GIS Education Weekly: Do Hackathons Exploit Participants?

Education News

SPARC: Congress Funds $5 Million Open Textbook Grant Program in 2018 Spending Bill - "This marks the first major investment by Congress explicitly in open educational resources (OER) as a solution to the high cost of college textbooks, and underscores that course materials are a significant factor in making higher education affordable."

Wired: “Sociologists Examine Hackathons and See Exploitation” - Researchers conclude, as explained in the article, "...institutions use the allure of hackathons, with sponsors, prizes, snacks, and potential for career advancement, to get people to work for free."


Programs and Courses

Geo University: Overview of LiDAR; system variations, data interpretation & applications - "Gain an in-depth understanding of LiDAR concepts, systems and algorithms."  There's a free trial of the first few lessons; the full course costs $25.

On and Off Campus

Express News: The Native American story in S.A. is 15,000 years old, and counting - "A new website produced by Bexar County and the University of Texas at San Antonio’s Center for Archaeological Research is promoting the city’s indigenous history, putting it in new perspective. It’s called the 300th Anniversary Celebration of Béjar: Historical GIS (hGIS) Story Map Projects."

UWM Report: Is your ZIP code your destiny? Maybe, UWM researcher says - Marcus Britton, a researcher and an associate professor of sociology at UW-Milwaukee, studies “place-based inequality." That's "the idea that if you grow up in ZIP code 53206 as opposed to an affluent neighborhood in Whitefish Bay, that has consequences for the kinds of outcomes you typically experience later on."

Dawn Wright, Esri chief scientist, responded to Suchith Anand's concerns about Esri's tagline "The Science of Where."

The Guardian: Durham University academics given two weeks to leave UK - Per @re_sieber on Twitter: "Academic geographer being threatened w deportation from UK bc she spent too much time doing fieldwork, even though there's an exception for her discipline: humanitarianism."

Resources

Esri: New Esri Textbook Teaches the Fundamentals of ArcGIS - Esri announced the publication of Getting to Know ArcGIS Desktop, Fifth Edition.

GIS Lounge: Newish Geospatial Podcasts - New additions to the GIS podcast space cover news, remote sensing and other topics.