Like many of you, we on the Esri education team frequently give presentations and workshops for educators who seek to use GIS to investigate relevant and current issues with their students. Web GIS is an increasingly important part of these workshops because of its ease of use, richness of content, and ability to foster geographic inquiry. Using Web GIS tools also easily leads into deeper questions that can be most effectively answered with a combination of Web GIS and desktop GIS, such as ArcGIS Online combined with ArcGIS desktop software.

We are frequently are asked what our favorite Web GIS resources are. My “favorites” are those that best meet the needs of the particular audience I am working with, so they change with each workshop, and change as Web GIS rapidly evolves. However, below is an attempt to list Web GIS resources that I have tested and tried in a variety of workshops and settings. Can I hold the list to a “top ten”?

First, for the past year, I and colleagues around the world have made and shared maps using ArcGIS Online (http://www.arcgis.com) and encourage you to do the same. A favorite of mine since the late 1990s has been the National Atlas (http://nationalatlas.gov). Over 100 layers are available, with diverse, well-documented content that can be used in a desktop GIS environment for further analysis. I also find the demographic, hazard, and health maps (pictured below) on Esri’s Mapping For Everyone (http://www.esri.com/mappingforeveryone) extremely useful.

I also make extensive use of over 600 variables as cartograms and Excel tables on http://www.worldmapper.org, as well as the NCES School District demographics maps, on http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/sdds/ed/index.asp. The FAO’s Geonetwork (http://www.fao.org/geonetwork/srv/en/main.home) is rich, and the graphs and maps on StateMaster (http://www.statemaster.com) and NationMaster (http://www.nationmaster.com) and those on GapMinder (http://www.gapminder.org) are excellent. I also make heavy use of the National Historical GIS (http://www.nhgis.org) and its associated http://www.socialexplorer.com, and language maps on http://www.mla.org/maps. I also frequently use the WHO global atlas (http://apps.who.int/globalatlas/) for health data, the CIESIN viewer (http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/mapviewer), for examining socioeconomics, and the NASA NEO Earth Observations (http://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html) for examining energy, lands, oceans, biomes, and the atmosphere.

Oops! I knew I probably could not hold it to ten. What are your favorite resources for investigating issues using Web GIS? Please share!

- Joseph Kerski, Esri Education Manager