GIS Education Weekly: VR, EdTech and How Teachers Prefer to Teach

Resources for Teaching and Learning 

NGA: Crossword Puzzle - The puzzle was created for National Crossword Day 2019 best I can tell. This seems to be aimed at those in the industry, since the clues look pretty challenging! Via Twitter.

LinkedIn: Geospatial resources for schools - Thierry Gregorius shares a slide deck and other ideas for taking geospatial ideas into schools. I can download the PDF, but have not been successful at downloading the 30 Mb PPT file.

GIS Education Weekly: New Masters Degrees and Ed Tech

Companies in GIS Education

CartoDB can be found at these schools

CartoDB shared a slide deck it presents to investors. It's discussed here by the COO. In one corner of the slide titled "The Geospatial Ecosystem" are logos of educational institutions using its software.

Boundless formally announced its academic engagement initiative via a press release. I noted the beginning of this effort last November. 

New Geo Masters Degrees

The National University of Singapore will offer a Master of Science in Applied Geographic Information Systems starting this August. If I understand correctly, applications for the first cohort closed yesterday. This is a full or part time residence program.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health will offer a wholly online, part-time Master of Applied Science in Spatial Analysis for Public Health degree program beginning this fall. Via press release.

Subscribe!

Special invitation to AAG2016 attendees: Get this GIS education update free, via e-mail, every Thursday!

GIS Education Brief: Goal First, Tech Second

Learning about Learning via People I don't Know via Twitter

Jennifer Maze (‏@JenGrayScience) is middle and high school science teacher in Colorado. I don't know her, but somewhere along the way I learned she was an educator to follow on Twitter. I've not been disappointed!

If I parsed her tweets from this weekend correctly, she attended a Google for Education Global Summit. She offered a torrent of tweets, one of which I'll tackle in Thursday's newsletter/post. Today I want to consider this tweet from Sunday.

NASA World Wind is a great tool.
What goal would an educator have
for its use in or outside of class?

Pick the learning goal, then the strategy, then the tool -- NEVER start with the tool! #gafesummit

That's the process I learned from my instructional designers at Penn State. I also learned that at Penn State classes are not aimed at teaching software packages. I'm guessing those who formally study education learn these ideas even earlier in their professional development than I did.

Geography EdTech Efforts Tackle Geology, AP Human Geography and Social Learning

Title Page for Earth, A Primer

Three edtech efforts related to geography cross my laptop screen this week. That's about three more than appeared in the last year (that weren't "learn the states" apps). I'm pleased to see them!

The first one, which I found via the AnyGeo blog, is aimed at geology and physical geography, It's called Earth Primer. I dug into the fellow behind it and was impressed. He was recruited to work on the game Spore and is working on his PhD in play design. The "Science Book for Playful People" is interactive. The reader (doer?) will

Discover how Earth works
Look inside.
Make volcanoes.
Push around tectonic plates.
Form glaciers, sculpt sand dunes, make mountains, and control the weather.

2014: The Year in GIS Education

Here's a roundup of the key GIS education news from 2014. While I'm skeptical of the impact of badges and Esri's ConnectED efforts, I think the grass roots growth of open source GIS in education has legs. I think there is promise in geo-related educational technology, but this year's efforts are but toes in the water.

UAS Education Front

I've been following Unmanned Vehicle University over the past few years (2012, 2013). The organization was surprisingly quiet this year and I found out why: the founder and Executive Director, Dr. Jerome LeMieux, Jr. passed away July 4.

U.S. educational organizations pursued federal funding opportunities related to UAS teaching and research (pdf on UAS Centers of Excellence) even as others banded together to express frustration about limitations in UAS use in research and teaching. U.S. educators (and most other users) must be patient as the Federal Aviation Administration finalizes its rules. The current word from the Government Accountability Office suggests that will not happen until 2017.

What is new this year in UAS education?

• Ohio students are working with simulations of drones. Students in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics program at Greenon High School are are in what's called a first of its kind program in the region. 
• In Australia, Unmanned Experts is moving from instructor-led and classroom-based instruction on UAVs to online training. 
• Nicholls State  University (Louisiana) geomatics students received a donation from Lafayette-based Navigation Electronics Inc. (NEI), a GPS and GIS equipment provider: a Trimble UX5 unmanned aerial vehicle, optical sensors, image processing software and training worth $70K. Why? The Harold C. “Charlie” Poche Jr. Laser Scanning Laboratory at Nicholls is named for the former NEI owner and president, who died in 2000.
• Penn State and the University of Denver launched online UAS courses as part of their GIS programs.

GIS Education Learning Communities

I was not really familiar with the idea of "Learning Communities" the related "Communities of Practice" until I took a MOOC that introduced the idea. Our assignment involved observing and documenting such a community in action. I explored a community I was already in that I'd never though of as a learning community: my running club. That project prompted me to consider such communities in GIS/geography education.

I consider TeachGIS (now dormant), the GeoTech Center and Esri's Learn ArcGIS and Esri's Education Community (via its Facebook, GeoNet, listserve and other presences) infrastructures aimed at creating learning communities. My sense is that not one of them has reached critical mass ...yet. What education focused learning communities do I frequent? I regular visit communities that are not really focused on GIS education, but GIS in general: Reddit/GIS and GIS Stackexchange.

Final Pitch: Mastering Map Scale

This is the final assignment (Assignment 6.2: The Final Product Pitch) for the MOOC I'm currently taking: MITx: 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology. We were asked to create a complete pitch for the educational intervention we've been developing during the course.

Large and Small: Understanding Map Scale Assessment

This is an assignment (Assignment 5.1: The Assessment Plan) for the MOOC I'm currently taking: MITx: 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology. We were asked to create an assessment plan for our educational intervention. My intervention is detailed here.

Large and Small: Learning about Map Scale

This is an assignment (Assignment 3.2: The Elevator Pitch) for the MOOC I'm currently taking: MITx: 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology. We were asked to pitch our chosen education technology intervention with a one minute video. A more detailed document is below.

Large and Small: Understanding Map Scale

Students of geography typically know how to use a map’s bar scale to estimate the distance from one location to another. They can also use the representative fraction (RF, 1:24,000, for example) to do similar tasks. But ask them if they need a large or small scale map to explore the trails in the town park or the route a car might take from New York to California and they are stumped. In short, they can use map scale, but don’t really understand map scale.

My intervention is designed to teach about map scale for understanding, which should also help in its use and connect it to real world use. In particular I want students to understand:

• Larger scale means more potential details can be seen, smaller scale means fewer details.
• Larger scale maps cover smaller areas (details of one tree, rather than a forest), smaller scales cover larger areas (rivers in a country, rather than paths trough a town park).
• Using a map to find an answer depends on it being at the appropriate scale.
• The RF is like a fraction, a larger fraction (a bigger piece of pie) means a larger scale.

The intervention takes advantage of active learning tapping both a simulation component and a constructionist component.

The first element is an enhanced online world map, akin to Google Maps. The difference is the addition of a few tools. Students can enter a scale by keying in a number in an input box. In short, they’d put in in x in 1:x. The map responds by “zooming to” that scale. There’d also be two buttons labeled “larger scale” and “smaller scale.” Each one would change the scale by a factor of perhaps 10. Thus, hitting the larger scale button would change the scale from 1:1000 to 1:100. I’d also like my map to cover scales beyond 1:1, that is 2:1, 10:1, etc. I’d also like a way to visualize that 1:1000 is smaller than 1:100 visually, perhaps by using a grid of dots and turning one of the 100 or one of 1000 bright red.

Mock Up of Interface of First Element

The workflow might include a series of problems asking, essentially, what scale map might be appropriate for a map showing:

• your walking or driving route to school
• where you hid a treasure in your back yard
• a car trip out of state (or country)
• which states in the United States grow wheat
• countries that are members of the European Union

The second element of the intervention involves students drawing their own maps. They’d do so on the left pane of a window. That would be the “real world” side. They might sketch a penny, a pencil, a toy bicycle. The other pane would, in as real time as possible, show the representation of the object at whatever scale is assigned in an input box as noted above. As before the student would also have access to a “larger scale” and “smaller scale” button to adjust the mapped representation. 

Enhancing Maps101’s Field Trips

This is an assignment (Assignment 3.1: Make a Mod) for the MOOC I'm currently taking: MITx: 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology. We were asked to identify an existing educational intervention, identity some weaknesses and suggest some modifications to make it better based on ideas we explored about educational theories and proven methods.

The Learning Intervention

I discussed Field Trips in my post from Week 1. It’s a tool to help knit history and geography together by integrating text, maps, images and videos. I felt that it had potential to be better than a textbook, but in its first iteration, offered a very passive experience. Students click through numbered topics and occasionally watch a video.

The product is rather new and I have found no information about its effectiveness. I did find that the product is part of a “pivot” and update to the company’s base product “Maps101,” a database of resources for social studies, history and geography. Sadly, a discussion of the rebranding and product development seemed to focus on teacher, rather than learner, needs. The other key drivers were support for standards and the development of a modern and fun user interface. I did not find any discussion of learning theories or user engagement from the designer who shared these insights.

I think Field Trips could be enhanced with some active learning!

The Weak Points

I will focus on just one part of one Field Trip: the second element (Pin 2) called Geography of the Nile in the Field Trip titled Gift of the Nile (it’s a sample Field Trip, open to all). Here are the concerns I shared about this content in Week 1.

It [Pin 2] discusses how the river is formed by the merging of the White and Blue Niles. It goes on to mention some rapids [caused by cataracts] that are treacherous for boats at a location called The Giant Bend. I zoomed in and out on the map but could not find the two tributaries. Perhaps they were there, just not labeled? I could not find where the rivers merge or the location of The Great Bend. There is no search tool for the map. Even worse, the location “pin” for Item 2 on the map is not even on the river (see below)! A motivated learner would quickly jump to a search engine to find a better map of the waterways of Egypt!

Here's a refresher on the current interface and workflow. Students click through each piece of numbered content.

Overall interface and workflow for Gift of the Nile Field Trip

Here are details of the current map interface. Note the limited zoom tools and lack of a search box.

Limited Interactive Interface for Map Exploration

Suggested Active Learning Enhancements

1. Give the students a search tool and a more complete set of "zoom" tools on the interactive map and ask them to find where the rivers merge. Ask them to explain, in general, why locations where rivers merge, are important. Ask them to give examples nearby or ones made famous around the world. (Three Rivers Stadium ring any bells?) 
2. Ask students to ponder why the rivers might be called the Blue and White Nile. Have them offer up a hypothesis and a made up story of the names. Then, have them research the origin of those names to see if their hypotheses held any truth.
3. Have students, again using the search tools, find the Great Bend and some of the cataracts. Ask them to consider how the bend and the cataracts might impact choices of where Egyptians live or work. There’s a great day vs. night set of satellite imagery of the area that helps reveal where the settlements are today. 

Why These Enhancements Might Work

1. Having students seek and explore via an interactive (or even a static) map is active learning. Asking them to look at the merging of rivers in general ties what they are learning about Egypt to their general and perhaps local knowledge of rivers. This might be part of a reflection exercise, asking how the study of Egypt relates to their region.
2. Hypothesizing about how physical features or their names appear is a kind of modeling. Constructing a story (constructivism), even a made up one, enhances build model building prowess. Identifying the “true story” can help students update their models and knowledge.
3. Moving beyond the idea that that there are cataracts and a Big Bend helps push students beyond memorizing facts to more generalized knowledge of how physical geography impacts human geography. This is teaching for understanding, rather than just for content.

Being new to educational technology, I’m not aware of how similar interventions have panned out. Not only is Field Trips new, the underlying technology, story maps, is also new. In fact an example of embedding quizzes into story maps just appeared in August of this year. I’ll be curious to see if enhancements like those I’ve suggested are implemented in future editions.

Maps101's Field Trips and the University of Illinois' PLATO

This is my first assignment (Assignment 1.1: Ed Tech Then and Now) for the MOOC I'm currently taking: MITx: 11.132x Design and Development of Educational Technology. We were asked to explore a current and older educational technology and then compare the two.

Part 1: Current Technology 

Field Trips are a new addition to the online offerings of Maps101. Maps101 is an online resource library aimed at K-12 social studies teachers and learners with a focus on geography and history.

Each Field Trip organizes content and resources in the Maps101 subscription library into an interactive map template (specifically, an Esri story map) on specific topics such as World War 1, The Spanish Influence on Texas and Energy Consumption. The Field Trips are all organized the same way (image below): a series of numbered thumbnail images run along the bottom of the screen. When one is highlighted a larger version appears in the upper left with explanatory text. The largest part of the screen shows a map of the location of the topic or feature.

Interface of Field Trip titled Gift of the Nile

I think the goal of these interactive lessons is to make the topics more engaging for students. They are meant to replace reading a textbook.

The “doing” aspect of the technology is quite limited. Students scroll through the images, read the text, and zoom in or out on the map. Sometimes an image will include a link to a short video from National Geographic. Save for the few clicks, students are passive learners, much like they’d be if they were reading a text book.

The Field Trips do not offer specific goals or narrative stories. As published only the instructor, not the student, has access to a list of of concepts and skills to be learned. The Field Trips are open ended, though there is clearly a “preferred” path through the content, one that follows the numbered images and map locations.

I found no evidence student motivation or engagement are a priority. There are no “in trip” quizzes, badges or quests. My fear is that the content would be presented akin to “read pages 50-57 of your history textbook.” There are instructor resources with lesson plans and ideas. For the Gift of the Nile they include a printable blank map of Egypt. Students are instructed to use an atlas to name and color in the countries.

If a learner was motivated, he or should would go outside of the Field Trips to learn more, perhaps to the Maps 101 content. Let me provide a specific example. Item 2 in The Gift of the Nile Field Trip is called Geography and the Nile. It discusses how the river is formed by the merging of the White and Blue Niles. It goes on to mention some rapids that are treacherous for boats at a location called The Giant Bend. I zoomed in and out on the map but could not find the two tributaries. Perhaps they were there, just not labeled? I could not find where the rivers merge or the location of The Great Bend. There is no search tool for the map. Even worse, the location “pin” for Item 2 on the map is not even on the river (see below)! A motivated learner would quickly jump to a search engine to find a better map of the waterways of Egypt!

Location of "Pin" for Item 2

Part 2: Earlier Technology

In the fall of 1983 I was studying physics in college. We had access to PLATO, an educational tool from the University of Illinois. I was not aware at the time it stood for “Programmed Logic for Automatic Teaching Operations.” PLATO tools were available for an number of topics. All I knew was that our professor (Isaac Abella) said it could help those of us struggling with understanding forces and the like. The image below is what I recall it looking like on the terminals of Eckhart Hall.

PLATO's graphics and text were limited back in 1933.

As I recall the system for physics offered a series of physics problem and helped “walk” the student through them. First, text on the screen would display the problem. Then, they student would be asked to “identify the forces.” I don’t recall if it was touch or arrow keys, but I do recall “pointing” to ropes holding weights and the like.

The PLATO program I used was intended for college physics students. And, as I used it and I think my professor intended, the idea was that it was an “extra tool” to be used in addition to lectures and problem sets. Many students in the class never touched it. I recall spending several hours a week practicing with the limited number of problems offered!

The goal of this module of PLATO was to teach the basics of physics, and in particular, a workflow for physics problem solving.

My sense was that for those who needed the extra practice, PLATO was terrific. It had scaffolding; as I recall you could “ask for a hint” and be guiding through the analysis. I could do the same problem over and over (and I did) and no one would laugh. I enjoyed the very simple interactivity and I do believe you got a “happy face” when you got the problem solved correctly. PLATO increased my confidence in my problem solving ability. And, I did get an A in physics!

The only downside or unexpected effect of using PLATO, I think, was social. I don’t recall any students saying it to my face, but I did have a feeling I was one of the “slower” students since I needed this “remedial” help. I could see how there might be some stigma in going to a special room in the math building to get on one of the two PLATO terminals. I’m pleased I was brave enough to go and use it.

Part 3: Comparative Analysis

Field Trips and PLATO (for physics) do have something in common. Both try to lead the student down a particular path. The former is a “story” about a place or event, while the latter is a workflow to solve a problem. The former has both a content and a procedure component to it, while the latter is more about changing the procedure of learning.

The “media” of Field Trips and PLATO are starkly different. The former is an aggregation of content: images, text, maps and occasionally videos. While there is a path (numbered) through each item, there is no defined route as to whether to look at the picture first, then the map, then the text or to explore them in some other order. It’s a simultaneous presentation. That term commonly used to describe a key difference in information conveyance between maps (all at once!) with text (linear, one piece after another).

PLATO uses just one medium: a one color (green or orange) terminal. It presented simple geometric shapes and blocky text. And, the path through each problem was a one way street: the student had to answer each “step” in the problem solving workflow before moving on to the next one. Some of these choices, I suspect, were made based on the technology of the time. Still, I think there’s something to be said for such simplicity even with today’s fancier graphics and animations.

I found Field Trips terribly dull despite its images and maps. The content and frankly the interface, were no more engaging than a text book. PLATO does not seem “sexy” compared to today’s video games and education technologies. Still, its simplicity, scaffolding, and ability to “do the problem again” worked for me. I have fond memories of it even today, some 30 years later!

It’s possible that those new to Field Trips and the story maps template might find Field Trips more engaging than I did. Still, going through one after another in this form would eventually become dull, just like reading the next chapter of less than engaging text book. I’ve looked for reviews of Field Trips from other educators but found only endorsements the company uses to help sell the product. This statement is from an employee of the company on whose mapping technology the Field Trips are based: "As a former social studies teacher, I would have loved having my students work with these. History comes alive when you can see the whole story, and it is much more powerful in a map you can dive into. Field Trips rock!"

The fact that PLATO continued to exist and teach until 2006(!) suggests to me that its ability to teach physics and other disciplines found a loyal following!

I think it’s worth really considering the content vs. procedure idea introduced in the very first video. The whole idea of Field Trips to take existing content, curate it and repackage it in an interactive and engaging way. PLATO is far more about “practicing” skills over and over. I think there is a place for both in educational technology and look forward to exploring more engaging Field Trips type programs and more physics teaching tools that grew out of the legacy of PLATO.

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!

Building Minecraft in Planning, Design, Spatial Literacy and other Curricula

I read James Fee and Dale Lutz thoughts on how Minecraft, a computer game of building and defending areas of our earth, had made their sons both decent 3D designers and more savvy about sustainability.

Lutz wrote on the It's All About Data Blog:

I found this out first hand recently when, the night before doing a webinar on 3D, I asked my 15 year old son to whip me up a model of the Barsebäck Nuclear Power Plant using Minecraft. In a matter of minutes, he had the model on the right for me.

Fee wrote on the Spatially Adjusted Blog:

It all came to me when Connor said he wished he hadn’t dug such a big hole because the sheep and pigs kept falling into it (that’s pretty funny out of context, but you’ll get over it). So while I was building my Fort out by the sea, he went back to restoring the hillside so it not only looked good, but could support trees, flowers and bushes. We talked about creating a rail line between our two forts and he wanted to make sure it was routed around area’s he wanted to protect.

These gentleman are very savvy geospatial professionals and so far as I can tell, great Dads, they are not explicitly educators. That said, I've learned quite a bit from both of them over the years. And, they are on to something with Minecraft, a game born in Stockholm.

It turns out that at least one school in Sweden requires students to work with the game. Or as The Local, the Swedish English language paper, puts is, "Swedish school makes Minecraft a must." The Viktor Rydberg school teaches lessons using the game to about 180 13 year olds. What do they learn? Per one teacher: “They learn about city planning, environmental issues, getting things done, and even how to plan for the future.”

Many of the boys, it seems, know of the game already, but girls were not deterred and began building, too. Instructors compare it to shop or art class; it's about making things and reworking them to make them better. As Fee points out, this is very much the idea behind geodesign, the more spatially aware vision for thoughtful, iterative planning.

How did Minecraft get into this school? A nationwide "Future City" competition asked students how to make education better in Sweden and one suggestion was using Minecraft.

I wonder if STEM, geography and other educators are willing to set GIS aside for a moment to consider the role Minecraft might play. What standards could it address? What areas of critical thinking? What areas of spatial literacy? A quick search turned up a few scattered uses of Minecraft in geography education, but nothing too mature...yet.

Integrating Top Tech Skills for Students in GIS/Geography Coursework

eSchool News asked readers to identify the top five tech skills students should learn. Interestingly, few were really tech skills.  In fact, some of them are akin to the soft skills that some argue are more important than "cognitive skills." (Did you listen to This American Life a few weeks back? Highly recommended!) The responses in brief:

1) Digital literacy
2) Critical thinking
3) The Science Behind the Tech
4) Adaptability
5) Courage

The tricky part, as some of the commenters point out, is putting these in the context of technology, rather than other subjects taught in school. What I want to do in this post is provide examples of how to incorporate them into GIS and geography teaching and learning.

Digital literacy, to me, covers everything from protecting one's privacy online, to addressing online bullying, to knowing how to evaluate an online source as authoritative or biased, to appropriately citing the use of other people's content. One great place to practice some of these skills is via evaluating online resources. How good are the datasets available for the city of Atlanta (for use in a GIS)? How do you find them? Evaluate them? Pick the best one for the project at hand? How good are the online maps for regarding the upcoming election (for geography). Who produced them? For what purpose? What is the source data? Is it credible? Was the right projection used? Is there metadata? Part of such an evaluation should always include suggestions for how to improve the content. How could the dataset and/or its metadata be improved? How would you make the map "better?"

Critical thinking is a term I hear a lot in education circles and it's a hot topic in GIS education as well.  What is it exactly? I think of it as making good logical decisions. A toddler might tackle this critical thinking challenge: What goes on first, shoes or socks? In GIS there are number of similar procedural questions: Which data sets are needed to answer the question? What preparation must be done to use them? (Re-project them, merge townships into counties, etc.) What is the best way to display the answer?

The science behind the tech speaks directly to GPS! Using a system is easy; understanding how it works and why it may fail is a bit more difficult and frankly, more valuable! Other technologies students can study and understand: LiDAR, satellite imagery, drones, mapping applications on their cell phones, wi-fi locating, indoor locating, Photosynth...the list is very long. But, if forced to pick one, I'd pick GPS. (I wrote an article on just that topic for Directions Magazine.)

Adaptability refers to empowering students to accept and roll with changes. What if all of the sudden they need to change from using Windows to Linux? Or MapInfo to QGIS? What if a new version of ArcGIS comes out? Do they have the skills to take what they already know and apply them to the new situation? Can they ask the key questions about the new environment? I particularly like classes where students work with more than one GIS package or geography application; it helps hone adaptability.

Courage is needed to try something new and potentially, make a mistake. Younger students tend to be less apprehensive about such things while older students can become self-conscious among their peers. Sadly, older students sometimes lose the excitement of experimenting. I was reminded of this in recent years when the "old" Microsoft Surface came out. I spoke with a vendor who had one in the booth at a conference. He was disappointed that children would happily touch the screen to make the fish swim but their parents were hesitant.

GIS is a great place to practice courage and "risk taking via "what if" questions. Some may be based on project: "What if we have 18 categories on our choropleth map? Is it useful?" Others may be about the software itself: "What happen is if choose this option?" Courage relates to hardware too, and sadly, sometimes means a device may be ruined. I know of several schools that collect old tech precisely for students to disassemble and explore. That type of project relates back to "the science behind the tech" topic above.

I do think it's valuable for GIS and geography instructors at all levels to keep these five skills in mind as they craft their lesson plans.

Break the Schools Rules, Break Your Rules, Just Teach!

It really was a knock upside the head when my colleague and instructional designer suggested we not have assignments due only on Tuesday nights. Pretty much every other course in the program had weekly assignments due on Tuesdays. Even the course I previously taught did!

"Assignments can be due whenever makes sense!"he assured me. So, after some discussion we revamped the syllabus such that assignments were announced on Wednesdays, but deliverables were due Friday, Monday and Tuesday of each week. Friday and Monday assignments were contributions to our class discussion and the Tuesday assignment included student reflections (what they learned) over the previous week. My grad students may not have liked so many deadlines, but they didn't balk at all. We all settled in to a nice rhythm after about two weeks.

While I know everyone puts artificial rules and boundaries on ourselves all the time, this was the first time I ran into it in teaching. Thankfully, I'm finding more and more instructors who toss out the rules. Here are two more rule breakers who are making news.

Did you read about John Boyer, aka The Plaid Avenger in the Chronicle of Higher Education? He does some crazy stuff to teach cajole 3,000 students (yes, 3,000) at Virginia Tech to learn about World Regions, basically a current events course. He does podcasts, uses language I would not use in the classroom, has no required assignments (students pick from a long list of ways to earn points)... Students love him and more importantly, they learn. Can everyone do what he does? No, but more power to him for doing "his thing" and breaking lots of rules.

Also in the Chronicle I read Jennifer Brannock Cox. She teaches journalism at Salisbury. She teaches in a computer lab and that means students can be distracted by their own or the schools computers. And, they are, of course, distracted, often preferring to check-in with friends rather than watch the PowerPoint slides go by. But Cox is paying attention to her students. She knew she had to be more interesting than Facebook and Twitter and personal e-mail. So, she broke the rules and ditched PowerPoint now and again in favor of ... her own real life journalism adventures.

I find that the keyboard clicking subsides when I take a break from the PowerPoint and provide an anecdote that may help illustrate my point. For example, when teaching journalism students about the dos and don'ts of interviewing, my students are riveted by the list of places I was kicked out of—shopping malls, grocery stores, people's homes—during my days working as a daily-newspaper reporter in Florida. They especially like to hear my stories about a fellow reporter who once hung from a tree over a cemetery to cover a private funeral. And they squirm when I describe the time I tried to contact an accused child molester by knocking on the door of the home he shared with the victim and his mother. (I was on the police beat at the time.)

Students love hearing about my adventures and misadventures as a former journalist, and they are full of questions. The discussion that ensues not only captures their attention (and distracts from the keyboard), but it also allows me to covertly teach them about media law and journalistic ethics.

It's so easy to fall into a habit of doing "what everyone else does" and "what you've always done." And, sometimes that works. Other times it doesn't. That's a good time to pull out the big book of breaking the rules. What educational or institutional rules have you broken? Which ones would you like to break?

Teachable Moment: Apple Credits OpenStreetMap

Last Thursday the OpenStreetMap (OSM) twitter account posted an image confirming that Apple, which now uses the map data in its iPhoto software, has given the contributors due credit. Back on March 8 many folks involved in mapping and mapping data cheered as Apple showed off the new iPhoto for the new iPad and it included OSM (APB coverage). They then hung their heads low as they realized Apple did so without proper attribution (OSM Foundation Blog).

After the tweet above, news outlets from The Next Web to Spatially Adjusted shared the news that Apple basically did the right thing. The gory details include how both the OSM Foundation and an iOS developer helped Apple make the change (Talking Points Memo coverage). Why is this change such big news? Honestly, it's not big news. It's just that any Apple news is exciting. And, in the mapping arena Apple mapping news, is well, news.

A better question to ask is how to turn this non-news in a teachable moment for geography and GIS students and geography and GIS practitioners. My answer is to use this as a jumping off point to look at spatial data licenses.

First, of course, have a look at what the OpenStreetMap license says. OpenStreetMap is currently distributed under a Creative Commons (CC) License. It's stated in plain English that you can use the map images or map data, so long as you include attribution and if possible a link to the OSM website and the CC license. The OSM license page even includes sample text you can copy! The page also makes clear that if you alter or build on the data you can only release it under the same license. (If you want to be really up to date, prepare yourself because OpenStreetMap is changing to a new license. That said, I'd get familiar with CC first.)

Once you are familiar with the current OSM license consider these questions:

• Are the Creative Commons Licenses new to you?
• Where else have you seen them? If you haven't, find some non-mapping content that is licensed that way.
• Why do you think OSM and other creators chose this license?
• Would you distribute your works (article, music, art, maps, data, etc.) under this type of license? Why or why not?
• Did you know you can use some search engine tools to identify content release under CC licenses (and sometimes other licenses)? See if your favorite search tools allows such a search. (Hint: you might need to look under "advanced" searching.)

Second, explore some other data distribution licenses. What licenses do these data products use? How are they different from Creative Commons? Why did the data creators/providers choose those licenses?

• VMAP0 (formerly Digital Chart of the World, DCW)
• The City of Chicago
• The City of Vancouver 
• Nokia (formerly NAVTEQ)
• TomTom (formerly Tele Atlas)
• DigitalGlobe  
• GeoEye 
• Landsat 

Finally, think about why we have licenses for data and for creative works. Should we? Do the licenses you found for the geodatasets listed above make sense? Serve their intended goals? What should be changed? Anything?

Siemens Wall-sized Airport Touch EduGames

Last week I was passing through the C terminal of Ronald Reagan Airport in DC. I was stopped in my tracks by a full sized wall display of a city map. Two children maybe 4 and 8 were routing electric cars into a parking lot to charge. They did this by dragging a route the car should travel to one of the open spaces. The cars then started to flash to show they were charging. The goal, best I could tell, was to get as many cars charged up and out of the lot before time ran out. The kids were having a blast and the adults enjoyed the graphics and challenges the kids had finding a safe route to an empty space.

A second game, involved a high rise office building. I actually got to read the directions for a brief moment while Mom explained them to the youngsters. The goal was to lower carbon emissions by lowering the temperature in rooms that were too warm, raising the temperature in rooms that were too cool and turning off lights when rooms had no occupants. Warm rooms got red, cold ones blue. And, you had to be careful not to turn the lights out while someone was still working in an office. If you did, they'd pipe up, "I'm still in here!" You made these changes by touching the rooms that needed adjustment. A thermometer-type display on the left kept track of the building's current emissions, rising and falling as changes were made. I got a kick out of the younger child needing a boost to touch rooms on the upper floors. She seemed to enjoy that part, too!

The game/advertisement was put together by Siemens. Its logo was up on top, but barely visible. Well done! Can we maybe build the game I want to see at the airport? The one where you spin and adjust the carry-on bags to fit the most into the overhead bin? It think that'd be a great "touch style" game for the kids and Mom and Dad!

Which Comes First in EdTech: Ed or Tech?

Don Boyes, who teaches GIS at the University of Toronto, wrote a thoughtful post last week about his current work preparing to move one of his face to face GIS classes to an online format. He addresses the key areas he needs to explore: content, pedagogy and technology. It's the last one that interests me. Boyes writes:

Technology
Teaching GIS in general, and certainly online, requires more than a passing familiarity with a host of technologies.  I have been thinking about the software I use, or might use for my online course.  Just off the top of my head, the list includes: PowerPoint; Adobe Photoshop, Captivate, Presenter, Premiere, and Connect; Blackboard; and Citrix XenApp.  I also have to understand issues concerning bandwidth, mobile devices, podcasting, open learning, etc.  As a technophile/early adopter, I love learning about all these things, but it takes a lot of time.  For every technologic tool or solution, I have to be mindful of the actual benefits for improving communication, teaching, and learning and judge whether the invested time will be worth it.

I am pleased Boyes has such a long list of tech tools in mind. And, I'm pleased he's aware that it's possible to get swept up in the tech and perhaps lose site of the goal, that is, learning.

That brings me to the question in the title: In the development of a course (residential or online), which should come first: the full syllabus with course and lesson objectives or the tech that will enable to objectives?

In an ideal world, educators would have the luxury of paid time to consider the content and pedagogy and develop a course. Then and only then, they'd have the resources (skilled instructional designers, hardware, funds, time to test implementations, etc.) to weave in the appropriate technology. I'm sure I'm not the first to notice it rarely works quite that way.

Still, I think it's valuable to try to work that way, especially now when education technology tools are exploding. Why?

• While the tool you may want may not be available when you begin to develop the course, it might be in beta by the time you start to select technology. And, if technology literacy goals are among of the course, why not consider new or beta offerings? Students can learn a lot from how software is tested and input collected. Moreover, you can often use such products for free as part of a beta program or the like.
• You can't possibly keep up with both educational technologies and your discipline. Don't try; rely on others to help identify and select appropriate technology. 
• It's so easy to get swept away by new sexy software and hardware. Just consider the big rush to the iPad when most of the research on its impact on learning is still anecdotal. Hold tight to your educational objectives; don't be swayed by flashiness. 

Education technology is supposed to enhance learning. Thus, by definition, an educator must know what is to be taught and learned before such tools are selected. Be sure Ed comes first when considered EdTech.

A Phd Candidate Argues Against ArcGIS

Konrad M. Lawson is a PhD candidate in East Asian History. I'd never had learned of him had he not written about open source QGIS at his blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education. (Thanks to Gary Price for pointing me to the piece.) Lawson's post is titled Introduction to QGIS thought in fact it's more of a statement of "what I as a humanities researcher want from GIS."

What does he want? Software that

1) is inexpensive and easy to learn and use - ArcGIS fails in his opinion on both counts
2) will make cool maps - analysis is nice but beyond his needs
3) will allow the maps to look the way he likes
4) will allow maps to be created for use in presentations and publications

He goes on to explain that learning QGIS was as painful as learning ArcGIS but the former is free and runs on many platforms. Further, he notes that he would not like to be tied to a school for access to Esri software in the future. Lawson concedes that Google Maps/Earth can do some his required tasks but include busy basemaps which limit the value of the final products.

He concludes:

With a little time investment, I believe that becoming comfortable in an open source GIS environment like QGIS can go a long way for those of us in the humanities. Increasingly, prepared layers of geographic information, or at least tables of easily geocoded data can be found downloaded from various locations online. Being able to take any of that data and project it on a map for use in a classroom setting or in our publications, even without employing more advanced analysis does not require more than a few hours of investment in a GIS education.

I think the article is an honest description of the type of mapmaking many people want to do. I agree that ArcGIS may not be the right tool for them.

The commenters are quick to note that ArcGIS is far more user-friendly now than in the past. They fail to mention the new $100 Home Use Version nor ArcGIS Online, both of which might be helpful to Lawson and those in his shoes.

This article paints a picture of the current state of GIS with but two players: Esri on one side and open source on the other. The former is seen as expensive and complicated, while the latter is seen as free and complicated.

I can't fault Lawson for this vision, for I believe this is what he sees. I can fault us, the geospatial community, for either not providing him the tools he needs and/or not communicating to him that those tools exist.

Can you Compare a GIS to the Periodic Table?

Last week Joseph Kerski, @josephkerski, tweeted:

For a geography, environmental, or earth science teacher not to teach with GIS is like a chemistry teacher not using the periodic table.

This idea seems to track back to 2009, when he wrote:

One might argue that for a geography educator not to use maps is like a chemistry teacher not using the periodic table.

I am not comfortable with the first, "newer" iteration since I do not feel GIS and the periodic table are parallel. One is interactive, the other passive. I think the older version, with map in place of GIS, is a particularly apt simile.

I can't imagine a chemistry teacher who does not use the periodic table. The HUGE periodic table was the focal point of Mr. Mark's classroom. He was my 10th grade honors chem and 12th grade AP chem teacher. The first day of tenth grade he let us know that we'd have quizzes every few days in the first two weeks on the elements (name, atomic number and symbol). Then he handed each of us a blue bordered "Go Navy" cardstock periodic table, pre-punched with three holes to fit in our binders. I kept that periodic table until I finished college with a chemistry degree.

I didn't know it then, but learned later, when I studied geography in college, that the periodic table is a map. (It's a representation of structure. A structure is a set of elements and relationships between them. That's so very correct to say the periodic table is a map.) Between grade 10 and college graduation I learned that the periodic table was my grounding, "my basemap" to making sense of the properties of elements and compounds. I suppose that's why I kept that "Go Navy" one for so long.

As much as I love the idea of GIS appearing in all kinds of courses including environmental and earth science and new interactive chemistry tools appearing in all kinds of chemistry and related courses, let's not put the cart before the horse. GIS and all its analytics and cartographic tools are not valuable unless students and teachers know how to interpret the maps it creates. (What is where? Why? So what?) Similarly, an interactive periodic table (there are many of them now, online and for your favorite desktop and mobile platform!) does demand some understanding of the static version. (How are elements in the same row alike? How about the same column? What do those numbers mean?)

What I'm suggesting is that interactive tools like these demand some measure of literacy, spatial or chemical, for them to be valuable. If GIS or interactive chem tools are a more appealing way to introduce these ideas, that's fine. But, these basics must be instilled too, perhaps at the same time, and maybe, just maybe, before the interactive tools are introduced, to enable learning.

Tech in the classroom is definitely appealing (and big business!). But if students do not have the basic literacy it can be no better than static versions. I'm hopeful geographers are selling geographic literacy to environmental and earth sciences teachers along with GIS.