Fostering Spatial Thinking Through Games

by Esri Education Programs on May 18, 2012

Those of us in the fields of geography, education, and GIS can probably name numerous games and activities that we are attracted to simply because there is “something spatial” about them. Some of them may have to do with wayfinding, others with angles and directions, patterns and shapes, distances, adjacency, groups, or may rely on geographic content knowledge. In Monopoly, I always sought houses and hotels on Oriental, Vermont, and Connecticut Avenues simply because I liked where they were positioned on the board. I wasn’t deterred by the fact that they were on the “cheap” side of the board (consequently, I seldom won). I enjoy playing Blokus and putting together jigsaw puzzles because of their spatial aspects (although I never could get the top pieces in the 3-D globe puzzle I helped put together this past New Year’s Eve).

Many of us were fond of the blue category in the original Trivial Pursuit game, which was geography (and were subsequently embarrassed whenever we missed a geography question!). I loved the angles and positions in early video games such as Pong and Galaga, and was frustrated by Asteroids largely because it seemed that the scale was wrong. Millions of people play Spatial IQ, Cross Fingers, Glass Tower, and other spatially oriented games on their computers and smartphones daily. And outside, while I found the directions to my one and only road rally game too complicated, I greatly enjoy confluence hunting, geocaching, and earthcaching.

A small but growing community of researchers and instructors is exploring how the playing of games can foster spatial thinking, content knowledge, and skills important in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, geography, and GIS. My colleague Dr. Diana Stuart Sinton teaches a class called the “Foundations of Spatial Thinking” as part of the Learning Spatially at the University of Redlands program. One of her assignments to the students is to categorize games and activities in terms of the spatial strategies used, and how the strategies may be relevant for STEM learning. Dr. Ola Ahlqvist has an NSF cyber learning grant to develop and study learning with GeoGames. National Geographic supported Reach The World’s development of geo-games. The world of geospatially-oriented games on smartphones and computers is poised for great expansion, with the inclusion of real spaces and places in these games posing intriguing potential for teaching, learning, and research. Imagine any game scenario not in an imaginary world but taking place using imagery and maps of Davenport, or Shreveport, or anywhere.

What are your favorite spatially-oriented games? How might you use games to foster spatial thinking and learning?

- Joseph Kerski, Esri Education Manager

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Fun with GIS 120: Five Fave World Maps

by Esri Education Programs on May 14, 2012

Last week’s blog was about five favorite ArcGIS Online maps of US data. This week I offer five favorite ArcGIS Online maps using world data. Like the US maps, these work on Mac or PC, tablet or smartphone. Each of these can be experienced by clicking on the map or using the short url.

1. Lat-Long Finder Tool, http://esriurl.com/latlongfinder
Many times, you just need a quick latitude and longitude. Use this app to zoom in to anywhere around the world, even plan out a field trip around in your community.

2. Elevation Profile, http://esriurl.com/elevation2
Use this app to draw a path in the neighborhood or across the world, and get a sideways look at the elevation, even out in the ocean, and trace to see the correspondence.

3. Recent Earthquakes, http://esriurl.com/recentquakes
Explore the last three months of earthquakes, classified by magnitude and containing attributes of date and depth. Watch local concentrations, identify global patterns.

4. World Climate, http://esriurl.com/climate
Characteristics of climate, presented in time series data, with anticipated shifts as projected through models.

5. World Bank Age & Population, http://esriurl.com/worldbankpop
This is a complex data set with multiple layers and multiple time slices, plus pop-ups spelling out info from the last half-century.

Again, innumerable lessons await teachers of science, social studies, math, and the holistically-minded educator. As with last week’s maps of the US, customize these maps, mix and match the data, seek out a project, focus on your specialarea of study. Examine the patterns and relationships that describe and influence all our lives.

- Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri Education Manager

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Components in an Introduction to Spatial Thinking Course

by Esri Education Programs on May 11, 2012

In my last blog post, I mentioned that universities are increasingly thinking about implementing courses entitled “Introduction to Spatial Thinking”. I described a few existing excellent models for such courses, inviting comments from the community. Development of such courses would be hastened by community dialog so that each faculty member does not feel like he or she has to develop such a course from scratch. In this essay, I would like to share components that would valuable in such a course.

I believe such a course should include a mix of reflections on readings and videos, and hands-on work with GIS and GPS technologies. An active discussion on the theoretical underpinnings of spatial thinking is necessary, because most students entering such a course most likely have had minimal exposure to geography in the past, and most likely have not purposely thought about the applicability of spatial thinking to their education, career, or life. I would begin with selected videos and essays to foster discussion, including the Geospatial Revolution, GIS Touches our everyday lives, my ArcWatch article Spatial Thinking: Habits of Mind, and my video Why Geography Education Matters. I would access articles on the bibliography on the Esri Education Community from Diana Stuart Sinton, Sarah Bednarz, Reg Golledge, and Phil Gersmehl, among others.

Whether face to face or online, I would promote active engagement with geospatial technologies. Easy-to-implement yet powerful activities would use ArcGIS Online, including Earth Quiz: Name that Place, analyzing the distribution of bail bonds and car washes in a metropolitan area, Weird Earth (Using strange and unusual imagery to spark inquiry), Exploring 10 Landscapes (such as eskers, karst, and lava fields), analyzing 10 aspects of water, (including watersheds, wetlands, dams and reservoirs, and oceans), and analyzing demographic components and their implications (such as median age, income, diversity, population density, and population change over time). Over the course of the semester, I would gradually increase the analytical rigor, using ArcGIS for Desktop with selected lessons from the Our World GIS Education books, siting a ski area using GIS, and determining the mean center of population for the USA and for individual states, 1790-2010. I would frequently include getting students out onto the campus or in their own neighborhoods (if the course is online), collecting data, mapping data, hyperlinking text, video, and photographs, and analyzing resulting patterns within a GIS environment.

I would require frequent presentations from students, including a presentation at the end of the semester, asking each student: How do you use spatial thinking each day, how have you used spatial thinking to solve three problems in this course, and how will you use GIS in the future?

What would you include in a course on spatial thinking?

-Joseph Kerski, Esri Education Manager

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Ten Lessons on GIS Education from other parts of the World

by Esri Education Programs on May 8, 2012

I have had the fortune of visiting and working on a variety of GIS education projects at universities from Beirut to Bujumbura, Kyoto to San Jose CR. For those readers who are accustomed to working or studying in modern GIS labs with the latest hardware, software and textbooks, well, it turns out that worldwide this is the exception rather than the rule. Traveling around parts of the developing world I have seen many differences but more surprising to me have been the similarities. Here is a short list of some of the lessons, perhaps surprising, I have learned about GIS education from other parts of the world.

An ArcGIS training course as part of
a Masters degree program at UN University,
Tokyo. Students, mostly from developing
nations, were treated to modern facilities.

1. GIS is still new. Although for many of us GIS is a 40-year-old phenomenon, the world is chock-full of institutions that are JUST NOW beginning to learn about the power of GIS in education. The potential growth in developing nations is mindblowing. Most places around the world have just begun scratching the surface of GIS use in secondary schools, which are slowly gaining access to computers and internet connectivity. Much growth can be expected there also, especially if educators follow some of the innovative experiences in places like Canada, The Netherlands and South Africa.

2. Limited Globalization. When I mentioned The Ohio State University at a recent meeting in Ghana, one of the local university administrators said “Hey, I’m a Buckeye!”. Many GIS professors around the world have doctorate degrees from the US and Europe, however are unable to recreate Western-style learning environments when back home due to a lack of resources and institutional support. Important theoretical topics in GI Science, such as geo-semantics or data quality assessment, are not treated in many regions of the world where more practical topics dominate. In fact, GIS research per se, beyond the typical “GIS applied to topic X”, is really quite limited to developed nations.

3. The phone is the platform of the future. Many of today’s students in the developing world do not own a PC or have internet at home, but they do own a mobile phone. From what I have seen in Eastern Africa, for example, the percentages must be something like 30% versus 90%. These students are ready to leapfrog straight to distributed i.e. mobile GIS.

4. Unstable utilities. Many GIS laboratories around the world have computers that function only at certain times, depending on available electricity and maintenance. I tend not to photograph laboratories with “dead” computers out of courtesy, but they are everpresent. Teaching must and does accommodate this reality. The mobile phones, however, do work most of the time!

5. Digital Divide. Many GIS students do not have reliable access to the web and, therefore, are missing out on the vast array of web resources including GIS articles and lessons. Increased access to the web will revolutionize all education, not only in GIS. Dramatically increased bandwidth is now reaching both West and East coasts of Africa, and so we hope expect that connectivity will reach classrooms soon.

A cramped yet functional GIS
lab in Ghana. GIS yes, web no.

6. Private versus Public. Many students are unaware of the private geospatial marketplace, believing instead that their government is the only provider and consumer of geodata. This often lowers their horizons as far as employment opportunities. In Rwanda Esri has been working with government agencies to promote geo-entrepreneurship among young graduates.

7. Role models. Everybody around the world has a relative or friend studying or working in the US or Europe; never ceases to amaze me. This means that many students can imagine themselves working anywhere on Earth, if they can only catch that special break. But do they think that all their lucky friends work for government agencies? And there is now some renewed hope that internet connectivity will provide greater employment opportunity at home and will reduce the legacy of brain-drain.

8. Nike and ArcGIS. Many GIS students in developing nations are eager to learn and to acquire “brand name” software, as is the case also for their phones, their laptops, and their clothing. This is in part because university students tend to come from higher socioeconomic ranks, but also because students see that GIS jobs require knowledge of known commercial software. Software piracy is an issue but certainly not a showstopper, and slowly universities are acquiring site licenses which allow free software distribution to students anyway.

9. Starving for visitors. Almost without exception GIS education programs have asked me to help recruit volunteers to come visit them to teach short courses. Normally the universities or secondary schools are very accommodating regarding housing and hospitality (sometimes the red-carpet treatment can be almost too much). More needs to be done to match “geomentors” with hosts. Opportunities exist in interesting locations such as Accra, Kigali, Macao, Tokyo, or Belize.

10. Need to move beyond the desktop. Most GIS students around the world –including the developed world– are not yet learning what we might call enterprise GIS, that which goes beyond desktop “overlay and buffer” type of exercises, to include data publication and sharing using client/server and cloud infrastructures. This threatens to limit the reach of GIS’s benefits for societal problem solving. Again increased access to internet resources in the classroom is the key.

–

The list could go on of course, but ten seems to be the magic number these days. Overall my view is quite optimistic, because smart students who are given access to resources can flourish anywhere. I welcome your feedback regarding observations you have made regarding GIS education situations around the world.

- Mike Gould, Esri Global Education Manager

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Fun with GIS 119: Five Faves of USA

by Esri Education Programs on May 7, 2012

PD approaches! With the sun heading to the Tropic of Cancer, educators across USA are planning what to learn over the summer. For ye non-teachers, know that most educators will seek massive infusions to brain, heart, and soul in the few short weeks between graduation and the return to classes. Like humpback whales gorging on the summer herring, many teachers seek day-long, week-long, even month-long absorption in new ways of seeing, thinking, and doing. With that in mind, this week I offer my five favorite maps based on USA data using ArcGIS Online. They work on Mac or PC, tablet or smartphone. Each of these can be experienced by clicking on the map or using the short url.

1. USA Demographics for Schools
10 layers of scale-dependent demographic data at state, county, census tract, and block group, with pop-ups: http://esriurl.com/usademographics

2. USA Territorial Acquisitions.
A common but incomplete representation of US history. What should be added to make a more holistic view? http://esriurl.com/usaterritories

3. US48Weather.
It changes constantly, and affects us massively. The contents update every few minutes; the impact can last a lifetime: http://esriurl.com/us48weather

4. USA Waters for Schools.
Hierarchies of watersheds, which bind us together but pay not a whit of attention to political boundaries. How frightfully inconvenient! http://esriurl.com/usawaters

5. USA Ecological Subregions.
The integration of landform, climate, soil, and biogeography. Types diverge or merge hierarchically, and influence massively how people can live within them: http://esriurl.com/usaecoregions

Vast numbers of lessons await teachers of science, social studies, math, and the holistically-minded educator. Customize these maps, mix and match the data, seek out a project, focus on your area. Examine the patterns and relationships that describe and influence all our lives.

- Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri Education Manager

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Planning an Introduction to Spatial Thinking Course

by Esri Education Programs on May 4, 2012

A question that gets increasingly asked on listservs and forums these days is advice by those who are planning a course at their university that focuses on spatial thinking. These courses may be entitled “Introduction to Spatial Thinking” but there are numerous variations, depending on the goals of the university and hosting department. It is exciting to learn about these new courses and those who are planning them, because it shows that the message that we in the geospatial education community have been sharing for years is at last getting out beyond our own community. That message has consistently been that spatial thinking and spatial analysis are too valuable to be held by a single department, program, or school on campus, whether it is Geography, Natural Sciences, or anything else. Rather, spatial thinking and analysis, and the use of GIS technology and methods as an aid in teaching those concepts, are valuable to the student’s overall education, career skills, and to society. These concepts and skills therefore need to be embedded in all departments on campus as part of a rigorous and innovative 21st Century education. Such courses not only provide theoretical and practical background for GIS courses, but also for any discipline in which the “where” question is important—in business marketing, environmental design, wildlife biology, history, civil engineering, geology, epidemiology, geography, and beyond.

How should such a course be planned and built? Fortunately, some good models exist. For example, the course developed by the GeoTech Center provides a checklist vetted by numerous GIS education professionals on what might be included. Dr Bone at the University of Oregon is developing a freshman-level course entitled Our Digital Earth, which will provide hundreds of students annually with an appreciation of the ubiquity of geospatial data and technologies in their everyday lives, and how the geospatial revolution is shaping societies around the world. Dr Diana Stuart Sinton developed courses at the University of Redlands such as Foundations of Spatial Thinking. Other example courses can be found in the “case studies” section of the Esri EdCommunity and in the pages of Esri publications ArcWatch, Esri News for Education, and ArcNews. I will follow this post with my own thoughts about what might be included in such a course in future blog essays.

In the meantime, please share your thoughts: What would you include in a course on spatial thinking?

- Joseph Kerski, Esri Education Manager

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Seven Ideas: GIS for Geocaching with Scouts, Youth, or Anyone

by Esri Education Programs on May 2, 2012

For the last several years now, every spring and fall, I volunteer to help the local Girl Scout council, not unlike many you GeoMentors. We plan and implement a large geocaching event. The event, now called “The Geocache Party” typically has 100 to 300 Girl Scouts involved. If you have ever planned a sizable geocaching (or Open Caching) event with several activities, you know placing, tracking, and reclaiming your caches can be a real nightmare. For a single event last year, we placed nearly 100 caches across 175 wooded acres. Just try to remember where all those caches are when you pick them up, at the end of an event!

Like many outdoor geo-activities, geocaching can be enhanced by using GIS. To support individual (traditional) geocaching or large geocaching events, I have assembled my seven ideas for leveraging GIS – to plan, manage, or even evaluate your caches and performance.

  1. Map your geocache coordinates before you leave home with the ArcGIS Online map viewer. Explore the geographic features, hazards, and public lands wherever you are headed. You can even add real-time weather to your map.

  2. Track and record your geocache finds in your own map at ArcGIS.com. This allows you to tell your geocaching stories, your way.

  3. Preparing a geocaching event? Use a GIS to map and manage your caches. Cache type, location, activity or purpose fields help explain where and why a cache is placed. (image below)

  4. Print out your GIS map and take it with you for reference while geocaching. Selecting the best base map can often lend helpful data to your hunt!

  5. Report out! Add your GPS track, routes, and waypoints to your geocache coordinate map to see how well you did finding caches – in ArcGIS Online. (first image)

  6. Report out! Take all the photos and video you want while geocaching. You can place media in “notes” and geotag to document your trip.

  7. Learn GIS career skills while enjoying a great geo-hobby!

By the way, both the Boy Scouts of America and the Girl Scouts now offer Geocaching badges, each at certain age levels.

Happy Geocaching!

- Tom Baker, Esri Education Manager

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Fun with GIS 118: Seeds of STEM

by Esri Education Programs on April 30, 2012

Visiting schools is a rush! Last week, I watched students in three schools in two states use geospatial technology. Without exception, the students were anxious to explore, diving headlong into the maps, comparing here to there. A few showed projects they had created in the last month. The catch? All these students were from grades 3-6 (age 8-12). I worked with the TravelWise program at two schools in Utah, and Waterville (WA) school’s “Literate About Biodiversity” program built in conjunction with NatureMapping.

Fourth grade students (despite blinders installed for computer-based testing) collaborate on a measurement task.

I’m often asked “When can kids use GIS?” I’ve watched many young learners work with GIS tools and demonstrate more interest and intellectual capacity than shown by older learners. Working with ArcGIS Online and starting with a view of their immediate neighborhood, students in third grade have been able to point to parts of an image and translate them into elements and directions out the window. I’ve walked with third and even second graders as they held a GPS unit, told me how the devices record numbers, that these mean a specific place on earth that can be put on a map, and that they can then connect on the map things they see out in the field. I’ve watched as kids defined paths and measured distances, zoomed in and out for detail or context, and compared their paths with those of neighbors.

Third grade student drives the mouse from the teacher's desk (by lamp) while another directs the activity.

I’ve also watched learners in high school and beyond (including even teachers!) who were hard pressed to do the same. My view: “With an appropriate introduction to concepts and skills, learners of almost any age can use GIS in tasks that require spatial thinking and technological skill.” There may be a base of life experience and cognitive capacity required, and I’ve not spent as much time with second grade and younger, but third graders are definitely capable of doing serious tasks with GIS and GPS, grasping what they are doing, and articulating it.

Third grade student finds the established spot (pencil driven into ground) and verifies with GPS in advance of taking serial documentary photo.

So why are some older students and even teachers unable to do the same? Sadly, I suspect many have had their curiosity and creativity regulated into submission. Many of these older learners have been willing to follow prescribed steps to reach a supposed “correct response,” but, absent steps, were unable to generate a relevant question themselves or connect the exercise with any real meaning.

        Third grade student shares her project documenting the life cycle and migration of salmon.        

Of the many learning examples I get to watch, the most powerful emphasize personal interest. The best educators I watch are able to introduce topics and help students of all backgrounds see quickly how these relate to their lives. Then, students pursue short customized studies that build an expanding lattice of principles, facts, concepts, and skills with personal relevance. Students are encouraged to mix and match, stretch and discover, and even risk failure, as long as they keep looking.

Life doesn’t come with a handbook. Few jobs come with an absolute instruction set, finite facts to memorize, and no decisions to make. Few events in life require no grasp of relationships or capacity to note differences between things here and things over there. Kids need to build these frameworks, and can do so starting from a young age, with geotech. Young kids love critters, they understand the basics of their neighborhood, and they are naturally curious. As one of my mentors described it, “Educators need to reach in and grab students through their doors.” Young kids have substantial capacity for doing and learning; we plant the seeds of STEM early. If we can foster those, we will help the youth, our schools, our communities, and the planet alike, in the best way possible. But educators and — more important — the people who monitor and regulate them can also vaporize curiosity, creativity, and craftsmanship with frightening speed, if we let it happen.

- Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri Education Manager

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ArcGIS Explorer and the Xbox 360 Kinect

by Esri Education Programs on April 25, 2012

The Microsoft Xbox 360 Kinect is one of most powerful consumer-oriented “Natural User Interface” devices available today. Its near-infrared camera produces 3D motion data of anything in front of the it and coupled with a standard webcam and quadraphonic microphone, the device is jammed pack with input sensors. The Microsoft Education team promotes Kinect and has prepared over a 100 lessons and activities to promote “active” learning. Microsoft also claims the Kinect may be useful as an assistive technology device and in promoting collaboration.

What you might not know is that the Kinect can plug to your computer and be used as an interface device!

Think about young students actively controlling a 3D ArcGIS Explorer Desktop globe – investigating the Earth while moving arms, legs, and torso to direct navigation, display data, or conduct an analysis. What an interesting way to engage young, energetic learners.

Last week, I demonstrated this concept at the meeting of the Esri Education Team. I connected my Kinect to my Windows laptop and we took turns controlling ArcGIS Explorer Desktop! To get the environment setup, I used the USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies recommendations. This set-up requires installing a set of drivers and then running the FAAST toolkit. Basically, FAAST allows you to create a mapping between Kinect-detected body movements to keyboard strokes. So, when I raise my right arm, the World spins right!

How to make the Kinect work for you:


  1. Acquire a stand-alone Xbox 360 Kinect or if you have a Kinect, just get an external USB power supply.
  2. Locate a computer with Windows 7, ArcGIS Explorer Desktop, and a free USB port.
  3. Visit the USC Institute for Creative Technologies to install drivers and configure the Kinect.
  4. Create your own mapping file or you can start with my simple mapping file.

Remember, these steps might require a little extra “tech-savvyness” and the FAAST toolkit from USC is an open source (neither a Microsoft nor Esri) project. Use at your own risk.

Post your comments and links using the Kinect to control ArcGIS Explorer Desktop below! Everyone should be able to create a fluid interaction with ArcGIS Explorer Desktop using the Kinect. Good luck!

- Tom Baker,Esri Education Manager

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Esri Education GIS Conference 2012

by Esri Education Programs on April 23, 2012

July 21–24, 2012 ~ Marriott Marquis and Marina ~ San Diego, CA

GIS education prepares students for valued careers, enhances learning across a variety of disciplines, and enables administrators to realize efficiencies in campus operations. Through technical sessions, hands-on workshops, and user presentations, the Esri Education GIS Conference provides unique learning opportunities to help you and your educational institution maximize its investment in GIS.

Join us as we envision the future of GIS technology and pedagogy in a uniquely participatory plenary discussion and be a founding member of the next generation Esri Education Community.

Learn more!

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