GIS Education Weekly: Do Hackathons Exploit Participants?

Education News

SPARC: Congress Funds $5 Million Open Textbook Grant Program in 2018 Spending Bill - "This marks the first major investment by Congress explicitly in open educational resources (OER) as a solution to the high cost of college textbooks, and underscores that course materials are a significant factor in making higher education affordable."

Wired: “Sociologists Examine Hackathons and See Exploitation” - Researchers conclude, as explained in the article, "...institutions use the allure of hackathons, with sponsors, prizes, snacks, and potential for career advancement, to get people to work for free."

GIS Education Weekly: Self-driving Car Engineer Nanodegree, Teaching Historic Offensive and Minecraft

Programs, Degrees and Courses

From the Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Video

Udacity has opened registration for 250 seats in its Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree program. Sebastian Thrun, the founder of Google’s Self-Driving Car program and co-founder of Udacity, is an instructor. Partners Mercedes-Benz, Didi, Otto and Nvidia will look at students for potential employment. The program spans nine months and runs $2400 (scholarships are available). Via @geoawesomeness.

GIS Education Weekly: High Schoolers and Interns Solve Challenges, MOOCs, Essential Body of Knowledge

Bronx High School of Science Students find Use Cases for DigitalGlobe Imagery

Image by Ryan Jay Crisostomo CC BY-SA 3.0

This year at State of the Map [the OpenStreetMap US event], developers and users gathered at the United Nations in New York City to exchange information on the latest geospatial applications. Among the participants were 15 entrepreneurial-minded students from the Bronx High School of Science. The students were on hand to discuss their use cases detailing the application of satellite imagery, big data, and maps to solve problems challenging the commercial sector, particularly, real estate investment, infrastructure, and security.

Ninety students at the school were part of DigitalGlobe's Bright Ideas competition held at the top notch school. (I was in an NSF high school program one summer and the Bronx High School of Science students kicked my butt.) The good news:

The original ideas within these use cases are the intellectual property of these superb intellectual athletes, and their next step is to apply to for grants through the DigitalGlobe Foundation to further their ideas towards commercialization.

If the ideas come to fruition, DigitalGlobe will sell imagery. Is it possible this detailed imagery is still a solution in search of a problem?

USGIF Publishes GEOINT Essential Body of Knowledge

USGIF produced the GEOINT Essential Body of Knowledge (EBK, PDF). It conducting a cross-industry job analysis to identify the knowledge, skills, and abilities critical to the GEOINT positions. The document was developed in support of the upcoming Universal GEOINT Certification I discussed last week.

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