GIS Education Weekly: Rich Communities Overrepresented at Princeton

On and Off Campus

Great Lakes Echo: Website tracks balloon debris in the Great Lakes - "Lara O’Brien, a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, created BalloonDebris.org to help citizen scientists track where popular balloon launches end. It maps where the balloons are found and allows people to submit photos of the debris."

Long Beach Post: 11-year-old Nathan Lu is one of the world’s youngest digital cartographers—and he does it by drone - "Nathan [Lu] has covered almost every aspect of Long Beach—from the suburbs to our boats—for the mapping system—which Amanda French, spokesperson for Soar, noted that he was the youngest drone pilot and photographer in their entire database—all with the hopes of eventually beginning his own own real estate drone imaging business."

GIS Education Weekly: Good News in Michigan, Minneapolis; Bad News in Nebraska, Montana

Events

MSU-GEO's Career Day and Job Fair is on Fri, Feb. 23 from 2:30-4:30p in Bessey Hall 108. All are welcome to attend! Want to brush up your resume before the event? Bring your resume to our resume critique session, Tu, Feb 20 at 10a in Geography 105. Via @onGEOatMSU. I love the idea of these events, but it seems online students can only attend in person.

The GeoTech Center provided more information about its regional workshops. There are stipends for teachers, and no registration fees, but travel and lodging are not covered.

Geo:Code is a hackathon at the Hennepin County Library (Minneapolis, MN) set for Saturday, March 24 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, March 25 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. It's a place to "learn/brainstorm about using open data to solve civic challenges" and it's free. Via @geocodetc.

GIS Education Weekly: High Schoolers Map the Impact of Katrina on Crime and Collect Images on the Summer Solstice

A part of the overall winner's
story map

Articles and Resources

University of Minnesota: U-Spatial Prize Highlights Thought-Provoking Data Maps - University of Minnesota's U-Spatial, which supports spatial research as part of the Office of the Vice President for Research’s Research Computing unit, selected nine submissions out of 50 as winners of its 2017 Mapping Prize.

Inside Sources: Geography Increasingly a Priority for Schools, Employers - The article covers the American Geographical Society's vision for education and its support for APHG and AP GIS&T. There is commentary on open source vs. proprietary software: "In general, the availability of free or open source data platforms has not always been good news for the incumbents in other industries. Education publishing companies for example have been reeling in recent years from the competition of freely available or cheap web-based lesson plans. [Chris] Tucker [chairman of the board of AGS], however, does not believe that the same dynamic is at work in the geography space, saying that he thinks the public and private sides of the market are 'feeding off one another' as the sector continues to grow."

GIS Education Weekly: Drones are Fun!

In and Out the Classroom with Drones

Smith students have fun with drones.

Instructor Jon Caris, director of Smith's Spatial Analysis Lab, offered "Fun With Drones," an Interterm class to generate excitement about the technology on campus.

The Purdue Drone Club hosted the first ever intercollegiate indoor drone races in January 2017. Ohio State and Illinois participated.

GIS Education Weekly: Geo Edu Supply/Demand Study, Women in GIS, QGIS

Distribution of respondents for "demand" survey

Note from Adena

I'm publishing the usual Thursday weekly recap a day early due to the New Year's holiday tomorrow. This weekly education GIS recap, and other musings, will appear on this blog. 


New EU Reports on Supply and Demand of Geospatial Education and Training Education

There are two new reports from a European Union project Geographic Information: Need to Know (GI-N2K). One is about the results of a survey of organizations that teach and train in geospatial areas (pdf), the other provides analysis of the workforce demand, again via survey for those services (pdf).

There are interesting data from the 234 responding organizations who supply training:

• 54% are not aware of the GIST Body of Knowledge
• 61% of those who are aware of it, use it.
• Why do some not use it? The most common response boiled down to: "No need, no wish” 
• Of the 430 courses offered by respondents, 62 (14%) are available online. Spain has the most at 14.

There are also interesting findings in from the demand assessment from 435 completed surveys:

• Current workplace tasks include "maps" and "management."
• Competencies gaining importance in the future include "Web" and "mobile."
• Competencies the respondents would like to gain include "programming" and "Web."
• Table 11 Gap analysis lists terms in the free-text responses that are not mentioned in the GIS&T BoK: API, python, geoprocessing, geoportal, UAV, OSM, VGI, augmented reality.

These PDFs are very detailed documents worthy of a complete read for those making decisions about geospatial education in Europe and likely, elsewhere.

A Geographer Looks at EdTech in 2013 - Part 10 - The Business of EdTech (in Geography/GIS)

--- This post is the tenth in a ten part series examining top 2013 trends in education technology in the context of GIS and geography education. ---

Audrey Watters introduces her final trend of 2013, the Business of EdTech with this often noted quotation: “Education is broken, and someone should fix it.” And, this being 2014, that means businesses should play a key role and be appropriately compensated for the fix. In the big world of education this means companies are jumping at the chance to offer:

• learning management systems
• MOOC platforms
• e-text and regular books
• hardware such as tablets and smart boards
• education communication tools
• resources for teachers and students in support of the Common Core and its respective tests

Our little world of geography and GIS education benefits only casually from most of these (iPads, say) and loses out quite a bit since geography and GIS are not explicit parts of the Common Core (but see part 3 of this series with resources on how these can be integrated into it).

I'm the first to agree that most individuals who go into business to help teach geography or GIS are not doing it for the money. No, they do it because they love the discipline and/or technology and believe others should know about it and use its principles to make the world a better place.

So, what are the "hot" geography/GIS education businesses and business opportunities in our space in 2013/2014? 

GIS Etc. - GIS Etc. is small company that offers both GIS education books (All Esri Press Books are 40% off the retail price) and consulting. GIS Etc. folks are the same ones raising money for GeoPorter.

Esri - Esri offers a map of its various education licenses implemented in the U.S. and publishes many of the top selling GIS training books. There's a story map of there the Esri Ed team travelled in 2013. I think the most innovative thing Esri did in education this year was to host an unconference as part of Ed UC. Said another way, I can't point to any specific edtech innovation from the company.

National Geographic - I found this year's Geography Awareness Week support/tools/outreach less than stellar. In fact, I for one feel it's losing steam.

The company still offers educational products. It also was a recipient, with three others, of NSF funds to explore the future of geography education, aka "The Road Map." I'm not sure if these documents (three at NatGeo, one at AGS - why these do not all live together, I can't say) have caused any innovation in the areas they cover. Could/should these reports be a resource for new education products and services?

National Geographic Learning, a partnership between the National Geographic Society and Cengage Learning, an educational publisher, is sort of on hold as Cengage declared bankruptcy in July and is restructuring.

ICA/OSGeo - A memorandum of understanding has these two organizations standing up 100 (there are now 64) university open source GIS software labs worldwide. Are there business opportunities here? I'm not sure.

Certificates - GIS certificate programs seem to draw students and bring in money. That would explain why more appear every few weeks. Elmhurst College is making waves by offering an AP Human Geography certificate for educators. The college feels there is demand, but is there money to keep such a program going? With few state geography requirements and no in the common core, funding for educators to study, may be a challenge. I hope I'm wrong.

Drone Training - I've noted Unmanned Vehicle University, a for-profit, unaccredited school, but other training organizations are popping up. Just this week Northland Community and Technical College announced a one year remote sensing programming specifically aimed at interpreting drone-collected imagery. The school is using drones as a marketing opportunity. Well played! We'll see more plays in this space in the short term now that the FAA has selected the UAS test areas in the United States. 

Conclusion

This list is a way to highlight two things: (1) there is little money in geography/GIS education and (perhaps therefore) (2) there has been little to no innovation in it in recent years.

The innovation in geography/GIS edtech with the greatest impact this year was MOOCs, most notably Penn State's Maps and the Geospatial Revolution (which is running again next spring). While I applaud it and its peers, the current MOOC business model, as I understand it, is not one that can spur many competitors or innovators. 

And, that perhaps explains our situation. In contrast to the larger edtech business space where all sorts of businesses are funded, pop-up, survive, die, pivot or are acquired, geography and GIS education lives in an edtech desert.

Unmanned Vehicle University Obtains License; Offers Free Book Publishing

I've been following Unmanned Vehicle University (UVU) on this blog for abut a year (previous articles: 1, 2). I keep an eye on it for two reasons. First, it's in the geospatial/GIS/remote sensing arena and second, it's a for-profit institution. I regularly receive e-mails from the school about upcoming courses and new offerings such as videos and books, but I do not receive news about the school itself. That information I have to dig up myself.

So, what's new at UVU since late 2012? Quite a lot!

In November university president Dr (Col Ret) Jerry LeMieux contributed to Big Beacon, a website about new ways to teach engineering. In his post titled Innovator’s Notebook: A New Approach to Unmanned Systems Engineering Education he scoped out the unique vision for UVU. It included decisions to:

• Start from a student’s perspective. [Connect course content to job (job market).]
• Recruit world-class expert faculty. [Require a PhD in engineering and tons of experience. Use social media to find faculty all over the world.]
• Keep content real worldly, relevant, and applicable. [Mix delivery systems for content (lectures, videos, reading) and for student work (problem sets, papers, take home evaluations).]
• Set a realistic business model and competitive pricing. [Make course fees low to serve areas with limited income (South America, India) and use off-site adjunct faculty to keep overhead manageable.]

Also in November I learned from LiDAR News' Gene Roe about the university's journal. "The International Journal of Unmanned Systems Engineering – (IJUSEng) is the official journal of Unmanned Vehicle University and the first journal exclusively dedicated to unmanned systems engineering." The January 2013 is the first issue and includes three free-to-read articles. There are also details on how to contribute and subscribe. The quarterly online publication is $495 for individuals and $150 for students. The publication is based in the UK. The editor, Dr Pascual Marques, has a company called Marques Aviation, which sells aircraft related products and services (website copyright 2010). He is UK Director for UVU.

On December 12 the University announced by press release a license to grant degrees in Arizona.

Unmanned Vehicle University just received a university license from the Arizona State Board for Private Postsecondary Education. The license grants UVU the authority to grant Doctorate and Masters Degrees in Unmanned (Air/Ground/Sea/Space) Systems Engineering. A Certificate in Unmanned Systems Project Management is also available for Undergraduates.

The Arizona State Board for Private Postsecondary Education license shows no accreditations. I'm guessing that means that the board does not recognize the accreditation from International Association for Distance Learning UVU holds. Or perhaps that accreditation ran out? (I noted the IADL membership in a previous article.)

Interestingly,"fully accredited degrees," a phrase on the UVU homepage for some time, is no longer mentioned anywhere on the website. While exploring the Arizona license, I learned that the school does not operate in Washington State.  UVU "is not a legal degree-granting school in the state of Washington," per the Washington Student Achievement Council.

In late December the University posted a job for a recruiter noting a salary of 10K per month (120K per year, wow)! I saw it on several job boards including SimplyHired.com. 

At the end of December UVU announced, again via press release, a program to pay for the publication of the first 50 approved texts about UAVs submitted. The gory details are on the UVU Press page; it suggests publication could cost between $3K and $5K without this aid. The press already has one book approved: Dr Oren Gal, who is working on his PhD at the Technion in Israel, had his book titled "Marine Robotic Concepts and Science" approved.

To start off 2013 the University received the trademark (press release) for Unmanned Vehicle University, describing it as "Unmanned vehicle training and education."

UVU is clearly working hard to keep both its educational integrity high while boosting its bottom line.