ArcGIS Explorer Blog : GIS Day

GIS Day with Explorer in Corpus Christi, Texas

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:50:00 GMT

A total of 490 students plus teachers from 14 middle and high schools surrounding Corpus Christi, Texas, were hosted at Texas A&M by the University and Del Mar College on GIS Day. The City and local users of GIS gave presentations and demonstrated how their community is using GIS. ESRI showed ArcGIS Explorer and the students found their campus and vowed to download it as soon as possible. The picture below shows two teachers finding their school location using ArcGIS Explorer.

We only had about 5 minutes with each group of about 15 students – but they all “got it” right away and some didn’t want to leave the station. Wish I could have shown them more. We also had the Weather feed on live and NOAA was there so they could see the data at NOAA booth and see it in ArcGIS Explorer! I also quickly showed them how to make a presentation. I had to take weather off of the screen shot as it covered the city! Explorer was a big hit!

Contributed by:
Ann B. Johnson
Higher Education Program Manager

Show us your geography and GIS!

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:39:00 GMT

Next week starts Geography Awareness Week. And next Wednesday, November 18, is GIS Day. So we'd like you to show us your geography and GIS!

We're ready to highlight your geographic and GIS activities using ArcGIS Explorer. Send us your screenshots, maps or layer files, or a brief write-up, and we'll feature it here in a future blog post. Send all submissions to bszukalski@esri.com

GIS Day provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society.

Launched in 1987 by presidential proclamation, Geography Awareness Week is held the third week of each November, promoting the importance of geography education in the United States.

If you're new to ArcGIS Explorer you can get more information and download it for free from the ArcGIS Explorer product home page or the ArcGIS Explorer Resource Center.

Explorer, GIS Day, and Geography Awareness Week

ArcGIS-Explorer-Team — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 20:12:00 GMT

Yesterday was GIS Day, and we've still got a couple of days left in Geography Awareness Week. About.com informs us that:

Geography Awareness Week was established in 1987 when U.S. President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that established the third week in November as Geography Awareness Week. Geography Awareness Week is sponsored by the National Geographic Society and other geographic organizations at the national, state, and local level.

We've received some screenshots and descriptions of Explorer being used on GIS Day and throughout this week. If you have more examples that you'd like to share, let us know by sending a screenshot and description via e-mail to arcgisexplorerblog@esri.com

This first example is from Adam Pittman, who prepared a presentation for the fourth grade class at Cambridge Elementary School in San Antonio, Texas. The students are learning about explorers of North America, and ArcGIS Explorer was used to look at the explorations of Coronado, Lewis & Clark, and LaSalle.

Here's a screenshot of the Lewis & Clark exploration ending up at Fort Clatsop, Oregon, where Capt. William Clark wrote in his journal "Ocian in view! O! the joy." While they weren't quite at the ocean, they were close, having reached the Columbia River estuary. Various camps are shown along the route.

Coronado travelled up from Mexico, heading to the Grand Canyon and then heading east through Texas and up to Kansas. He stopped just outside Lindsborg, Kansas, erecting a small fort on top of a hill, shown below. The fort has been rebuilt and can be seen in Explorer's default map.

GIS tools were used to analyze terrain and view other layers of information that could have helped these early explorers, like weather, topography, vegetation, and others.

And Ray Carnes presented at the Highland (California) Library and Environmental Learning Center as part of a "See Highland Through Maps" GIS Day exhibit. Shown below is a part of the city with average household income information. Images like these helped visitors understand the characteristics of their local community.