GIS Ed Weekly: Revisiting North at the Top

Mapping

 

ABC News: Which US states require masks and which 2 don't at all? - A doctor friend shared this map from July 22. We had a nice chat about the legend.

NY Times: More Than 6,600 Coronavirus Cases Have Been Linked to U.S. Colleges - Frat members, administrators, construction workers and student athletes are testing positive.

Fatherly: This Map Shows the Patchwork Reopening Plans for U.S. Schools - The media website Fatherly (for Dads) offers a map. The analysis reads: "What can we make of this preliminary data? For one, that no public health answer has gained traction throughout the country."

Meanwhile in our Industry

Aspectrum Blog: GIS Community Insights 2020 - Aspectrum, a cloud platform for geodata business intelligence provider, shares insights from a survey of 5000 specialists from EMEA, North America, and Asia Pacific. The PDF report is here. Two news outlets posted an article with the title including this phrase: "Mandatory coding skills are named a major pain point of GIS specialists." I was unable to find a reference to that pain point in the articles or the report. 

 

On and Off Campus

 

FIU: GIS researcher Levente Juhasz examines online maps and their inaccuracies during pandemic - The article titled Mapping COVID-19: How web-based maps contribute to the infodemic "examines the various mitigating factors that contribute to mapping inaccuracies."

 

University of Michigan Flint News: UM-Flint receives $300,000 EDA CARES Act grant to support local economic development - The GIS Center will be involved in several ways: 

• The GIS Center team will work alongside campus and community partners to address economic and social impacts resulting from COVID-19, such as market retail analysis and spatial analysis based on the prevalence of COVID-19 cases in the region, unemployment rates, retail sales, loan distribution information, and other socioeconomic variables allowing for comparisons from before and after the pandemic. The resulting studies will provide a repository of information for small businesses, entrepreneurs, and communities in the region to analyze how the economic landscape has changed over time and will assist them in adapting to the new climate.
• The GIS Center will also help to support municipal and education leaders with their data requests, including mapping broadband access, opportunity zones, and demographic trends."

Northern Public Radio: New Food Map Helps Illinoisans Find Nearby Food Sources - The University of Illinois Extension is launching a community food map on its website so people can find nearby food sources.

 

People

 

NPR: High School Senior's Tool To End Food Insecurity Wins National Competition - Lillian Kay Petersen, a 17-year old from Los Alamos, N.M., may help solve food insecurity. Her geospatial entry into the Regeneron Science Talent Search took first place. "First, she analyzed daily satellite imagery on known domestic crop data. Then she applied that data to countries in Africa and successfully predicted crop yields."

 

Resources for Teaching and Learning

ABC News: Most world maps show north at the top. But it doesn't have to be that way - This is from the Australian Broadcast System, but the topic pops up pretty regularly. I do appreciate that the piece addresses if the Mercator projection was designed to be racist.

International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education  - The latest issue is about geocapabilities, a term I'd not heard until this week. Apparently, it's built on educational principles from Amatya Sen and Martha Nussbaum on welfare economics. This site suggests we are at phase 3 of studying geocapabilities. The most useful slide I found from David Lambert at UCL is above.  

 

St. Louis Public Radio: St. Louis Map Project Reveals Different Views Of City’s Past And Present - Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based organization that studies how communities remember their histories through public art and monuments, spearheaded a project in St. Louis. The results of the community research were published in July. This is an interesting way to try to get at both mental and historical maps at the same time.

 

National Geographic: National Geographic Learning, a Cengage Company, Introduces New Advanced Placement Human Geography Program to Support Distance Learning - As I understand it, it's a textbook "For the fall semester, a digital teacher’s guide and etext will accompany print versions so that teachers have both a print and digital option to teaching AP Human Geography. Furthermore, the entire course will be available online with MindTap, offering customizable learning portals for teachers and students starting in January 2021."

 

Brookings Blog: Creating the “Geography of Hope and Desperation in America” interactive - An interview with Carol Graham (Brookings) and Sergio Pinto (U Maryland) in about creating their new interactive tool, The Geography of Hope and Desperation in America.

 

Events

Open Source Geospatial Hackathon: September 14-20, 2020 - There are both competitive teams and a collaborative effort. I assume the event in online, but there's no indication one way or the other.

 

Esri

 

App: This is a before and after swipe map of the Beirut explosion with imagery from Planet Labs. Change detection can be horrific.

GeoNet: Learning Resources for Students and Educators - Several short videos introduce resources from Esri Academy (training services), Learn ArcGIS (my team) and Esri Press (books).

Press Release: Esri Offers Students Free Access to GIS Software and Lessons - "Beginning September 1, 2020, the Learn ArcGIS Student Program will provide free access for one year to software, lessons, and a community of learners through Learn ArcGIS to qualified students globally."

Esri Education GIS Summit: The online free event started today and continues Friday.