COVID-19 Mapping
LinkedIn: Tanya Berger-Wolf, the director of the Translational Data Analytics Institute at OSU notes on LinkedIn that the Ohio State University was the only institution to receive an “A+” for its COVID19 dashboard according to We Rate Covid Dashboards, a website that rates college and university COVID dashboards. The team includes a number of students and faculty from Yale and other schools though it's unclear to me if they created the rubric or assigned the scores. I'm curious who is behind the site. If I had to guess I'd say tableau.
Resources for Teaching and Learning
GIS OpenCourseWare: The content is now hosted on platform: Moodle. IHE Delft is behind this resource. "An IHE-OCW is typically (but not necessarily) a by-product of an existing face-to-face or online course of the Institute. The IHE-OCW educational resources are organized in a course format which contains the non-interactive copyright-free parts of IHE courses to form a coherent set of educational materials that allow for free online self-study. " Via @GISOCW.
Yelp Blog: Yelp Partners with Zillow to Name Top Affordable U.S. Suburbs With a City Feel - "Today, Yelp announces a partnership with Zillow to name the Top Affordable U.S. Suburbs With a City Feel, using a new “Cityness Index” to pinpoint U.S. suburbs that best strike a balance between indoor and outdoor space, affordability and urban amenities that have long drawn Americans to cities." Tops in my geography? Lowell Mass.
Teaching Ethics?: @MapesGeog suggests this website as a starting point. "I Know Where Your Cat Lives iknowwhereyourcatlives.com is a data visualization experiment that locates a sample of one million public images of cats on a world map by the latitude and longitude coordinates embedded in their metadata. The cats were accessed via publicly available APIs provided by popular photo sharing websites. The photos were then run through various clustering algorithms using a supercomputer in order to represent the enormity of the data source."
NBC News: Map: Where President Trump went the week he was diagnosed with Covid-19 - "From Ohio to Minnesota to New Jersey, and back to Washington, D.C., the president crisscrossed a chunk of the country this week."
Programs and Courses
Black Voices: More “Black Girl Magic” – Ignite Leadership Academy for Girls Welcomes New Facilitators for 2020 Session - Beginning Saturday, October 3, the Ignite Leadership Academy for Girls (Ignite), got going. Designed for girls between the ages of 11 and 14, introduces participants to STEM topics including GIS along with life skills such as leadership development, team building, social media etiquette, presentation skills and more. This article introduces two of the facilitators, including a GIS student at the University of Redlands.
Penn State: Student Profile: Adam Lee - "Adam Lee recently completed the Postbaccalaureate Certificate in GIS, and is a current student in the MGIS and Geospatial Programming/Web Map Development Certificate programs. In this profile, he shares his experiences and also offers advice relevant to prospective and current students."
USGIF: Student Diversity Awards and Best Student Poster Award - The Most Promising Female GEOINTer Award was presented to Mia Poynor, University of Sothern California. The GEOINT Woman of Color Award was presented to Alejandra Rubi Marquez, Fayetteville State University. The 2020 Best Student Poster was also awarded at the GEOINTegration Summit. The recipient for this award was Yinan Wang, Johns Hopkins University for his poster on “Applications of Satellite Imagery in Paleontology.” See also: Fayetteville State University Student Wins GEOINT Women of Color Award.
EuroNews: Hidden faces: Why I launched a movement for Black people in geography - ".. Francisca Rockey, founder of Black Geographers, explains why she launched a movement to diversify her field and the hidden faces of geography." Black History Month is in October in the UK.
On and Off Campus
NAU: Quantum Spatial Kicks Off Accessibility Mapping Project for Northern Arizona University - Quantum Spatial, Inc., started "a project in coordination with Northern Arizona University to develop a campus accessibility map that helps individuals with mobility issues easily navigate the campus. Quantum Spatial, working in partnership with the university’s GIS and astronomy departments and the Commission on Disability Access and Design, is conducting a lidar survey across the Flagstaff, Ariz., campus and will develop high-resolution maps that are programmed to work with assistive technology, such as screen readers."
The University News (St. Louis University): GeoSLU to Train Members of U.S Intelligence Community - The paper's associate news editor explains that SLU’s Geospatial Institute (GeoSLU) was awarded a five million dollar grant, called the GEOINT Learning through Academic Programs (GLAP), which promotes the training of members of the U.S intelligence community by SLU faculty . She then notes: "For some members of the SLU community, this grant, which explicitly asks SLU faculty to train spies and warfighters, raises ethical concerns about SLU’s collaboration with the U.S military and the U.S intelligence community. "
Meanwhile in our Industry
Placekey: This week marked the launch of Placekey, another potential solution for an open addressing system. This FAQ tries to explain how it works and why it's better than other solutions including What3Words.
Meanwhile in Education
Critical Voter: "Just in time for the 2020 election, this new edition of Critical Voter by best-selling author Jonathan Haber, will help you turn this year’s news into learning experiences that can help you (or your kids) hone the vital thinking skills needed to succeed in the 21st century." I'm just getting to know Haber's work; we went to high school together.
GeoNet: Fun with GIS 277: 2021 Student Competition - It's time to start thinking about getting middle and high school students to build some stories for next year's competition.