GIS Education Weekly: Learning Math by Designing a City

Resources

WaPo: Where Americans vote — and where they don’t - A map series, aka "small multiples," to celebrate National Voter Registration Day.

Story Maps: On the Story Maps Resources page, scroll down to a new section titled "If you're an educator."

GIS Education Weekly: OSGeo Partners with YouthMappers

Resources

The Final Map from Bloomberg's Analysis

Bloomberg: How America Uses its Land - This is a very nice "story map" type of presentation. Via Larry Sandhaas.

GeoHipster: Maggie Cawley: “What else can we do but keep going?” - Interview with Cawley, who among other things, develops curricula with open source geospatial software.

GIS Education Weekly: What Can the National Geographic Bee and Oxford University Teach Us About Geography Education?

Resources

GPS.gov: I'd not been to the U.S. government's GPS site for quite a while. It's aimed at the public and includes information on how to submit map changes (graphic at right) and a STEM curriculum for middle schoolers.

BBC: 100 Women: Gladys West - the 'hidden figure' of GPS - When Mrs West started her career at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia in 1956, just one other black woman and two black men worked alongside her. She went on to work on GPS.

GIS Education Weekly: GAW and GIS Day are Upon Us!

Resources

This is the edition I have; It was
assigned in my Cartography
course circa 1985.

How to Lie with Maps: The 3rd edition with the new chapters, which "look good," per @undertheraedar, is expected in May. Via @undertheraedar.

New York Times: Where the STEM Jobs Are (and Where They Aren’t) - "What recent studies have made increasingly apparent is that the greatest number of high-paying STEM jobs are in the “T” (specifically, computing)."

GIS Education Weekly: Why Female Students Leave STEM

Articles

Concentration of Children Near Facilities
Releasing Cancer Causing Chemicals

DePaul Geography undergraduate student Michael Rasmussen made the school's Map of the Month. 

Bulldog Blog (University of Redlands): Environmental business alumnus helms GIS department within days of graduating - Jakob Larson ’17 was hired to manage GIS operations for California’s largest land preservation system, the Wildlands Conservancy.

UW-Green Bay: More than 200 UW-Green Bay students navigating with GPS - It's about the school's Gateways to Phoenix Success (GPS) program for first year students.

GIS Education Weekly: Future Geography Curriculum Leaders

Contests and Competitions

URISA is hosting a student competition with the finals at its Toronto GIS Pro event this fall. College students (enrolled in geo courses spring, summer or fall 2016) can compete for prizes of money ($500, $300 and $200) and free registration to the event (but no travel funds) and paid Young Professional dues upon graduation. The first round of the competition involves the creation of a video; the top three from that round will go to Toronto for the final. Videos are due September 2. The conference is Oct 31- Nov 3.

GIS Education Weekly: Introducing Spatial Thinking to K-5 Students, MOOC, How Much Coding?

Students work with puzzles
in the STEM+C project

Spatial at the NSF STEM for ALL Video Showcase

The University of Redlands wants you to vote for its Spatial STEM+C video voting page so it can win a Public Choice Award in the NSF 2016 STEM for ALL Video Showcase. "Spatial STEM+C is an exploratory integration project that is introducing K-5 students to spatial thinking as a way of improving computational thinking and mathematical performance. This video will provide a glimpse into the process of developing and pilot testing curricular activities for the project." Last year the GRACE program won a Public Choice Award.

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Resources

USGS National Geospatial Program Director Mike Tischler was featured on Sunday's CBS Sunday Morning news program. He speaks about the National Geographic Bee, emphasizes the importance of geographic knowledge, and gives a shout out to USGS mapping. h/t Mark at USGS

"GIS Gang" Leader Shares Best Practices

In September 2015 Wendy Lemke, a sixth grade teacher at Ann Arbor's St. Francis of Assisi Catholic School, launched a before school club, the GIS Gang. I shared an edited version of her blogs posts about the club's meetings last week.

This Q & A focuses on the lessons learned and offers advice that other educators working with GIS in K-12 students may find valuable. Thanks for taking the time to share Wendy!

1) If you were giving advice to other schools, would you suggest GIS be used in class or in in extra-curricular club? Why?

In my experience, GIS in education consists of two parts: data analysis and map creation. So, there is a place for GIS in both arenas.

I believe that analyzing map data is an excellent and integral part of teaching science and social studies. In addition, simple map building (pinning locations with information and images) can be used in the same way that PowerPoints are used in class. . . a creative way for students to present information. A middle school classroom is a great venue for the Explorer map analysis and map creation lessons.

GIS Education Weekly: MapMOOC Maps, Jobs for Graduates, Marketing GIS Programs

The Guardian: Geography is "must have"

The UK's Guardian newspaper offers an editorial pointing out the increased interest in geography via the A-level exam.

According to the Royal Geographical Society, 13% more took the subject at A-level this year than last, up to 37,100 – the biggest jump of any of the major subjects.

Why? 

Part of the explanation is [former Secretary of State for Education] Michael Gove’s determination to make schools focus on more traditional academic subjects at GCSE and A-level, rather than general studies or critical thinking.

The editorial also notes that geography graduates have higher employment levels six months out of school that others majors. I dug into the topic in a post earlier this week.

Cartographer Explains the Making of the Maps of the Maps MOOC 

The blog post Making Maps of a MOOC from Penn State PhD candidate Carolyn Fish explains the process of mapping data from the school's Mapping and the Geospatial Revolution Coursera-hosted course.

CartoDB White Paper on GIS Education

@CartoDB tweeted:

Our latest whitepaper is here! Check out how CartoDB provides GIS solutions for the educational community: http://hubs.ly/H0141lG0

It's titled The Future of GIS Education. A cloud-based, open source GIS and mapping solution for education.

Obama's STEM High School Vision and Geospatial

The education idea that caught my eye from last week's State of the Union address had to do with expanding options in high school to infuse more Science, Technology, Education and Math (STEM) and grant students an entry credential into that workforce. The discussion was short and sweet:

Let’s also make sure that a high school diploma puts our kids on a path to a good job. Right now, countries like Germany focus on graduating their high school students with the equivalent of a technical degree from one of our community colleges, so that they’re ready for a job. At schools like P-Tech in Brooklyn, a collaboration between New York Public Schools, the City University of New York, and IBM, students will graduate with a high school diploma and an associate degree in computers or engineering.

The vision is of a competitive grant opportunity.

We’ll reward schools that develop new partnerships with colleges and employers, and create classes that focus on science, technology, engineering, and math – the skills today’s employers are looking for to fill jobs right now and in the future.

Few details were provided so I was pleased my local NPR station's OnPoint radio show got some experts to flesh out the models mentioned in the speech.

I learned that in Germany, once in such a program, really an apprenticeship, students work alongside mentors some four days a week, with just one day in school learning the underlying background to the tasks done at work.

I also learned that at P-tech students are not delivered a curriculum geared specifically for skill to be performed at IBM, but rather learn soft skills (working together, presentation skills, project work and the like) while completing a rather standard sounding associates degree. That program is six years (freshman to senior +2) but students begin college work typically in their sophomore year. Moreover, each one has a mentor from IBM for the duration. The program is only in its second year, so it's unclear how it will play out. The offer from IBM: P-Tech students will be first in line for entry level jobs, but are certainly not guaranteed them.

Could the president's program, as it matures, be another way to grow all those missing geospatial professionals we will need? (See for example the latest National Research Council report.) Will this radically change the role community colleges are playing now as providers of two year geospatial degrees? What about all those private schools offering certificates?

Will the GeoTech Center's GTCM now be used to build high school curricula? Will these programs be as horizontal as P-Tech seems to be or be more focused, creating workers who can walk into a specific job at Northrop Grumman or NGA? How will the GeoTech Center, USGIF, GITA, URISA and MAPPS contribute to this vision? Will they be matchmakers for the three required partners (high school, college, employer)? How will online education play into these new programs?

There are many questions and few answers, but this program seems like the next money train for geospatial education and training and we need the best players in our community to step up to the challenge.

Find a Grant to Fund STEM Initiatives, Professional Development and other Educational Imperatives

I'm always wary of databases or indexes hosted by commercial companies. I have to believe there is a motive beyond altruism. Thus, a database offered by IT warehouse CDWG (the part of CDW that serves education, government and healthcare) is suspect. While I'm sure there are some honest "service to the community" goals for the effort, I'm also sure there's some hope dollars delivered to schools, educators and students via its GetEdFunding website will end up in the company coffers.

GetEdFunding is a free, curated database of more than 750 active grants and awards (as of January 8) "that are currently available to public and private pre-K–12 schools, districts and educators, higher education institutions and the nonprofit organizations that work with them. I'd take that number with a grain of salt; many of the results I found had application dates during 2012 and many others were unsure of funding for 2013. I also found some "contests" that were not really grants including the National Geography Bee listed.

The site allows searches by geography (U.S. state or nationwide) institutional eligibility (public, private, charter, etc.), grade level (by grade group, higher ed, adult), focus (humanities, ed tech, professional development or STEM), content areas (arts, math, social science) and what are called 21st Century Skills (critical thinking, global awareness and problem solving).

I searched for U.S. grants for grade 9-12 STEM grants and got 50 results. Many are from federal government agencies like the National Science Foundation or the Department of Education while others are from professional groups like American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and AAUW. Many are from private corporations like Lowes and United Technologies Corporation.

A keyword search on "geography" resulted in two state grants, including one from a state geography alliance. Good to see!

It's worth a quick look and perhaps an application if it will mean a professional development workshop for an instructor or a new computer for the classroom.

- via EdTech Magazine

NPR Mapping Experts Miss Teachable STEM Moment

Last week the NPR show OnPoint (based out of WBUR here in Boston) discussed the new world of maps. It was prompted by the latest plans from Google and Apple but touched on privacy, how we are less spatially literate and several other important ideas.

The guests were:

• Steven Levy, a senior writer at Wired magazine and author of In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.
• Darin Jensen, a cartographer and Professor of Geography at the University of California, Berkeley.
• David Heyman, cartographer and co-founder of Axis Maps, a group that designs custom and interactive maps for the digital age.

Still, as is so common in these discussions for the general public, this show missed what I consider an important educational opportunity.

About halfway through the one hour program a woman called in from Lexington, KY. I'll paraphrase her comment:

She said she'd given up on her GPS since it couldn't do the job of getting her where she needed to go. She's a horse trainer and travels to rural areas. She detailed how the device got her to the correct road, but then said the destination was just up the road 100 yards on the left. But in fact it was much farther down the road on the left.

Now, we geospatial folks can readily explain that. We know the error comes from how geocoded address ranges attached to road networks are used to "guesstimate" the actual location of a specific address.

Neither the writer from Wired (who may not have known this) nor the two GIS savvy professionals (who surely did) explained the math/science behind how geocoding is still sometimes done. Instead, we learned that addresses are better in more populated areas and that Google and other map providers welcome feedback to correct such errors. Those comments are indeed true, but why not explain a bit about how these magic black boxes work and how they can (and do and will!) make such errors? Why not engage in a discussion of how fairly basic STEM ideas are behind GPS and GIS? And, most important to me, why not explain something that even young people can understand since the math is pretty basic! Why not let them own this cool piece of knowledge? Getting one's head around such ideas is so important in building STEM confidence and STEM interest - not just for kids but for adults, too!

To be fair, there may be a good reason the discussants did not go "there, " of which I may not be aware. And, I know it's easier to critique a recording than it is to respond thoughtfully in real time. Still...

One final thought. The day this program ran my housemate came downstairs after listening to it and asked: "So what did you think of the mapping thing on Tom Ashbrook [he's the host]?" I explained I specifically hadn't listened to it live since these publicly focuses mapping discussions always get me frustrated. I listened to the podcast a day later and indeed became frustrated right on queue.

Spatial and STEM: Can we add some geography?

Jonathan Wai wrote about spatial intelligence in Psychology Today. His article was titled Why We Don't Value Spatial Intelligence. He doesn't explicitly answer the question but does point out that as a society we don't test for spatial ability and hence miss the chance to grow it in our students. Those who do have it, research suggest, can do great things in physics and engineering.

He concludes:

We need to learn to value these beautiful minds.

We need to identify them. We need to provide a tailored education for them. And we need to place the tools in their hands so that they can help invent our future.

Tom Baker addressed this topic at the Esri GIS Education Community blog. His post is titled STEM Education's Critical Dependence on GIS. He cites the National Research Council's Learning to Think Spatially document from 2006 that suggests GIS is a tool for learning to think spatially.

I have to point out that there's a bit of a disconnect here. Wai speak about spatial intelligence as about 3D visualization and "in your head" processing. He ties it to physicists and engineers. That makes me think immediately of Tim O'Reilly and the Maker Movement.

While the NRC report starts out with Watson and Crick and their discovery or visualization of the double helix structure of DNA, I think most people can't or won't or don't connect that type of hard science to geography and geospatial technology. As someone who studied chemistry, I'd use the visualization of the benzene ring as a spatial thinking example.

What's missing? One or more great stories of well-known geospatial scientists that solved a real world problem with spatial thinking. We as a community know they are out there, but those stories are not told as frequently as the well-known ones above. I just heard a great story from my former colleague at Esri Boston, Peter Girard, now CTO at AppGeo. He explained how he used some high level math to solve a complex bounding area problem for a spatial index needed for a client.

The trick is we need to identify these stories and tell them. That's how Watson and Crick's double helix got famous. That's how Kekulé's benzene ring got famous. What are our geospatial stories? How do we make them part of everyone's education the way these two stories currently are?

What story do we tell? John Snow and cholera. What other real life, true stories of spatial thinking do we as geographers have to tell? Once we get that book of short stories written (has it  been written?), we can make a better case for both spatial literacy education for the next generation, and the great things they can do with those skills in their jobs in later life.

A Geographer Looks at EdTech - Part 7 - STEM

--- This post is the seventh in a ten part series examining top 2011 trends in education technology in the context of GIS and geography education. ---

The seventh theme Audrey Watters identified in her top ten list of ed tech for 2011 is the newfound focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). She details how president Obama linked Sputnik to education reform in his 2011 State of the Union address. He also proposed ARPA-ED, a new agency funded in 2012, to explore ways to educate students. She argues we need to seed interest in STEM far before college and the way to do that is via hands on learning - coding, building, making - not via standardized testing.

GIS and geography have a good history of hands on projects dating back to the early 1990s. Middle schoolers from New Hampshire taught themselves PC Arc/Info (the HORROR!) and mapped their school. They were the first group, I think, to present their work on the big stage at the Esri international User Conference in 1992 or 1993. Now GIS is in science fairs and 4-H among other places, with much of the credit for these programs going to Esri.

The problem I see with GIS and geography and the current interest in and focus on STEM education is that GIS and geography sit on the edge of social and physical sciences. So, when those who advocate for GIS (a technology) or geography (typically considered a social science) speak up, they can seem a bit wishy washy about where it sits. I raised this issue this fall when Speak Up for Geography ran a campaign to get those who believe in geography education to contact their Congresspeople and ask them to support The Geography is Fundamental Act (TGIF).

I think for right now we need to push the human side of geography/GIS to the background and run a full force offensive highlighting its importance as a STEM discipline. Frankly, geography needs to fish where the fish are.