GIS Ed Weekly: Students explore old Bloomington, Worcester's buses and Victoria's housing crisis

On and off campus

My favorite map in Bloomington story: you navigate
the map via modern image, but see details from 
the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps from 1907!

Indiana Student Daily: Early 1900s Bloomington shows historic city, shifting landscape in interactive map - An, IU project called Reconstructing Bloomington,  displays data on early 1900s Bloomington. IU visiting geography professor John Baeten and his team of 19 undergraduate students used historic data to depict Bloomington’s physical and social landscape in 1907. 

Mass Transit: Clark University student calls for revamp of WRTA bus system - "A Clark University [GIS] student believes better frequency and increased ridership could be the result of a bus system that focuses on serving major, multimodal 'transit corridors.'"

UVic: Victoria’s housing crisis: students shine light on empathy - "Through a partnership with the Greater Victoria Coalition to End Homelessness, Island Health and the UNESCO K4C Salish Sea Hub, the geography students created story map —an interactive website for the community to learn more about the people living in the transitional tiny home community being built at 940 Caledonia Ave."

Resources for teaching and learning

Washington Post: Two marathon frontrunners took the wrong path. Another runner sprinted to the finish and won the $3,000 prize. - "Tyler Pence of Springfield, Ill., finishes first in the Quad Cities Marathon on Sept. 26 in Moline, Ill. Two runners who had far outpaced him were disqualified after being diverted off the course by a race volunteer." Pence is the head track and cross-country coach at the University of Illinois at Springfield and he became the first U.S. runner since 2001 to win the race.

Bloomberg CityLab: The Rise of the Pandemic Dashboard - "Governments around the world have created online tools for the public to view the latest data on Covid-19, but some platforms are better than others." I'm pleased to see that after publication, "ESRI" was updated to "Esri."

The New York Times: The Maps That Steer Us Wrong - "Good maps articulate not just what we know but also the limits of our knowledge — where the known world ends and where the unknown begins. But as long as we’re reliant on maps that mislead us by not acknowledging where those boundaries lie, we’re doomed to believe in a world that is, in some ways, imaginary."

Windstream Holdings: Paper Map Challenge - The company is offering a couple (selected via a contest) to show they can use a map, rather than GPS, to find three locations in their area over a week. The prize? $1500. Windstream is a provider of voice and data network communications, and managed services, to businesses in the United States. Via CBS 3 Philadelphia.

Programs and courses

Illinois: Institute will focus on innovative cyberGIS and cyberinfrastructure - A new national initiative to enable geospatial data-driven scientific discovery will create a $15-million institute at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to better understand the risks and impacts of climate change and disasters. The Institute for Geospatial Understanding through an Integrative Discovery Environment (I-GUIDE) will receive the funding over five years to explore questions at the frontiers of science and engineering.

UW Oshkosh: Former professor’s farm turned into nature area - "A family hobby farm where a UW Oshkosh geography professor often took his students to study conservation is now a public nature area." Donald Nezter, who retired from UWO in 1980 was fan, and colleague, of Aldo Leopold.

People

The Globe and Mail: How Lim Geomatics is using new technology to change an old industry - The publication profiles Kevin Lim of Lim Geometrics of Ottawa, Canada, who devised a new method to survey forests with lidar.

Universiy of Sydney: Student pioneers COVID-19 communication with cutting-edge tech - Science PhD candidate Jamie Simpson Research developed a real-time suburb-by-suburb view of COVID-19 cases in New South Wales; Esri selected him as an Esri Young Scholar Award recipient.

Events and Opportunities

  

Redlands: The Center for Spatial Business (CSB) at the University of Redlands School of Business will launch its 2021-22 Speaker Series with a virtual event on Wednesday, October 13, 2021. At 6:00 PM Pacific, the featured speaker Dr. Konstadinos (Kostas) G. Goulias, Professor of Transportation, UC Santa Barbara will speak on Exploring the Roles of Location and Transportation Provision on Business Establishment Formation, Dissolution, and Relocation. RSVP to attend. Via HigherEd-L.

UCGIS: Do Names Matter? Branding, Marketing, and Communicating about Geography, Spatial Sciences, and GIS - The event is Mon, Oct 4, 2021 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM EDT. Via @UCGIScience.

Minnesota: StoryMap Spotlight - On October 15, 2021 at 10:00am CST curators discuss using StoryMaps to create virtual exhibits and to showcase historical collections. Hosted by U-Spatial. Via HigherEd-L.

Navigation Games: Navigation Games, a US nonprofit, is looking for volunteer mapmakers help with its mission to deliver map navigation education to children. Navigation Games creates, shares and delivers map navigation education for children through the sport of orienteering. The programs enable kids to build self-confidence, learn skills that can be applied in academia and real life, and gain a deeper appreciation for the earth. Via NEARC-L.

Meanwhile in education

MIT: Justin Reich and researchers from the Teaching Systems Lab released a new report: "The Teachers Have Something to Say: Lessons Learned from U.S. PK-12 Teachers During the COVID-impacted 2020-21 School Year".

Esri

2021 Education Summit - Videos from the event are now available on YouTube. Via my colleague Angela Lee.

GIS in Higher Ed Chat: Join an education chat to learn from Jian Lange, Esri Principal Product Manager for ArcGIS Spatial Analysis, the workflow to automate updates to your web feature layers without scripting.  Tuesday, October 5, 12 NOON (ET), 11 AM (CST), 10 AM (MDT), 9 AM (PDT) . Via my colleague Canserina Kurnia.

My Top ArcGIS Living Atlas Things - A collection of stories from Esri UK data curator Liz De Guzman. Via @EsriUK.