GIS Education Weekly: New Courses on GeoStatistics and Growing Your Team

On and Off Campus

A bit of the University of Michigan dashboard showing
ArcGIS Online use on campus.

University of Michigan: This Operations Dashboard shows ArcGIS Online use at the school. Via Adam Carnow on LinkedIn.

Pace University: "Forbes" Featured Pace University in "Colleges See GIS Playing a Larger Role in Business Education - This is a press release about the article I noted last week. Again, while this article is hosted on the Forbes website, is it not earned media.


Greater Kashmir: Now, new primary schools in J&K to be set up on GIS mapping basis only - “As per MHRD guidelines, no permission will be given to the state to establish a new school unless the GIS mapping is completed,” the official said.

Generosity: Peep Hopeworks ‘N Camden youth’s heat maps of the country’s biggest donors - Youth from Hopeworks ‘N Camden used data from DonorPerfect to make two maps: one map illustrates the distribution of donors across the country and a second one offers with the same information, but layered with the country’s 2016 per capita income. (I don't understand the Peep part of the headline.)

GoErie.com: Gannon students locate, plot university’s AED devices - Christopher Magno, associate professor of criminal justice at Gannon and ten students searched for and mapped the devices, then added them to the PulsePoint Respond app.

Brandman University: Team approach highlighted at GIS conference in Palm Springs - Brandman's team shared how it's worked with Esri on its programs at the recent CalGIS/GIS Pro event. Esri's Learn.ArcGIS.com got a nice plug, too.

Resources

East Anglian Daily Times: Geography education is vital in the age of climate change, says broadcaster Nicholas Crane at Suffolk conference - A veteran broadcaster makes the claim. Nicholas Crane is best known for his BBC TV documentaries Coast and Map Man.

LinkedIn: Why can't GIS be like Google Maps? - Matt Sheehan provides an answer; I agree with it to some degree. I share this question because I think it'd make a great quiz or test question!

State of the Map: SOTM 2018 presentation recordings are linked individually to the session title on the program.

CityLab: A Step-by-Step Guide for Fixing Badly Planned American Cities - Jeff Speck, the Walkable Cities guy offers a guide in his new book  Walkable City Rules: 101 Steps to Making Better Places. This is a teaser. Via @TimOReilly via @SteveCase. (People reading this know who Steve Case is, right?)

McGill: Good spatial memory? You’re likely to be good at identifying smells too - Turns out similar regions of the brain are involved in both activities. Via @dianamaps.

Rick Thomas: "For those of you interested in GIS in the history classroom you might want to take a look at this article published last week in the latest issue of the Oregon Journal of Social Studies [OJSS Journal 100 page Google Doc]. The article is entitled "Sold Down the River: Broad Context & Individual Perspective" and focuses on the sale of slaves "down the river" into the cotton and sugar plantations in the new South during the decades prior to the Civil War. The article provides background to the history, a discussion of the use of GIS, and an extended lesson plan." Via GeoNet.

Storytelling with Maps on Paper and Screen: The second story map in a series from Allen Carrol looks at maps on paper vs. on screen. It's really an essay.

Quote of the Week

We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.

― John Dewey 

John Dewey's birthday was Oct 21. I'm embarrassed to admit that I did not know he was behind the focus on reflection as part of learning. Why am I embarrassed? I was the resident assistant in Dewey House, which is named after him. h/t Edutopia.

Open Education News 

Edsurge: Free Textbooks Are Not Always Free: New Study Analyzes OER’s Costs to Colleges - SRI ran the numbers for the Achieve the Dream OER degree effort. The cost of OER materials for one course,  based on an average from five schools, was just about $12,000. The grant funded OER textbook/degree development effort showed about half of the cost is faculty labor and the other half is administrative. The big winners were students, who found the savings substantial enough that it allowed some to continue to pay tuition rather than leave school. Sadly, as the grant funding for this program runs out, several schools are exploring "OER fees." I've noted ATD before: here and here.

RobinDeRosa.com: The Library is Open - DeRosa, an open education advocate from  Plymouth State University (NH), gave the keynote at a Pennsylvania library association meeting. She shares a print version on her blog. It's about the past and future of the library as told via the name of the first organization for which she worked: The Free Concord Public Library in Concord, MA. It's a most insightful piece with references to geography and OER.

Programs and Courses

Everything Geoscientists and Data Scientists Need to Know About Geostatistics: Michael Pyrcz, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, shared the code, workflows, data and lecture notes. The exercises are here. Via @geostatisticsguy.

Penn State: There's an online preview event of the new GIS for Transportation course set for on Oct 30, 8pm ET. Via @pennstategis.

How to Take Your GIS Team from Good2Great: The online course from Toby Soto starts Oct 29. It's now 50% off; it's a beta release and students are expected to provide feedback and testimonials. He notes, "Investing in yourself and learning from seasoned professionals brings huge dividends to your career. " Via a LinkedIn group.

GIS Day

ArcWatch: Be a GIS Day Champion - Tips from GIS Day coordinator Joseph Kerski.

Live Chat: GIS Day Strategies- Chat on Nov 9 about GIS Day strategies with GIS Day coordinator Joseph Kerski.

Events

Esri: Call for presentations 2019 Education Summit@ Esri UC - The event is July 6-9, 2019. Abstracts are due Dec 3.