(Reminder and disclaimer: I have accepted a job with Esri. I was not in San Diego this past week and gathered this coverage from afar.)
The details of Esri making all e-learning free to all users (with qualifying products on maintenance) were shared at the opening Esri UC plenary. The new training site is not yet available, but a teaser site with a Q & A and video is. When launched the site will include education resources, including GeoInquiries and SpatiaLABS. Among the licenses and programs that qualify for the free resources are those commonly used in teaching and learning including Esri Higher Education Enterprise Licenses (Education Site License) and the ArcGIS for Personal Use Program.
The plenary videos are live as of Monday night. Those in education might want to view the presentations from students at San Andreas High School in Highland, CA featured during the plenary. There's a bit more on their work from the local paper and Esri Insider. I've mentioned the school several times in recent years (2015, 2016).
Here are some recaps of the education and user conference events:
- From Muki Hacklay: EdUC Day 1, EsriUC Day 1 (plenary day), discussion of his plenary talk at EdUC, Esri User Conference – Science Symposium
- From Michael Busby: Keynote from David Zaboski (after the travelogue in the first few paragraphs)
- From GeoNet: Live blogging of plenary and more
Here are all the tweets tagged for the education conference. Below I've curated a sampling from the most active tweeters.
Shannon White (@shannonwhite):
- Using a Flipped Classroom in GIS at university. Think about the benefits! preparation perception engagement motivation
- Esri is working with 11,000 universities across the world and some are incubation/innovation centers.
- "It's more than data, it's how we use it to change the world." - Sarah Williams [Director of the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT, @datasew, keynoter]
- Adam Dastrup using Creative Commons & public domain images and multimedia. Saving his students in 3yrs over $3M in textbook cost [see more under Resources, below]
- ArcGIS Pro 1.3 now has ability to bring kml files and ability to publish 3D to web
Geolouge (@geogologue)
Top three things to think about for me [Day 1 EdUC] were...
- Keeping track of where students go after exposure to GIS. Do they go on to study geography? What about careers w/GIS? Are we successful?
- Empowering students to use GIS for projects that interest, engage and inspire them. Lots of amazing community projects taking place in US
- Make use of the published resources already developed and in use! These can be accessed online!
Muki Hacklay (@mhaklay)
- Great way of getting metadata in Tufts: force students to fill in poster info during submission process for their GIS poster expo
- Creators believe, iterate, collaborate, risk, and complete - Dave Zaboski [keynoter]
- Esri done 4 MOOCs with 50,000 users
- The Esri Insights for ArcGIS is a beautiful exploratory spatial data analysis - geovis in action
Dawn Wright (@deepseadawn)
- esri supports over 10,000 institutions of higher education & Jack salutes all the faculty here at EsriUC building future of smart
- All esri ELA users will receive on-premise version of ArcGIS Insights just shown by @indabeale free (online version exists too)
Michael Gould (@0mgould)
- Explicit shout-out to the more than 600 teachers in the audience!
- Chris Jepps @chrisjepps: At EsriUC Jack announces DigitalGlobe will provide their "best data" globally as part of the Esri Living Atlas [details]
Courses, Degrees and Programs
The Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents approved a new Bachelor of Science in Geographic Information Science (GIS) on June 16. Once fully approved, the program is expected to begin in fall 2017 with about 15 students. Southeast will be the only public university in Missouri offering this degree.
USGIF named James Madison University’s (JMU) Department of Integrated Science and Technology in Harrisonburg, Va., an accredited program. It's the 14th school to be accredited. (press release)Esri detailed its MOOC schedule for 2017.
Resources
Open Geography Eduction - Adam Dastrup of Salt Lake Community College hosts this site featuring open educational resources. See Inside Higher Ed's recent article on the status of OER. Of note: "Awareness and discovery continue to be major issues facing the growth of OER. While faculty members who are aware of OER are generally enthusiastic about the quality and ease of use of such course materials, even they admit to sometimes struggling to find the content they are looking for. Additionally, many faculty members know little to nothing about OER."
Geographic Information: Need to Know - "The GI N2K project is an extensive network of 31 partners from 25 countries from the academic and non-academic sector linking up with associated partners from the broader industry (e.g. SHELL), major GI associations and individual experts. The project will analyze the current market demands with regard to the knowledge and skills and compare them with the current training offer in the GI S&T sector." The European effort will help update the Body of Knowledge.
Cartographic Design - Kenneth Field of Esri offers Cartogeek content.
Teaching Creativity: Blending graphic & web design for cartography - Robert Roth of UW-Madison posted his slides before his talk.
Simple Ways to Introduce UAS Data in Your GIS Classes - Wing Cheung of Palomar College shared these slides.
You Can Help Make Maps for Science (No Experience Needed!) - Some citsci efforts for you and/or your students from All Over the Map.
Instructional Guide for The ArcGIS Book - This book can work as a personal tutorial, as a lab manual, or as a resource for workshops. See a brief video.
The ArcGIS Imagery Book: New View. New Vision was available Monday in print or via an interactive PDF. There's also an interactive companion website; all of them together "will give readers foundational knowledge about how imagery and remote sensing can be used with geographic information system (GIS) technology. Readers also will get hands-on experience in working with imagery and remote-sensing data in ArcGIS, Esri's GIS platform." (press release)
The Vermont Geographic Alliance will be offering two two-day workshops, one in September and one in October, for educators interested in learning how to use ArcGIS Online as an instructional tool. These are onsite in Vermont and come with food, PDH, stipends and certificates.
CartoDB offers a new Map Academy Intermediate Design lesson: How to Choose Map Colors, Part 1. There'll be a Part 2.
If you teach with MapQuest Open’s free OpenStreetMap-based tiles, do be aware that direct access is going away on Jul 11. There are also changes to map access via the Google Maps API.
Esri announced the winners of its 2016 Storytelling with Maps Contest; the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society took grand prize for a story map of the organization’s 2015 annual report. The contest had 965 submissions; the winners are in this gallery.
The Knight News Challenge on Libraries grantees were announced last week. One, a test project with $35,000 grant, involves mapping.
In and Out of the Classroom
The GeoTech Center announced the finalists in its 2016 GeoTech Geospatial Technology Skills Competition. There was a tie in the four year division, a first and second in the two year division, and an open source winner (QGIS was used).
On August 29 the Global Content Challenge will open for university and high school AP students. "Get creative by using Esri's land, ocean, and population premium content libraries to tell compelling stories that bring about understanding and action." Submissions must use the map journal app. Winners will receive money or software equivalent.
On 4-H National Youth Science Day, Oct. 5, U.S. young people will tackle an ineractive engineering design challenge created by Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) in partnership with National 4-H Council. The program, called Drone Discovery involves building, planning flights for and flying a drone equipped with a keychain camera.
Worth Reading
Geographic Information: Need to Know - "The GI N2K project is an extensive network of 31 partners from 25 countries from the academic and non-academic sector linking up with associated partners from the broader industry (e.g. SHELL), major GI associations and individual experts. The project will analyze the current market demands with regard to the knowledge and skills and compare them with the current training offer in the GI S&T sector." The European effort will help update the Body of Knowledge.
Cartographic Design - Kenneth Field of Esri offers Cartogeek content.
Teaching Creativity: Blending graphic & web design for cartography - Robert Roth of UW-Madison posted his slides before his talk.
Simple Ways to Introduce UAS Data in Your GIS Classes - Wing Cheung of Palomar College shared these slides.
You Can Help Make Maps for Science (No Experience Needed!) - Some citsci efforts for you and/or your students from All Over the Map.
The Vermont Geographic Alliance will be offering two two-day workshops, one in September and one in October, for educators interested in learning how to use ArcGIS Online as an instructional tool. These are onsite in Vermont and come with food, PDH, stipends and certificates.
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| Color Matters! |
If you teach with MapQuest Open’s free OpenStreetMap-based tiles, do be aware that direct access is going away on Jul 11. There are also changes to map access via the Google Maps API.
Esri announced the winners of its 2016 Storytelling with Maps Contest; the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society took grand prize for a story map of the organization’s 2015 annual report. The contest had 965 submissions; the winners are in this gallery.
Heather Gamper, Age 39, Sunnyvale, Calif. has one of the jobs "that are too good to be true," per Fortune. She has a PhD in GIS and works at Walmart.
Money
Money
The Knight News Challenge on Libraries grantees were announced last week. One, a test project with $35,000 grant, involves mapping.
ATL Maps | Georgia State University| $35,000 | Project leads: Brennan Collins and Megan Slemons | Twitter: @ATLStudies | AtlantaDel Mar College's Phillip Davis will be the principal investigator for a three year NSF funded Unmanned Aircraft Systems Technology Education Consortium (UASTEC).
Enabling people to use multiple library collections to tell stories about their city through open source software that combines archival maps, geospatial data and multimedia pinpoints. Emory University is a partner on this project.
The goal of the proposed project is to improve geospatial technology education at the community and technical college level to increase the number, diversity, and quality of geospatial technology professionals. This is achieved primarily through the establishment of a unique broad-based consortium of key stakeholders called the Unmanned Aircraft System Technology Education Consortium (UASTEC). The members of the consortium are Del Mar College (DMC, a public two year community college), Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi (TAMUCC) a 4-year institution, the Camber Corporation (a DOD contractor) and the Lone Star UAS Center of Excellence.I The UASTEC project will create a new four-course DMC certificate in UAS Technology that can be earned in as little as two semestersSpringfield, Ohio's Clark State Community College received more than $400,000 to support its precision agriculture technology program, including the use of UASs. The three-year grant comes from the National Science Foundation.
In and Out of the Classroom
The GeoTech Center announced the finalists in its 2016 GeoTech Geospatial Technology Skills Competition. There was a tie in the four year division, a first and second in the two year division, and an open source winner (QGIS was used).
On 4-H National Youth Science Day, Oct. 5, U.S. young people will tackle an ineractive engineering design challenge created by Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) in partnership with National 4-H Council. The program, called Drone Discovery involves building, planning flights for and flying a drone equipped with a keychain camera.
Worth Reading
- Face Off: Should Teachers Pay Teachers Or Share Freely? - The discussion was sparked by Amazon's recent education announcement and a response at ISTE.
- Digital Distraction vs. Engagement in Action - A discussion of strategies for when students are off task, using computers or books. Bonus: Consider how you behave in a conference session; how often are you truly engaged?