GIS Education Community

Unconferencing the EduC

by dibiase on June 17, 2013

The 2013 Esri Education GIS Conference includes some new activities that we’re introducing for the first time this year. Most ambitious of these is an “unconference” track scheduled for 10:30 am until 5:30 pm on Sunday, July 7.

What makes an unconference so different? First and foremost, it’s that participants set the agenda, not the organizers. This approach is consistent with the purpose of the EduC. The main reason we organize it is to strengthen the GIS education community. Feedback from last year’s event tells us that participants want more opportunities for conversation, and to be more involved in setting the agenda. The unconference format makes sense for both of these goals. Besides, we thought it could be fun!

Unconference is not a new approach. It originated in the 1980s with a concept called “Open Space Technology” devised by Harrison Owen. The concept is well documented online. Many variations on the Open Space approach have emerged in recent years, including EdCamps, TeachMeets, BarCamps, and Birds of a Feather sessions. Most of these variants share a few common characteristics:

1) Unconferences begin with no formal agenda, other than an overarching charge or theme.

2) Participants determine the agenda voluntarily and democratically.

3) Sessions report back to the entire group.

Our charge to conference participants is a pair of questions: First, what are the established and emerging best practices in GIS education? And second, what challenges remain to be addressed in GIS education?

Setting the Agenda

The unconference track will begin at 10:30, following a morning plenary session on “Emerging Best Practices in ArcGIS Online for Education” and a coffee break. Participants will gather in the Marina Ballrooms D&E, in the South Tower of the San Diego Marriott Marquis & Marina. There participants will find seven bulletin boards. Each bulletin board corresponds to one of the seven meeting rooms available to us for unconference sessions.

The boards will be printed with grids that divide the track into five hour-long time slots for unconference sessions beginning at 11:30, 12:30, 1:30, 2:30 and 3:30. As participants enter the Ballrooms to set the agenda, they’ll receive a handout that includes a couple of large post-notes. Those who wish to organize and lead a session will write their name and proposed topic on a post-it, then stick the post-it on a board in the time slot and meeting room they prefer. Those who don’t wish to organize a session can simply stand back and choose which sessions they wish to attend.

In some cases, more than one session will be proposed for the same room and time slot. We’ll resolve such conflicts by combining similar topics or, if need be, asking participants to vote on competing session topics. Members of the Esri Education Team will be standing by to answer questions and resolve conflicts. If there’s no space left in the agenda for a proposed session, proposers are free to set up ad hoc meetings at other spaces, such as the hotel coffee shop, or by the pool, or in the bar.

Unconference Sessions

Sessions will begin at 11:30, after the agenda is. Session leaders will convene their sessions with remarks about how their topic relates to the twin themes of the unconference: emerging best practices and remaining challenges in GIS education. Then the session will proceed with group discussion, presentations, or whatever format the session leader proposed. Between sessions, participants will return to the Ballrooms to review the agendas posted on the bulletin boards and choose their next session.

At the end of each session, the leader(s) will summarize the session in preparation for his or her report back to the entire group.The report may be a post to a social media channel, or a lightning talk session in the San Diego Ballroom starting at 4:30 pm. We hope that a cash bar will contributed to a lighthearted set of three-minute summary presentations.

Embracing Chaos

We hope most EduC attendees will choose to participate in the unconference track. If they do, this this will be an unusually large unconference. Everyone should expect it to seem a bit chaotic at first, until the agenda is set. If you’re unsure what you’re supposed to do at the event, just look for an Education Team member who will be on hand to answer your questions. Meanwhile, think ahead about a burning issue you’d like to propose.

Those who choose not to participate in the creative chaos of the unconference will find plenty to do in EduC Computer Labs or the Expo, which will be open all day in Marina Ballroom F&G in the South Tower.

Posted in Education | 2 Comments

Teaching Spatial Concepts with Drive-Time Buffers

by Joseph Kerski on June 14, 2013

Teaching spatial concepts and analysis can be effectively done with web-based GIS tools. One type of spatial analysis involves the use of buffers–areas that show proximity to mapped features. One kind of buffer is a “drive time” or “service area” buffer, which can be used to calculate and display the amount of time required to walk, bicycle, or drive to or from a certain location. This developer map is also useful for teaching to create some buffers, in this case, drive time.

1-2-3 minute drive time buffers

Click on a location in the city of Lawrence, Kansas and wait a moment for the drive time buffer to appear. Ask the students: Why aren’t these buffers a perfect circle? Click on Interstate Highway 70 and note the differences between the buffer along this limited access highway versus a buffer along city streets. Click on a point just north of the river and note the effect of the river that blocks quick access to areas south of it.

These drive time buffers depend not only on the street location and density, but they have intelligence beyond street location: They take into account one-way streets, stop signs and stop lights, traffic volume, speed limit, physical barriers, and terrain. Pan the map to a rural area outside Lawrence and click on the map in that location. What is the difference in the amount of terrain someone could reach in 1, 2, and 3 minutes from a rural area versus that from an urban area? Why do these differences exist? Pan to the location where you live and calculate drive time buffers in different locations in your own community.

For an application of this concept in analyzing access to a specific type of business, access this map showing pizza restaurants that are within a 3 minute drive of the location you select. Click on various locations and note the differences in the buffer and the resulting selected restaurants. This service uses a Yahoo! Local Search to calculate its drive time, but also note that terrain is still important. In other words, yes, physical geography still matters!

Both of these live maps and the services they provide are easy to use, fascinating, and can foster much good discussion about the practical application of spatial thinking and analysis.

Posted in Education | Tagged Analysis, ArcGIS Online, Spatial Thinking | Leave a comment

Designing and Teaching a GeoTech Club at a School

by Joseph Kerski on June 7, 2013

My colleagues and I on the Esri Education Team sometimes hear from educators, parents, and those in the GIS community who have successfully run geotechnology clubs at their local school. Over the past few years, I have also had the opportunity to run a GeoTech Club of my own, at a local middle school, and then at a local high school. Space does not permit me to go into too much detail, and therefore I would welcome a dialogue on this topic below. However, I wish to share the approach I have taken and what I have learned in the process.

GIS Poster from High School student participating in GeoTech Club

First, an after-school club is an excellent way for students to engage in GIS, remote sensing, GPS, and web mapping. Second, since it is a club, I encourage you to make the activities fun and engaging. I hand out cool maps, satellite images, and other mapping related items. We investigate current events using GIS. During every class, I bring in real job ads requiring GIS skills in the local area and we discuss career decisions and work environments. Third, I start the school year with field activities–we gather data about litter, trees and shrubs, social zones, cell phone reception, and infrastructure on the school campus using GPS receivers and smartphones (“We get to use our phones in school? Cool!”). We map our field collected data in ArcGIS Online. Fourth, I ask them what they are interested in examining. Fifth, choose a variety of topics and scales: We examine local-to-global issues such as urban sprawl, open space trails, business site selection, population change and characteristics, watersheds, weather, natural hazards, energy, biodiversity, and more.

Sixth: Soon after the second semester begins, I start instructing less and let the students pursue an independent project of their own choosing. One student created an ArcGIS Online map with data points and photographs to support the field trip the Earth Science teacher was conducting. Another made a map-based project comparing all of the local lunch spots students in his school. Another made a map with all of the major league baseball stadiums complete with team logos used as point symbols.

Seventh, since there is so much competition for students’ time after school, I make sure that I not only advertise the club via school newsletters, announcements, and web sites, but I also take advantage of the best way to grow the club: I encourage the students in the club to tell and bring their friends.

Eighth, ensure that the club is well supported by the school’s teachers and administrators, and build connections between what you are doing in the club to the school’s focus areas. Career academies are an important part of the high school housing the GeoTech Club I facilitated this past year. The themes of geotechnology, inquiry, our content areas, and critical thinking skills became an important part of the school’s STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) academy and, I hope in the future, their Business and Global Studies academy. The career academies required participating students to focus on certain coursework and skills, and the STEM academy’s pathways on computer technology and “Earth, Energy, and the Environment” were particularly well aligned with the GeoTech Club. I was thrilled when one of the students from the club decided to focus on GIS for her senior capstone project, an advanced research project that results in a research paper, poster (shown here), and presentation. I was very impressed by the quality and professionalism during the day in which this student and the other senior capstone participants presented for their peers, parents, and teachers.

If you are already running a GeoTech Club at a school, what activities do you include in it? If you are not running such a club, I encourage you to look into it, or encourage others to do so. What I would love to see is for the students to direct the activities of their own club, and ideally, run the club themselves. Is this happening anywhere?

Posted in Education | Tagged ArcGIS Online, Careers, critical thinking, Curriculum, fieldwork, Projects, Schools, Training | Leave a comment

Be Spatially Critical

by Joseph Kerski on May 31, 2013

At the last Esri International User Conference, my Esri education colleague Laura Bowden and I conducted a spatial thinking workshop. Laura said something in the workshop that I have been musing about ever since: “Be spatially critical.” This phrase is laden with meaning and examining it in this blog may shed light on why this community believes so firmly in the value of research and practice in GIS in education.

Be Spatially Critical !

Effectively using GIS in teaching and learning hinges upon critical thinking and spatial thinking. For example, some critical thinking questions relate to the context of a problem: What background research do I need to examine and what content do I need to immerse myself in to be knowledgeable about the issue? What are the costs and benefits of the issue I am analyzing? Who are the stakeholders affected by the issue? What are the historical, current, and future implications surrounding the issue?

At the 1987 conference on Critical Thinking and Education Reform, Scriven and Paul stated that critical thinking means to “conceptualize, apply, analyze, synthesize and/or evaluate information gathered from, or generalized by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning or communication, as a guide to belief or action [or argument].” GIS can be used to foster such actions, and in practice, this is where critical and spatial thinking meet: What data do I need to gather and analyze to assess the issue completely and accurately? How can I represent that issue within a GIS environment using raster and vector data sets, multimedia, graphs and charts, and by other means and tools? Can I trust my data sources? At what scale do I need to examine my chosen issue? What data will support that scale of analysis? What symbology, classification, and presentation techniques should I choose to effectively communicate my results?

Other questions are specific to an instructional environment: As an instructor, how can I best teach to encourage students to be spatially critical? As a student, what content knowledge, skills, and geographic perspectives do I need to cultivate in order to develop my ability to become spatially critical?

In sum, the phrase “Be Spatially Critical” includes elements of critical thinking and spatial thinking, both of which my colleagues and I frequently write about in this blog. Laura Bowden and I plan to conduct a spatial thinking workshop at the 2013 Esri User Conference as well, and we look forward to reading your comments here and interacting with you during the workshop!

Posted in Education | Tagged critical thinking, geoliteracy, Spatial Thinking | Leave a comment

A Working Definition of Spatial Thinking

by Joseph Kerski on May 24, 2013

The phrase “spatial thinking” has been receiving increasing attention over the past decade, encouraged in part from the National Research Council’s report Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum. However, in many ways, we in the GIS education community have been immersed in promoting and supporting spatial thinking in education for far longer than that; indeed, for over 20 years. Beginning in the early 1990s, a handful of innovative K-12 teachers, along with a few interested faculty in universities, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies working closely with K-12 educators, as well as the Esri Education Team (which began in 1992), to bring spatial thinking through the use of GIS tools to primary and secondary schools. At the same time, the Esri Higher Education program began. At the university level, spatial thinking has long been nurtured by research and practice from the fields of geography, science education, cognitive psychology, human-computer interaction, and others.

Spatial Thinking: Perspective, Skills, and Content.

What exactly is spatial thinking? There have been many attempts to define it. My interest in it lies mostly on the geographic side, so, perhaps my definition is better labeled as “geospatial thinking.” This overlaps some with “geoliteracy“, which has also been receiving increasing attention. My working definition of spatial thinking is “Identifying, analyzing, and understanding the location, scale, patterns, and trends of the geographic and temporal relationships among data, phenomena, and issues.”

More important to me than the definition, though is that the diverse communities of scholars and practitioners who care about this topic work together to ensure that it is supported, taught, and put to use in education and in society. What is our goal in terms of spatial thinking? I like how the NRC report puts it: It is to cultivate the spatial thinking “habit of mind.” This habit of mind is the geographic perspective on how the world works, including how systems function, how and why certain relationships exist, and also how we might approach and solve problems. How can we cultivate spatial thinking? That, friends, is the subject of many of the essays that appear in this blog, from pedagogical strategies to specific skills and technologies used. What could be our measure of success? If we can identify key points in the educational curriculum where spatial thinking can enhance what and how we are teaching, and in those points, to put spatial thinking skills into practice, then I think we have succeeded.

What is your definition of spatial thinking? When, where, and how do you think spatial thinking should be put into practice?

Posted in Education | Tagged critical thinking, geoliteracy, Schools, Spatial Thinking | 2 Comments

The Pain of Geography

by Charlie Fitzpatrick on May 21, 2013

Our thoughts and prayers go out to those in Moore, Oklahoma, victims of our violent planet. The tornado that atomized houses, plucked trees, and pulverized schools was at times a mile wide, with winds that may have exceeded 200 miles an hour.

This monster did not appear from nowhere. Science – including geography, the science of “what is where, and why” – helps us understand the present and see into the future. Our vision grows stronger with each year, but we still have a long way to go.

Air, water, fire, and earth … we cannot yet control the storms, the quakes, the floods, the fires, though we may perhaps influence them … consciously or not, and whether we admit it or not. We can only hope to understand them better, and learn to make better decisions regarding them. Science – including geography – will yield many lessons. It is up to us to learn the lessons. And, until we understand well enough the many rules of our perilous planet, we will continue to mourn the lost.

Our thoughts and prayers go to the families and friends of these events.

Posted in Wicked Problems | Tagged Earth Systems, Geography, Science | Leave a comment

Student Videos to be Featured at EduC Plenary

by dibiase on May 18, 2013

This Spring, Esri’s Education Team invited nominations of outstanding students and alumni to present their stories in a special plenary session at the 2013 Esri Education GIS Conference. Nominations were to include a video in which the student or alum demonstrates how GIS education made a difference in his or her life.

Of the many nominations received, we’ve selected the following five nominees to appear in the Celebrating Student Success plenary session Saturday morning July 6 in San Diego:

Steve Chignell, Colorado State University

Julien Clifford, Texas A&M Corpus Christi

Mohan Rao, Austin Community College

René Smit, University of Pretoria

Nekya Young, Texas Southern University

We regret that we can’t bring every worthy nominee to San Diego. However, we will proudly screen excerpts of the following nomination videos during the Celebrating Student Success plenary:

Mariana Belgiu, University of Salzburg

Luke Burns, Leeds University

Dara Carney-Nedelman, Unicoi County 4-H Team

Kelsey Ciarrocca, George Mason University

Christopher Grundling, University of Pretoria

David Hapgood, Center of Geographical Studies, NSCC

Iván Elías Ruiz Hernández, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez

Emmaline Long, Cornell University

Nancy Milholland, University of Southern California

Elisabeth Moughan, Unicoi County 4-H Team

Cameron Robertson, Center of Geographical Studies, NSCC

Amanda Stanko, Arizona State University

Chris Stayte, Miami Valley Career Technology Center

Congratulations to all these successful students, and thanks for their efforts in preparing nominations. We’re looking forward to seeing their videos featured during the plenary session!

Posted in Education | Tagged EdUC, UC | Leave a comment

Connecting and Empowering Young Professionals

by Joseph Kerski on May 17, 2013

I recently participated in the European Association of Geographers conference in Belgium. There, I had the pleasure of interacting with energetic and knowledgeable young professionals promoting the European Geography Association for Students and Young Geographers, the EGEA.

Some members of the European Geography Association, with Karl Donert above left, President of the European Association of Geographers.

It is an honor for Esri to partner with and support this organization, along with our colleagues at the University of Utrecht and elsewhere. The goal of EGEA’s network is to exchange knowledge and information for geography students and young geographers. To achieve this goal, EGEA organises congresses, student exchanges, hosts foreign students, and publishes a newsletter. As all of us in the field of geotechnology are well aware, networking is critical for success. But what is also critical is empowering students and young professionals as they begin their careers in this field. How can we as the geography and GIS professsional community best do that?

Associations such as the EGEA can help grow an effective geo-workforce of tomorrow through development of skills, confidence, and, in short, cultivating lifelong learning and career growth. Also playing a key role are resources such as the new GeoPivot and the Geomentor program. But I also think effective nurturing starts at earlier ages, reflected in the efforts that we and others are making in such programs as 4H, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and other after school programs, and through working directly with primary and secondary students and educators. We have numerous complicated issues to solve in the 21st Century, and most of these issues have a geographic component that can be understood through the use of geotechnologies. These young people with whom we are working are skilled, committed, and eager to make a positive difference in our world.

Are you involved in any of these efforts to help build the next generation of geo-minded professionals? What other efforts do you think our community needs to make?

Posted in Education | Tagged Careers, GIS Program Resources, Schools, Universities, youth | Leave a comment

Eighteen

by Charlie Fitzpatrick on May 13, 2013

Esri’s Education Industry Team began formally on Monday June 1 of 1992, and the K-12 side slid into playing catch-up before the week was out. Late in 1994, Judy Laudenbach joined the “Schools & Libraries” team and started fielding initial calls, sending out info, and helping people get software. She became the primary contact for school districts anxious to get software, arrange special services, or find a business partner who could help. For 18 years, with down-home ease from small-town Minnesota and years in banking, she has talked and emailed with thousands of people, including holding down the fort when the Esri Conferences were underway and nobody was accessible. (Common question at conference: “Is Judy here? I talk with her all the time, and want to meet her!”)

At the end of May, Judy is retiring, turning in her mouse and monitor and phone. Never one to let grass grow underfoot, she has already set up volunteer work in the community. A bit of travel with family, “digging in the dirt” around home, fishing, and helping friends and relatives will keep her fully occupied.

On behalf of thousands of users, thanks for making everyone’s life better, Judy! We will miss you!

The Esri EdTeam

Posted in Education | Tagged Schools | Leave a comment