GIS Education Weekly: Teaching GIS in Every School in the County; New Geo Journal, Podcast and Video Series

Degrees, Programs and Courses

The 16-month Professional Science Master’s Program in Geographic Information Science from the University of Illinois focuses on GIS and business. "'Students who come to the program benefit from high-level, cutting-edge GIS training from leading people in the field, and they also gain from the U of I’s business program, which is very highly regarded and also cutting-edge,' said Sara McLafferty, head of the Department of Geography and Geographic Information Science. 'So we think we have a very exciting combination where we've got two really strong programs that are being merged.'” The first cohort started last fall, a second one starts soon, and applications are open for the 2017 cohort. It's interesting that the program name is generic and does not mention business.

Lawrence Stipek, director of the Loudoun County, Va., Office of Mapping and Geographic Information, details the county's use of GIS over the last 30 or so years in an article at GovTech. Among the tidbits of note: "Today, GIS is taught in every county high school."

Trajectory Magazine profiles NOVA IMS, USGIF’s first international school to be accredited. That announcement was made earlier this year. The first students will graduate with a certificate in 2017.

The University of Cincinnati's Geography Graduate Student Organization and Libraries will host an organizational meeting Aug 31st to discuss the formation of a cross disciplinary Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Learning Community. Excellent!

GIS Education Weekly: Future Geography Curriculum Leaders

Contests and Competitions

URISA is hosting a student competition with the finals at its Toronto GIS Pro event this fall. College students (enrolled in geo courses spring, summer or fall 2016) can compete for prizes of money ($500, $300 and $200) and free registration to the event (but no travel funds) and paid Young Professional dues upon graduation. The first round of the competition involves the creation of a video; the top three from that round will go to Toronto for the final. Videos are due September 2. The conference is Oct 31- Nov 3.

GIS Education Weekly: Geo for All and the United Nations, Parrot's Drone Education Program

United Nations Explores GeoAcademy Curriculum with Help from Geo for All

Two weeks ago news crossed my desk describing uptake of the GeoAcademy curriculum for training UN staff in its move from proprietary to open source GIS. Maria Antonia Brovelli, Vice Rector for Como Campus and GIS Professor, Politecnico di Milano who leads a UN capacity building working group, which has support from Geo for All volunteers, made a statement.

...a voluntary team of people of our GEO4ALL network are working in a capacity building project related to a migration of UN staff from proprietary to OS software. The team revised the tutorial and will start the first experiment with the QGIS GeoAcademy tutorial.

I contacted Brovelli to get some context. She explained that the "UN OpenGIS Initiative aims at developing an enterprise GIS system using free and open source geospatial solutions in support of UN Peace Operations." The Geo for All volunteers are working to provide "suitable training packages for UN staff on open source geospatial technologies." The news, then, is about the first step in this capacity building:

As the first step, it was decided to conduct training program as a virtual class for UN Staff, which is an on-line course as self-training with the help of G4A tutors, using some free and open source selected tutorials. The virtual class training courses will cover various subjects such as QGIS, PostGIS, GeoNode, GeoServer and OpenLayers. UN Staff will directly access training material through the free and open source ‘Beep Platform’ of Politecnico di Milano and could also be communicated with Tutors. The first course for the virtual class is chosen for QGIS GeoAcademy. The virtual class will be started in the second half of September 2016.

GIS Education Weekly: Geo for All Plans to Expand Reach, What Students in GIS are Doing

Geo for All to Work with other GIS Education Proponents

Geo for All Logo

A thread on the newly renamed Geo for All mailing list addresses concerns about the group's singular focus on open principles and software to the exclusion of proprietary ones. It's worth reading but the upshot is that there is indeed an opportunity for Geo for All to reach out to, communicate with and perhaps work with organizations such as Esri and AAG who are helping to grow GIS and geography education. As of today, Geo for All is looking for some leadership for this effort. The phrase “More People Making Maps That Matter,” was a suggested rallying cry.

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GIS Education Weekly: MOOCs, Guides, and Enslavement

Maps and the Geospatial Revolution now Available as Open Educational Resource

Now available for self study or re-use in your classes - the Maps MOOC (link is external) offered on Coursera is now offered as an Open Educational Resource by Penn State.

Here's the content. It's one of many OER Geography and other courses from Penn State. The About Page of the open content explains that the course may not be taught as a Coursera MOOC again:

• Will this class be taught again as a MOOC on Coursera (or elsewhere)?  

• I don't know yet. I would love to, but Coursera is radically changing how it does courses and I may not be able to spend the time necessary to convert how I do this course to fit their new model. Teaching a MOOC is a voluntary portion of my job (and most others who teach MOOCs), so it's important to understand that what my day job expects from me vs. what people want me to do for free are often incompatible with one another.

More on Geo-MOOCs

Diana Sinton offers an update on geo MOOCs at Directions Magazine. Of interest: quotes from ten people who took one or more geospatial MOOCs during 2014 or 2015.

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GIS Education Weekly: Has All the Buzz Gone out of Geo-MOOCs?

Response to Coursera GIS Specialization

I was excited to learn of the Coursera GIS specialization I wrote about last week. I thought it was big news. But at least with my community of readers, it isn't. Web and social media searches turn up few mentions and suggest either the news has not reached too far or it's just not worth sharing.

I wonder if we are post Geo-MOOC. I wonder if other MOOCs are sucking the oxygen out of this program. I wonder if the lack of marketing from Coursera and/or UC Davis limited reach of the news. I wonder if there is less demand for an ArcGIS for Desktop specialization than expected. I wonder if the "fee" is making this a non-starter. I wonder if the potential for the credential to help with job prospects is slim.

Another Look at the Future of Geospatial

NGAC, the National Geospatial Advisory Committee, identifies key trends that will define the geospatial industry in the future. It's a 10 page PDF from December titled The Changing Geospatial Landscape: A Second Look.

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