GIS Weekly: Are Drones, and Drone Courses, Leading to Jobs?

Geo for All News

Geo for All opened a call for tutors for the UN Open GIS Initiative. The group seeks people with "expertise in QGIS" and interest in volunteering for "UN Open GIS Initiative online self paced courses."

The slides from The State of Geo For All presented by Helena Mitasova, Vaclav Petras, Anna Petrasova from North Carolina State University (NCSU) GeoForAll Lab at FOSS4G 2017 Boston are available.

GIS Education Weekly: Investment in Location-based Learning, AAG GIS&T Course, Student Awards

Investment in Location-based Learning

A press release from Ambient Insights, "an integrity-based market research firm that uses predictive analytics to identify revenue opportunities for global learning technology suppliers," suggests mapping is hot this year:

Another interesting trend is the investor interest in digital cartography and mapping companies. These companies develop what Ambient Insight defines as Digital Reference-ware and Location-based Learning. Maps are inherently related to procedural learning in the same way recipes, product manuals, flowcharts, periodic tables, architectural diagrams, star charts, and schematics are related to learning. In the first three quarters of 2015, $72.0 million was invested in ten cartographic and mapping companies. This is significant considering that there were no companies of this type funded in 2014. 

"Some of the most extraordinary mapping innovations are now emerging around so-called indoor mapping and Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) that work inside locations where GPS does not function," comments Adkins. Six of the ten mapping companies funded in the first three quarters are selling new IPS products. "Museums, galleries, and tourist venues are now avid adopters of IPS systems. For example, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Royal BC Museum in Victoria have both installed IPS for their patrons."

A white paper on International Learning Technology Patterns (pdf) identifies some of the companies: Mapbox, CartoDB, Mapsense (recently acquired by Apple) and IndoorAtlas. Of these I know CartoDB is actually marketing in education, Mapbox started to do so, but then went rather dark. IndoorAtlas (with a US$10M infusion from Baidu) offers indoor tools for museums and exhibits but best I can tell malls and airports are more interested thus far than museums.

Geo-Literacy Projects Build Students' Understanding of Our Complex World

The article appeared in September on Edutopia. It's by the same woman who wrote a post titled Students Map Real-World Issues with (Free) Geospatial Tools on Edutopia last summer. There's nothing too earthshattering or different in this post: discussion of Geospatial Semester, Big Fork High School in Montana and links to Story Maps, NatGeo tools (via Gooru, of which I'd not heard), EAST and GeoMentors.

GIS Education Weekly: Geography Text Includes ArcGIS Online Maps, New Geo for All School

First Geography Text Taps ArcGIS Online Maps

Dr. Erin H. Fouberg, professor of geography at Northern State (South Dakota) is a co-author.

After eight years of writing and revising, the first edition of Understanding World Regional Geography (Wiley, 2015), co-authored with Dr. William G. Moseley (Macalaster College) was released in March 2015. Understanding World Regional Geography is the first geography textbook to integrate live, digital maps that open in Esri’s ArcGIS Online program.

As I understand it, only the e-edition ($63) includes the interactive maps. The loose leaf and paperback versions do not ($115, $164 respectively). I found a sample chapter (in ISSU, an online magazine format) but no samples of the Esri maps or the materials to help students explore them.

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