GIS Education Weekly: What Industry Can do for Young Professionals

Resources for Teaching and Learning

The Scotsman: Map of Scots women accused of witchcraft published for first time - A new map tracks more than 3,000 Scots women who were accused of being witches in the 16th and 17th century. Researchers from the University of Edinburgh built on the Scottish Witchcraft Survey which detailed the persecution of women during the period, with many burned at the stake or drowned. Interesting symbols!

Devex: Should open-source software be the gold standard for nonprofits? - This article, that tells the story of a move from open source to proprietary, is making the rounds. It should prompt some good conversations in classrooms worldwide.

GIS Education Weekly: Open Data is Winning but not for the Reasons You Think

Resources for Teaching and Learning

Offaly Express: Offaly to feature in events marking the 'Year in Geography' - The Geographical Society of Ireland initiative, The Year of Geography, has begun. Offaly is the first county to be featured. "This initiative also involves geography teachers and other members of the Irish geographical community and aims to better illustrate what modern Geography is all about and to better highlight the work that geographers do." There's more information  on the Society’s webpage. 

Business Insider Australia: 10 'easy' geography questions that middle schoolers can answer, but are hard for adults - "INSIDER has compiled a sample test of 10 questions from topic areas that frequently appear in the Geobee, courtesy of the National Geographic Society’s free quiz – and they’re surprisingly difficult."

GIS Education Weekly: Boundless, LizardTech and NatGeo Reach Out to Educators

Trajectory Touts Northeastern's USGIF Accredited GIS Program

Trajectory is USGIF's magazine. The publication features Boston's Northeastern University and its USGIF accredited geo program in an undated article.

A private research institution, Boston-based Northeastern University emphasizes experiential learning, or the integration of the classroom with the real world by engaging students in professional internships, research, and service projects around the world. Northeastern’s graduate geographic information technology (GIT) program within the university’s College of Professional Studies has thrived under such experiential learning initiatives.

"Experiential learning" is not new at Northeastern; the school offered it when my Dad went there in the 1940s.

LizardTech offers National University Program

LizardTech, the creator of MrSID® and provider of software solutions for managing and distributing geospatial content, announced today it has made its line of geospatial software available to national university students worldwide through the new National University Subscription Program (NUSp).

This is not for U.S. institutions. Per a LizardTech representative, "This press release is intended for National Universities outside of the United States." U.S. institutions are to use the existing program detailed here.

This program, for schools outside the U.S., offers options with different numbers of seats; one is $1999 annually, the other $2999. Those are the same offerings and prices for U.S. school offerings I found on the education website. To date, LizardTech only lists schools in the U.S. that use its software including Notre Dame, USC, Youngstown State and the City of College Station, which I'm pretty sure is a city in Texas.

The company updated its educational licensing program last GIS Day.

Boundless Reaches out to Educators

On Tuesday the CEO of Boundless, @annjohnsonceo invited queries from educators:

Interested in open source geospatial software for education? Reach out to Boundless at: mailto:education@boundlessgeo.com

There was a graphic, too.

So I e-mailed. The e-mail bounced. I sent the e-mail to another Boundless address. I've not received a reply.

One in Four Americans Holds an Alternative Educational Credential

The Census Bureau reported today (press release) that some 1/4 of U.S. adults hold a credential that's not a tradition college degree. The Census cites a professional certifications, licenses or educational certificates as examples. The data is from fall 2012 and is detailed in a report titled Measuring Alternative Educational Credentials: 2012 (pdf).

Money does come with these credentials.

Among full-time workers, the median monthly earnings for someone with a professional certification or license only was $4,167, compared with $3,433 for one with an educational certificate only; $3,920 for those with both types of credentials; and $3,110 for people without any alternative credential.

But, if you have a bachelors degree, adding on one of these does not significantly change income.

Two findings are relevant to geography and GIS leaners and workers.

About three-quarters of professional certifications and licenses were required for the current or most recent job. 

That's not something we see (yet?) in our field. It's a rarity when a professional certification is even noted in a job posting and in most U.S. states, there is no licensing of GIS users.

More than 90 percent of these credential holders took training or courses and had to demonstrate on-the-job skills or pass a test or exam in order to earn them.

This is also something not common in the U.S. geography/GIS market. However, with the current work on a test for the GISCI GISP credential, there may be some movement in this direction.

The main finding of this data for me is this: Educational institutions, educators, learners and hiring managers should open their eyes to these alternative credentials. They are here to stay.