GIS Education Weekly: Authoritative Story Maps, GIS in Ecology, Michael Jordan

Authoritative Story Map?

Early this week I read about a story map via a tweet.

http://gmattis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapJournal/index.html?appid=f14a2db655df43d7b213e61d09e91818 … Climates of Africa as an @EsriStoryMaps Incredible teaching resource! #maps #esri

Part of map and legend from the story map

It looks great and I'm sure educators will think of interesting ways to use it both in and out of class. Still,  I'm uncomfortable with the story map because I do not know who created it and why. There is no "About" tab or metadata. I try to teach my students to evaluate websites and data and to use those considered "authoritative." I try to do so, too.

I'm Web savvy, so I did some digging on the story map. I know the prefix in the URL (in this case "gmattis") in ArcGIS Online is typically the owner's name. Some searches led me to a bio for a Greg Mattis, an Academic Sales Representative at Esri. I guess he made it. But why? And when it was first published?

Later in the week I saw another tweet pointing to an educational story map.

Students can learn all about Iran with this @EsriStoryMaps Story Map : http://www.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=bfab514df6b3441ebb93d673aa647323 … #geography

That one, I'm pleased to report included not only the author's name, but also his e-mail address. He's an MGIS student at Chicago State University. Cool!

I really hope vanilla ArcGIS Online and the story map templates provide easy to populate fields to publish this sort of information. And, I hope anyone teaching Web map creation emphasizes putting one's name on one's work!

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