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Thursday, May 13, 2021

GIS Education Weekly: Three free ways to learn GEE

Programs and Courses

BDaily News: New Campaign Aims to Create a New Generation of Indiana Jones’ [sic] - "Yorkshire-based geospatial professionals, Elaine Ball (43) and Elly Ball (33), have today announced the launch of their new Get Kids into Survey global recruitment campaign to help save the future of surveying." 

Earth Engine Course: Ujaval Gandhi (@spatialthoughts) writes on Twitter: "I finally managed to finish my most ambitious project to date. Years in the making, I am releasing the full material for my 'End-to-End Google Earth Engine' course under an open license - allowing anyone to learn, teach and adapt it."

Google Earth Engine 101: An Introduction for Absolute Beginners - Stanford Geospatial Center's Stace Maples offers this workshop on Friday May 11 from 10-12 pacific.

NASA: Using Google Earth Engine for Land Monitoring Applications - "Google Earth Engine (GEE) for remote sensing applications is quickly becoming one of the most utilized tools in the scientific and decision-making community. ... This training will cover the GEE Code Editor, hands-on exercises on change detection, time series analysis, land cover classification, and accuracy assessment of optical imagery." There will be three two-hour sessions (June 16, 23, & 30, 2021) at 12:00-14:00 EDT (UTC-4).

People

Yelm Online: New Yelm Assistant Planner Maps Out Equity - "Casey Mauck, the new assistant planner in the Yelm Community Development Department, said she hopes to continue the good work of equitable planning in the city as she maps out her career." She's got a degree in geography from Western Washington University.

Penn State: Geodesign graduate program welcomes urban planning expert to faculty - "Devin Lavigne, a nationally recognized urban planning professional with over 20 years of experience in the fields of urban planning, geodesign and geographic information systems (GIS), has joined Penn State’s faculty to teach an online graduate geodesign studio that focuses on solving problems at an urban scale. The course is offered through Penn State World Campus and is available to students pursuing the master of professional studies in geodesign degree."

Mississippi State: John Cartwright - John Cartwright is currently in the Department of Geosciences and serves as GIS coordinator and instructor teaching and developing geospatial curricula for a new departmental emphasis in geographic information systems.

St. Louis Business Journal: UMSL names new leader for its geospatial-focused center- "The University of Missouri-St. Louis has hired a new leader for its geospatial technology-focused center at the T-REX incubator in downtown St. Louis." Will Werner will be director of the National Security and Community Policy Collaborative. He was most recently a planner with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.

Resources for Teaching and Learning

Scientific American: How GPS Weakens Memory—and What We Can Do about It - "Spatial navigation, which had been a process performed exclusively by the human brain and perceptual system, has now been surrendered to technology. However, in doing so, we also surrendered our agency. Does it matter?"

Penn: How has COVID-19 changed ‘superstar cities’? - "A new analysis found that overall mobility in large U.S. cities has yet to return to pre-pandemic levels, and some are also experiencing changing segregation patterns, with potential implications that could last well beyond the pandemic."

Library of Congress Magazine: Mapping Our Place in the World - The May/June issue features pages full of maps from the G&M collections. I did not know LOC published a magazine. Via @LOCMaps.
 
PolicyMap: PolicyMap Announces New Agreement with The Center for Research Libraries (CRL) - "PolicyMap announces the availability of its national data and mapping web-based application to members of The Center for Research Libraries (CRL). ... This new agreement provides CRL members with favorable terms and simplified access to PolicyMap’s geodatabase on its newly released platform."
 
The Epidemiologist R Handbook - "R for applied epidemiology and public health" strives to
  • Serve as a quick R code reference manual
  • Provide task-centered examples addressing common epidemiological problems
  • Assist epidemiologists transitioning to R
  • Be accessible in settings with low internet-connectivity via an offline version

Meanwhile in Education

TES: The CPD puzzle: why don't teachers keep improving? - "We have a tendency to plateau when it comes to professional development - reflection is the solution, says [article author] Mark Enser." I think the point is a good one. I continue to suggest the value of teachers witnessing other teachers actually teaching. Via @JasonSawle. 

Schools Week: Ofsted: ‘Very few’ primary teachers trained to teach geography - "Ofsted has found 'very few' primary school teachers have actually been trained to teach geography, with nearly half of schools not meeting national curriculum standards in the subject."

On and Off Campus

LAist: Weaponizing Maps In The Social Justice Struggle To Limit Warehouse Emissions - "... a group of University of Redlands students who collaborated with social justice activists on a project to use previously unavailable warehouse location data to create a series of maps. The maps, published in this article from the environmental group EarthJustice, juxtapose warehouse locations with data about health, wealth, poverty, online shopping, race and ethnicity."

Meanwhile in our Industry

Bentley Systems: Bentley Systems Announces New Bentley Education Program, Putting Students on the Path to Infrastructure Careers - "The Bentley Education program is initially available in the United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore, Ireland, and Lithuania, with plans to expand to the United States, Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and India by mid-summer. The program’s student and educator entitlements allow no-cost learning licenses for Bentley infrastructure engineering applications and proven learnings through the new Bentley Education portal." The program is currently aimed at college students but there are plans to address secondary school students at a later date, according to Susan Smith at GIS Cafe. Among the software available is OpenCities Map, a geospatial application.