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Thursday, July 30, 2020

GIS Ed Weekly: "I could not apply the basic geographic knowledge I had acquired in high school"

On and Off Campus

West Central Tribune: Girl Scout pinpoints Minnesota businesses on a sustainable - Sarah Kessler, a 16-year-old from Grand Rapids, MN is interested in fashion. She turned that interest into maps addressing sustainable clothing. One map includes stores that sell sustainable products, and a second includes stores that offer second-hand or consignment products. Kessler's efforts helped her earn the Gold Award, the highest award for a Girl Scout.

Trinity: Navigating the History of Trinity’s Campus Using a Digital Story Map - "A digital story map developed in the past year by Tess Meagher ’20 and Trinity instructional technologist Cheryl Cape showcases the evolution of Trinity College’s campus. The interactive story map, complete with aerial photos of campus and close-up pictures of buildings, documents the school’s unique physical history."

UC Davis: Brain Builds and Uses Maps of Social Networks, Physical Space, in the Same Way - "New research from the UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain shows that our brains build maps of abstract concepts, such as social networks, in the same way as geographical maps."

Tap Into Camden: Hopeworks Helps Map Out Camden Sidewalks for a Chance at Future Funding - Six youth from Hopeworks, ages 17 to 26, helped launch a survey and map the results.

People

Inquirer.net: Canada’s Simon Fraser U appoints its first Filipina professor - "May Farrales, Ph.D will be joining SFU’s faculty as an Assistant Professor in Urban Social Change, cross-appointed between Geography and  Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. Farrales is an SFU alumnus, having obtained her Bachelor’s degree in 1997."

UT Dallas: Geospatial Researcher, Fine Arts Student Earn Recognition "Dr. Daniel A. Griffith, Ashbel Smith Professor of geospatial information sciences (GIS) in the School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, is the recipient of the International Spatial Accuracy Research Association’s (ISARA) 2020 Peter Burrough Medal for outstanding contributions to spatial uncertainty research."

The Guardian: Blind date: 'We discussed geography teachers as good date options' - Her friends say she should date a geography teacher, so she discussed this with her actual blind date, a film studies PhD.

SIUE: SIUE Selects Pankl as Dean of Library and Information Services - The Southern Illinois University Board of Trustees recently approved Lis Pankl as dean of SIUE Library and Information Services (LIS). She most recently worked at the University of Utah. Of note: "Pankl earned a PhD in geography from Kansas State University in 2015. She holds three master’s degrees: in English from Abilene Christian University, in Abilene, Texas, in 2001; in library science in 2005 from the University of North Texas, in Denton; and in public administration from Utah in 2020. She also earned a bachelor’s in English in 1999 from Washington State University, in Pullman."

GeoNet: I learned from my colleague Charlie Fitzpatrick that Randy Raymond, who I knew through the GRACE Project, passed away. His energy will be sorely missed in the GIS education community. Charlie profiled Randy two years ago and Joseph Kerksi did so four years ago. I found this short obituary.

Programs and Courses

Siasat News: AMU becomes first Indian University to get UN-GGIM membership - "Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) has become the first Indian university among 49 educational institutions from all over the world to get the membership of the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM)." Five educational institutions in the U.S. are members: four are state universities and one is Harvard.

Ridgewater (Minnesota State): Ridgewater College and agriculture education partners receive $584,000 grant to train ag technicians - "Ridgewater College and agriculture partners received a $584,000 National Science Foundation grant to address a need for more agriculture technicians." "The primary goal is to create a pathway for high school agriculture students that will lead to a college- and industry-recognized credential, making a measurable impact on the agriculture technician workforce." Geospatial technology is one of the areas to be covered in the program.

Resources for Teaching and Learning

Maps Mania: Comparing Map Projections - The post is about Comparing Map Projections "a clever visualization of different map projections. It allows you to directly compare different types of map projections and see the levels of distortions which each map projection introduces by visualizing a globe in two dimensions." Via @googlemapmania.

COVID-19 Mapping

Cleveland.com: New interactive map shows Cuyahoga County businesses reportedly following, flouting coronavirus safety practices - The map, which went live on Friday, is fed by data obtained through reports to Cuyahoga County’s mask-complaint hotline and website.

Meanwhile in Education News

Yahoo: School introduces all-day lessons on one subject to limit students' movement - To lessen spread of COVID-19, the school in England is considering five hours of a single subject each school day, on a two week cycle.

New Era: OPINION: Experimental education will get us far - "The problem, I eventually realised, was that I could not apply the basic geographic knowledge I had acquired in high school." A student from Namibia rethinks her rote memorization in her early education; it's making college, including a GIS course, very difficult.

Esri

Purdue: Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies Honored for Special Achievement in GIS - Purdue University Libraries and School of Information Studies (LSIS) won an Esri Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award for its innovative application of mapping and analytics technology, as well as thought leadership in the field of GIS education.

From User Conference: 

Esri Education Summit: It will be online on August 6-7: Registration is open. Here's the agenda per Charlie and here's another version.

GeoNet: What's new in Learn ArcGIS July 2020 - I wrote this; it lists new websites, paths and Learn ArcGIS lessons my team has published.

GeoNet: Craig Misajet, a high school geography teacher and MS candidate in Idaho, is requesting feedback from educators on his story map. The story map features a semester worth of content and enrichment material used in his freshman eastern hemisphere geography course slated to start this fall. There's a survey link for feedback in the story map.