of “The vast majority of teachers said” ?, for example, greater than the average, or X standard deviations greater than the mean?

In the affirmations of teacher interviews it is important that you indicate them in terms of percentages or proportions of the teachers that support your claims:

Line 246: Did all the teachers agree? What percentage of the total?

Line 249: Some of them expressed… (how many? What percentage?)

Line 258: “Teachers mainly mentioned”, What means this in relation to the total of all teachers?

Line 261: What percentage of teachers “noted the latter point as a difficulty”?

Line 267-268: Quantify “was the most common mentioned”

Line 274: "They suggested" How many suggest this?

Line 303: Figure 4. Why low values in Q1 and Q5 qualify it as negative feelings? Is it not positive that the students consider that the project was not boring, and it was not difficult?

Discussion

Could you indicate what areas of improvement could be considered to replicate the project?

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Thank you for your review, all my questions were answered and the suggested improvement recommendations were also incorporated.