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Thursday, March 21, 2013

Esri UK's New GIS for Schools

Jason Sawle, a GIS Education Consultant in the Esri UK schools team, noted today on Twitter that Esri UK has launched a "new" GIS for Schools. I'm not sure what the "old" version was, but the new one offers ArcGIS for Desktop and ArcGIS Online to individual secondary schools.

ArcGIS for Desktop

Pricing:
The ArcGIS for Desktop schools annual subscription:
£250 + VAT per year
Includes Spatial Analyst, 3D Analyst and Network Analyst extensions
500 licences for your school site
Buy now
Educators are pointed to a free online course and can request a free inspection copy of Getting to Know ArcGIS® for Desktop.

ArcGIS Online for Schools

Pricing:
The ArcGIS Online for Schools annual subscription:
£250 + VAT per year
500 users
2500 Credits (more about credits here)
Discover how you can use it here
Buy now
I know here in the U.S. managing credits for schools is a challenge. The credits discussion at Esri UK's school's page states the 2500 are plenty.
This is a generous allocation of credits and should last for the duration of a one year subscription for a typical school.
The Esri UK ArcGIS Online for Schools resources include some generic (not education specific) getting started videos (Esri UK made) and a getting started PDF (Esri Redlands). There are also videos about the administration of ArcGIS Online (a mix of UK and US) but again, these are generic. And despite the demand in the U.S. (and I'm sure in the U.K.) for best practices information for organizations in general and educational organizations in particular, no such guidance is provided.

I share this information since I think it's valuable to see how different distributors support education. Clearly, in the U.S. the focus seems to be more on district, state and other broad licenses, rather than a single school.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Size Matters in Spatial and Critical Thinking

There's a new geography education app out for iOS, writes Kelly Johnston from the University of Virginia Scholars Lab:
I recently joined with map-minded folks to build GeoTron 5000 to put the power of comparative geography and spatial literacy in hand. Choose two places and the GeoTron 5000 robot spins up two maps to show exactly how those places compare.
It's free (with more data available via in-app purchase) and the public domain data (Natural Earth) was crunched with open source software (QGIS). It sounds interesting, but more interesting are the key spatial ideas the app (and other programs like it) teach:
Travel is one of the best tests of our spatial literacy. When away from familiar territory we can use the size of places we know well to better understand places we’ve never visited. Travel guide books assume a high degree of spatial literacy when offering comparisons like “Germany is about half the size of Texas”. But spatial thinking is best served when we choose familiar frames of reference.
I fully agree. Johnston goes on:
Scaled maps for geographic comparison using How Big Really or GeoTron 5000 inform spatial reasoning by answering the key question: compared to what? 
Size matters.
These tools do indeed answer the "compared to what" question. That's a really important question in critical thinking. I recently read that "more than 96,000" students took the AP Human Geography exam in 2012. That's a big number - but how may took it the year before? And how many students took the AP American History exam? That context is incredibly valuable for understanding the data and the underlying argument (if there is one).

Johnston's last comment is a key stepping stone for further spatial thinking. Size most certainly matters when comparing size. But, does it matter when comparing other things about countries? Population size? Population health? GDP? Influence? Does size have a positive or negative correlation with these and other factors? Or to quote one of my favorite geography professors, the late Paul Simkins, "Germany is half the size of Texas. So what?"

- Scholars Lab via @dianamaps

Monday, March 11, 2013

The Story Behind Elmhurst College's Online AP Human Geography Certificate Program

Dr. Rich Schultz, Ph.D., C.P.G., OTC is an Associate Professor in Geography & Geosciences, Director, Elmhurst College Online GIS Certificate Program and Director, Online AP Human Geography (APHG) Graduate Certificate Program at Elmhurst College in Illinois. I contacted him in that last capacity to learn more about the APHG program. I wrote about it last week and Dr. Schultz left a detailed comment. In the interview below, he answers a few specific questions about the history and impetus for this new certificate.

Ignite Education (IE): What was the spark for the development of this certificate program? How did evolve from that point to the current rollout?
Dr. Rich Schultz (RS): AP Human Geography (APHG) teachers' demands are the impetus. They need professional development because many are asked to teach APHG on a whim to keep up with the rising demand for offering AP courses at high schools. They are provided with little notice (almost none in some cases) to develop and teach APHG in future terms. Many of these teachers have never taken geography classes in their educational past, so they are left scrambling. Our idea is to educate the teachers so they can properly educate their students. If the teachers develop a real interest in geography and spatial concepts, their passion will be contagious and we are hopeful their students will become excited about geography as well, especially in terms of a future career.

IE: I see that National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) members receive a special discount when pursuing the certificate; that’s great. How was NCGE involved with the development of the program? Will it be in the future? Do you have/are you looking for other partners? 
RS: NCGE declined to be involved in the initial stages of development, and rightly so because they felt they could not give adequate attention to it with the likes of the Geography Standards, 2nd ed., rolling out and the RoadMap Project under their auspices. So, Dr. Joseph Kerski (then NCGE President and the real impetus for this initiative) and I took the ball and ran with it. NCGE has partnered with us most recently to provide their support and we are thankful for their involvement. We are seeking other partnerships as the APHG teachers need all the support they can get. We aim to bring these teachers the best possible experience in learning how to teach APHG and to infuse spatial concepts into their teaching.

IE: How are AP Human Geography instructors typically (currently) trained? 
RS: If they have a traditional background from taking geography courses in college/universities, that is their "training". Many are social studies teachers or history teachers and their knowledge in geography comes from that. However, some APHG teachers have never taken a geography course before, which is where we, as a professional development program, step in.

IE: What indicators convinced Elmhurst there would be demand for such a certificate in the short and long term? For example, is demand for the AP Geography exam rising? Are more schools planning to offer APHG? 
RS: Some of our Advisory Board and faculty members in the program are heavily involved with the College Board and noticed that the trend was very clear that APHG was increasing in demand and more and more schools nationally are offering it, at least over the last eleven years (2001-2012). However, our real encouragement came from the APHG teachers themselves. They really want to learn how to properly teach APHG. They are a passionate group!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Why is Elmhurst College Offering an AP Human Geography Teaching Certificate?

Today I learned that Elmhurst College, a small liberal arts school outside of Chicago, will be offering a five course, fully online graduate certificate aimed at instructors of Advanced Placement Human Geography (APHG). High school advanced placement courses prepare students for exams that can be used for college credit and/or to skip ahead in college.

I've been watching the proliferation of online and residence GIS certificates and masters degrees over the past few years. I could easily tie the schools' decisions to offer them to the Dept of Labor's (DOL) statement about the need for more geospatial practitioners. I'm aware of public, private, and for-profit schools offering such GIS programs and virtually all are aligned with either entry level career opportunities or advancing one's career within geospatial technology.

That's why I'm a bit perplexed at Elmhurst's new program. While teachers are in short supply in various parts of the United States and the world, I can't say I'm aware of excess demand for AP Human Geography teachers. Instead, the demand for English, STEM and special education teachers at the K-12 level seems especially high, at least here in the Massachusetts.

Elmhurst's collateral on the program does not have the punch of DOL statistics quoted for virtually every GIS certificate or degree program. Instead, it states:
More than 96,000 students took the AP Human Geography exam in 2012 and it is estimated that there are 3,200 AP Human Geography teachers nationwide. As demand for APHG exams increase, so will the demand for qualified teachers.
For comparison, Wikipedia reports "In May 2011, the AP U.S. History Test was taken by 402,947 students worldwide." I agree that as more students want to take the geography exam, demand for teachers will increase too.

Is there data suggesting more students want to take the exam this year or in the coming years? Are there changes in educational policy at the local, state or federal level that will cause demand for the APHG exam to rise?

Is it possible that The Geography is Fundamental (TGIF) Act will pass? Is it possible there will be a concrete reaction to the recently released (but not yet publicized) National Science Foundation funded geography road map reports? Or, perhaps there are other initiatives of which I'm not aware that will push geography back into the high school and college curriculum? And, maybe there is funding coming from foundations or other sources? I hope one or more of these possibilities turns out to be true.