GIS Ed Weekly: Unequal COVID-19 surge and vaccination distribution

Resources for Teaching and Learning

Yale School of Medicine: Yale and Columbia Create Interactive Vaccine Allocation Map - An interactive map and charts for each state proposes how COVID-19 vaccinations could be distributed.

XBox News:  Minecraft Releases Free Sustainability City Map Inspired by Microsoft’s Sustainability Report - "Mojang Studios is releasing a free Sustainability City map today that invites players to explore how some of the goals and themes in Microsoft’s Annual Sustainability Report come to life in a Minecraft town." The map is a free download, and there are also "six new lessons designed to give students a sense of stewardship for the planet, from responsible forestry to waste management, learning about the components of a sustainable home, exploring alternative electricity, and more..."

Outside Magazine: What We Learned from Tracking Cycling Deaths for a Year -  "With the help of the nonprofit BikeMaps.org we analyzed the data we collected on bicyclists killed by drivers in 2020 and found some surprising takeaways" Of interest to geographers who cycle: "Louisiana recorded 7.3 cycling deaths per million people, the most of any state."

NY Times: Mapping Los Angeles’s Unequal Covid-19 Surge - "A New York Times interactive map shows the uneven toll of the virus, neighborhood by neighborhood..."

JHU Newsletter: Hopkins COVID-19 tracking map celebrates one-year anniversary - Jan. 22 marked one year since the launch of the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center (CRC). "Upon its launch, the website became a preferred source for the general public and news media over the world, including the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times."

Black History: The Journey of Us - "Explore the major milestones across Black history that have shaped the American experience." It's a Google Earth story curated with the Schomburg Center and Howard University. Via @centralAPHG.

Twitter Thread: Matt McLean asks: "If you could give one piece of advice to GIS students what would it be?" There are some good suggestions. From where I sit these days, I'd offer: Be sure to know how to reset your password!

Call for Instructors as Pilot Testers: Hour of CI - "The Hour of Cyberinfrastructure (Hour of CI) project is completing its first nine one-hour interactive, self-paced online lessons to introduce cyberinfrastructure and cyber literacy to advanced undergraduate and graduate students with an explicit focus on GIScience. We now seek Lesson Pilot Testers who will test these materials with learners, both synchronously in the classroom or asynchronously as supplementary course assignments. If you are interested in helping your students and/or colleagues learn more about Cyberinfrastructure, Big Data, Spatial Data, Computational Thinking, or Spatial Thinking, among other areas, then consider piloting an Hour of CI lesson." The lessons and materials are free to use and you can apply to be a Supported Pilot Tester to potentially receive an honorarium up to $500.

 

Greater Greater Washington: See how the spatial distribution of education levels in the region has changed since 1970 - A series of maps by DW Rowlands, a human geography grad student. 

Events and Opportunities

ASLA Northern California: My Journey from Empowering Communities to Geodesign with Kelleann Foster - The webinar is February 10 @ 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm and free for students and American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) members.

Vanderbilt: GIS workshops in February: Heard Libraries’ Digital Scholarship and Communications Office and the Spatial Analysis Research Lab will host “ESRI (sic) Basics: From ArcGIS Pro to ArcGIS Online,” and “Intro to QGIS.”

Harrisburg University of Science and Technology: GeoDev Summit - "In 2021, the [Mar 3] event will feature hands-on technical sessions on a variety of topics relevant to anyone working in the GIS space – from those who are new to software development to experienced developers." No fee for those in education and non-profit organizations.  

Ethical Spatial Analytics - This is the first in a series of AAG events exploring ethical issues of geospatial practice. It's on February 9 from 11-1:30 ET Via @EthicalGeo.

On and Off Campus

Union of Concerned Scientists Blog: Using GIS to Center Equity for Clean Transportation Investments in Massachusetts: The MassROUTES Screening Tool - "We designed a GIS-based tool called Massachusetts Screening System to Recognize those who are Overburdened and Underserved by Transportation, Environment, and Socioeconomic status (MassROUTES). MassROUTES uses a set of indicators grouped in three categories— Environment, Population, and Transportation— to calculate an overall score for each census tract in Massachusetts." The article is by grad students in the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. 

UC Riverside: Grants will helps transform online courses - "A new initiative provides 19 UC Riverside faculty members with grant funding to transform their existing remote courses into more robust online learning experiences." Among the courses: Ran Wei, PBPL 010: Intro to Geographical Information System (GIS).

LSU: LSU Biological Engineering Students Design Playground Map With Visually-Impaired Children - "...a group of LSU Biological Engineering students teamed with faculty and staff at the Louisiana School for the Visually Impaired (LSVI) in Baton Rouge to design a tactile map for students there to learn the lay of the land on their own and have more time to play."

Kean: Kean Research Maps COVID-19 Impact Across Communities - "George Avirappattu, Ph.D., and his team use data analytics of ZIP Code-level demographic data combined with COVID-19 outcome data to identify how different communities are impacted by the coronavirus. Working with five Kean students, the researcher uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) statistical analysis and machine learning to analyze data."

MSU: Scientists advocate breaking laws — of geography and ecology - Jianguo “Jack” Liu, Michigan State University’s (MSU) Rachel Carson Chair in Sustainability suggests scientists need to go beyond Tobler’s Law and think and act across geographies and disciplines.

ASU: College town vs. education center: ASU researcher examines geography of higher ed - "New research co-led by Meagan Ehlenz, assistant professor in Arizona State University's School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning, provides the most detailed picture to date of the geography of higher education institutions across the nation."

People

St Augustine (FL) Record: Creekside High School's Ali Pressel is St. Johns County's Teacher of the Year - "Pressel has been an educator at Creekside High School since 2008, where she teaches four levels within the St. Johns County Career Academies program, the Academy of Environmental Sciences and Advanced Placement Environmental Science." She's a National Geographic Certified Educator, too.

The New Yorker:  How a Young Activist Is Helping Pope Francis Battle Climate Change - "David Owen profiles the cartographer and environmentalist Molly Burhans, who, through her organization GoodLands, is attempting to map the Catholic Church’s global landholdings in an effort to help it combat climate change."

Programs and Courses

An Introduction to Spatial Data Analysis and Visualisation in R - The free online course is from Guy Lansley and James Cheshire from CDRC at UCL. Via @Geosapere.

Esri

A complete first course in Modern GIS  - An ArcGIS Experience version of Joseph Kerski's course from North Park University.  He introduces it in this blog post.

LinkedIn: My Top Five Tips for Technical Demonstrations - Esri's Pat Dolan collects advice from some colleagues who demo. I agree with all of these!

ISI and Esri Spatial Thinking Student Competition 2020-2021: The deadline for applications been extended to March 1st, 2021. All participants will have until May 30, 2021 to submit materials for judging. 

Cartography. MOOC: Esri's latest offering started Feb 3. Registration is open for another week or two. I understand there is a new exercise, so if you took it befor