GIS Ed Weekly: The Spatially Gifted Are Being Overlooked

On and Off Campus 

University of Pittsburgh: Some States May Lack Facilities for Administering COVID-19 Vaccine to Residents - "...the researchers found that more than a third (35%) of U.S. counties have two or fewer of these [potential vaccine providing] facilities and nearly 1 in 10 counties have fewer than one facility per 10,000 residents." This interactive map accompanies the white paper.

University of Minnesota: Closer to Home: Modeling Local Travel’s Effect on COVID Spread - "Raphael Stern, PhD, and Michael Levin, PhD, both scholars in the Center for Transportation Studies and assistant professors of civil, environmental, and geo- engineering in the College of Science and Engineering, enhanced existing computer models of disease spread by adding in high-resolution data on short-distance transportation. The models can better show the effects of local travel and help inform decision-making to address disease spread." Via @USpatial.

 

Do you want to use online GIS with your students?

The title comes from a tweet from an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher. The whole tweet reads:

Do you want to use online GIS with your students? @EsriCanada has extensive resources. http://bit.ly/VvLiQ4 Start with Map My Community.

While I think the goal is to point out the valuable resources at the website, I'm more interested in the question posed, ideally to educators, "Do you want to use online GIS with your students?" The tweeter used to teach geography and finds GIS and GPS interesting, so the question seems quite natural.

And yet that question causes me some discomfort. While I'm a fan of GIS and GPS, as an educator, I've been trained to lay out, or learn of, existing educational objectives (what the students will learn to do) before determining the form of the course or the tools to be used.

I recall a similar discomfort when meeting one of the geography textbook publishers at a conference. He assured me his text was the best for my World Regional Geography course at the community college. The problem was, in my version of that course, there was no text, just an atlas.

While I'm hopeful more and more students will be able to take a dedicated geography course in their K-16 experience, I believe most will only "run into" geography and its related technology in small "injections" along the way. John Caris at Smith College and  Sharron Macklin at Williams College take that approach in their small liberal arts colleges. David DiBiase, of Esri presented a vision for that sort of "injection" at in a presi titled Spatial Thinking Across the Curriculum at the Specialist Meeting on Spatial Thinking Across the Curriculum, Santa Barbara CA, December 10-11, 2012. I think as geographers we need to think about a geography curriculum that addresses both those taking a dedicated course or degree, and one that injects key ideas across a broader liberal arts or engineering program.

How would I rephrase the question for the latter vision? Here's a starting point:

Do you want to ...

• practice critical thinking
• develop spatial literacy skills
• explore visual communications
• evaluate Web data resources
• learn to use Web services
• consider epidemiological spread of disease

with your students?

The answer? Then you might want to consider teaching with GIS!

Valuable Resources from Sinton and Boyes

Last week an event titled Spatial Thinking across the College Curriculum was held in Santa Barbara. I didn't attend. In fact, I didn't even know about it, until I saw on Twitter that Esri's David DiBiase spoke (and posted his slides, err presi). Then, after watching the latest Penn State Geography Dept Coffee Hour (description, video), I learned my advisor, Roger Downs, gave the keynote. I want to point readers to this short write-up of the event from Diana Sinton. I have three point to make about this event/recap/topic:

1. Read the recap. It's worth your time, especially if you are planning to attend or organize a gathering on this topic.
2. I have observed how few of the geography/GIS education events get any write up at all. I see tweets (mostly of who is on stage next or that someone will be speaking at 10 am) and agendas, but little in the way of "this is what happened/was of interest/sparked discussion." I am hopeful organizers (even those with limited funds) can find someone (blogger, student, vendor, etc.) to document what happens.
3. Perhaps it's time to take just a single issue or question on this topic and tackle it in a single day un-conference. I'm thinking of a variant of a code sprint. It sounds to me like the Santa Barbara meeting had many of the challenges we faced at Bucknell: too broad a topic to get much done.

Also worthy of note this week was the University of Toronto's Don Boyes' announcement via a blog post that he was sharing his online course course content for his introductory GIS courses including his lectures, videos and resource listings. Several people have already remarked on their quality via Twitter.

I watched the intro video and some of the technical lectures (How to do a query). The bite sized lectures, presented via Adobe Presenter, are essentially Boyes speaking to PowerPoint slides. The videos are demos of how, for example, to do a query in ArcGIS. The videos seem to be provided as a complement the PowerPoint "chalk talk" on the same subject. Boyes noted how much effort was required to create these lectures and videos.  I can only imagine!

As I watched I was reminded of something I heard on the Hack Education podcast this week. It was about if teachers should use "generic" (Khan Academy or other educators') videos in the flipped classroom, or make their own. The anecdotal response highlighted the value of teachers making their own videos. A high school student noted that she got math for the first time using videos her teacher makes, while another class, an economics one that used other people's videos, was considered one of the worst on campus, and students were switching out.

I for one am still pondering how best to use "home made" video in online teaching and in flipped face to face classrooms. In very process focused subjects like math, I can see how having the instructor use a consistent vocabulary and create videos that match the current state of the class as a huge plus. Is that also true in a "learning about a technology" and "learning software" type environment, too? Or does something more generic, like Esri's virtual campus courses combined with educator-created lectures work as well?

I hope Boyes and other geography/GIS educators will share their results as they try different combinations in the coming months and years.

Takeaways: Conference on GIS & Spatial Thinking in the Undergraduate Curriculum

Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, PA hosted a two day conference on GIS & Spatial Thinking in the Undergraduate Curriculum this past weekend. Here’s the full schedule.

Below are my takeaways:

Make it a point to talk to your aunt at Thanksgiving. One graduating senior at Bucknell had a conversation with his aunt at a family gathering. When she learned he was studying GIS, she noted that her company, Lockheed Martin, did that. She helped him get an internship and he has a job lined up for when he graduates this spring. (I think he’s pretty sharp, too.)

I was surprised so few of the educators were aware of PLOTS and other DIY remote sensing efforts. I’m learning that like GIS professionals, GIS and geography educators are very “heads down.” Jeremy Crampton of the University of Kentucky gave the evening keynote and highlighted the U.S. government’s geospatial intelligence efforts, use of public information to gather information about spatial patterns (Twitter), and DIY data capture via balloons and drones.

There was a recurring theme regarding how early to engage undergraduate students in GIS. Several educators noted that in the past seniors literally learned it as they were heading out the door, leaving limited resources on campus. There are efforts at some schools to leave up to half the seats in some intro GIS courses for freshman and sophomores.

Diana Sinton, University of Redlands, gives one of three keynotes.

A comment about faculty and staff “checking your ego” came up in at least two presentations. Anne Kelly Knowles of Middlebury College recapped her research on the history of iron in the U.S. and her work with a multidisciplinary team studying the geography of the Holocaust. Regarding the latter she noted that once the team got over trying to impress one another and just listened to one another, far more interesting ideas appeared. She didn’t explicitly note it, but I suspect checking one's ego when working with undergraduates in research, which she does, helps put them at ease and be more creative, too. Diana Sinton of the University of Redlands noted "checking the ego" was valuable when faculty/staff and students learn together. Redlands Ithaca College faculty are allowed to take once class per semester and having them do alongside undergraduate GIS students requires checking the ego.

There are a variety of grants from federal sources, foundations, and even the schools themselves to support GIS education explorations. Among those mentioned were funds available for study of the digital humanities, hybrid learning and local natural areas. Few presenters cited “huge” grants, but many seemed very satisfied with just a few thousand dollars. It’s worth keeping an eye out for a variety of sources. Moreover, as one presenter noted, just having another organization acknowledge the value of the work can help reinforce the value of GIS, or an educational technique, on campus.

Jeremy Donald, Trinity University and Mike Winiski, Furman University used Kolb’s concept of the the Learning Cycle (new to me) to help determine which parts of a GIS course should be done in class and which as homework. 

• concrete experience (or “DO”)

• reflective observation (or “OBSERVE”)

• abstract conceptualization (or “THINK”)

• active experimentation (or “PLAN”)

They choose to assign the first two for “homework” and the second two as in-class activities. There was some discussion in presentations and during the networking time about how to draw these lines and how to motivate students who may blow off “homework.” Robert Beutner of Hobart and William Smith Colleges shared that his GIS class was completely flipped: concepts and readings were explored for homework and class time is 100% hands on. That's something I've wanted to try for quite some time.

Service learning, despite its extra challenges for faculty (finding clients, managing expectations of both student and client, keeping students on task and moving toward the deliverable) and students (frustration, team management, limited class time) yields huge rewards. Both groups see the value, but not necessarily while they are sweating out the details.

More and more schools, especially small liberal arts schools, seem to be getting the message that GIS must be in their students’ toolboxes. Institutions are hiring staff to infuse GIS across the curriculum. Some schools, like Bucknell, seem to created enough interest and demand with one or more GIS courses, before hiring such a professional. That, however is but one model of how to grow GIS and spatial thinking across a campus. I suspect in a few years there will be a best practices document detailing all of the options and how to pick the best one for different kinds of schools. I met several educators who'd like to read it now.

Geocube: A Best Website for Teaching and Learning?

Geocube was cited as a Best Website for Teaching and Learning site by the American Association of School Librarians. It was in the Curriculum Sharing category. I'd not heard of it before, so I checked it out. Here's the About information from the site:

Geocube…… re-inventing the way to explore Geography
The world of Geography at your fingertips and just a mouse click away!
Geocube is an attractive online resource about Geography. Geocube is based on the principle of the Rubik Cube with six faces and 54 topics. It is a virtual and easily accessible website which is available online for free. Move the Geocube around with your mouse and explore the faces and topics.Geocube provides an accessible way to read, see and watch what Geography is and geographers do. This is a European initiative developed by HERODOT, the European Network for Geography in Higher Education and is available to anyone who is interested in Geography.

While visually interesting and fun to play with, the site is more flash than substance. A virtual Rubik Cube floats in the center of the site and visitors navigate to different topics by spinning it. Each face has a theme (section in Geocube lingo): Earth from All Angles, Useful Geographies, The Fascinating Earth, Living Together, etc. Each face expands to a nine segment tic-tac-toe board of nine topics (subsection in Geocube lingo).

Living Together, for example, includes subsections on economic development, pollution, language, mobility, health, migration, ethnicity and religion, literacy and poverty. The health section includes a short, dull essay on health and epidemiology. There are also some images in a gallery (insect, ambulance, a picture of the sun viewed through open hands) with no captions or details. I have no idea why they are here, nor do I find suggestions on how instructors or students might use them. There are videos, too. None that I saw had any sound, nor captions or titles. Curious.

The "How to Use" video explains how to navigate the cube, but does not suggest a meaningful path through the content for students or guidance for instructors.

The explanation for this is not on the site, but can be found in a slide deck from 2009 explaining the goal of this project as a tool to promote geography, not share curricula or educate. I think the site does promote geography well, but I'm not sure how an educator would use it in course/curricula development.