GIS Education Weekly: Cadets Show off their Projects

Resources

GIS Lounge: Free Urban Planning GIS Exercises - The book GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management is freely available as an open access book or can be purchased in hard copy format. The six exercises, written for QGIS, are available from the GIS in Sustainable Urban Planning and Management: Exercises and materials page. Each exercise includes a PDF and downloadable datasets (QGIS project, shapefiles).

USGS: "Geographic Information Systems," a 2002 poster is available for download in the Publications Warehouse.

GIS Education Weekly: UW Stevens Point Geography on the Block

Courses and Programs

Inside HigherEd: U Wisconsin-Stevens Point to Eliminate 13 Majors - The University of Wisconsin at Stevens Point plans to address “fiscal challenges” with changes in the curriculum and staff. "Programs pegged for closure are American studies, art (excluding graphic design), English (excluding English for teacher certification), French, geography, geoscience, German, history (excluding social science for teacher certification), music literature, philosophy, political science, sociology and Spanish."

The University of Geneva offers a Certificate of Advanced Studies in Geomatics for a Sustainable Environment (pdf). The program includes a MOOC. The certificate program is limited to 30 participants. Via LinkedIn.

GIS Education News: A UAS MOOC, Poverty Mapping, More Free Software for Students and Faculty

Resources

Number of international students a state hosted in 2016-2017

U.S. News: Map: 10 States That Attract International Students - Could it be the states with the most colleges and universities? Twitter cartographers call for normalizing the data.

Stanford News: An artificial intelligence algorithm developed by Stanford researchers can determine a neighborhood’s political leanings by its cars - "Stanford researchers are using computer algorithms that can see and learn to analyze millions of publicly available images on Google Street View to determine the political leanings of a given neighborhood just by looking at the cars on the streets."

GIS Education Weekly: Making MOOCs Massive Again

Resources

Cartogram: Violence Against Women

Geographical: Violence against women - a global perspective - A cartogram shows the worldwide pattern.

Motherboard: Following a Google Map to Nowhere Is Easy. Getting Out Is Hard - A look at navigating by the moving dot rather than a static map.

Outside: Strava Is Killing the Blissful, Beautiful Loneliness of Running - Does measuring sport remove the fun? Or add to it? Via Larry in Muscatine.

GIS Education Weekly: NSF Grants for Drone Education, Quality of Life in Cities go to Minnesota

On Campus

SUAS News: NCTC, SCSU celebrate partnership, NSF grant - Northland Community & Technical College  and St. Cloud State University are partnering to enhance geospatial information technology and unmanned aircraft systems education in the region and develop educational pathways for students. The funding is via NSF.

Science Blog: Digital Map Helps Historians Get Granular With Holocaust Research -"Beorn, a lecturer in UVA’s Corcoran Department of History and a consultant to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, has studied the Holocaust from a geographic perspective before and was looking for a way to create an interactive map of the Lviv ghetto and the nearby Janowska concentration camp."

GIS Education Weekly: High Schoolers Map the Impact of Katrina on Crime and Collect Images on the Summer Solstice

A part of the overall winner's
story map

Articles and Resources

University of Minnesota: U-Spatial Prize Highlights Thought-Provoking Data Maps - University of Minnesota's U-Spatial, which supports spatial research as part of the Office of the Vice President for Research’s Research Computing unit, selected nine submissions out of 50 as winners of its 2017 Mapping Prize.

Inside Sources: Geography Increasingly a Priority for Schools, Employers - The article covers the American Geographical Society's vision for education and its support for APHG and AP GIS&T. There is commentary on open source vs. proprietary software: "In general, the availability of free or open source data platforms has not always been good news for the incumbents in other industries. Education publishing companies for example have been reeling in recent years from the competition of freely available or cheap web-based lesson plans. [Chris] Tucker [chairman of the board of AGS], however, does not believe that the same dynamic is at work in the geography space, saying that he thinks the public and private sides of the market are 'feeding off one another' as the sector continues to grow."

GIS Education Weekly: Computer Sci without Computers, Astronaut Offers MOOC on Orbital Perspective

Programs and Courses

Introduction to the Orbital Perspective is a 10 week Coursera MOOC headlined by Ron Garan, the astronaut who spent time on the space station. "The goals of this course are to develop the student’s critical thinking skills, global awareness, and ability to work as an integral part of a team in an increasingly complex global job market. The course provides a foundation in such skills as team building, collaboration, and elevated empathy using real-world scenarios from some of world’s most effective collaborative projects including the Earthrise-2068 Project." h/t Glenn Letham

GIS Education Weekly: Update on UC Davis Coursera Specialization

Update on the UC Davis Coursera Specialization

As promised back at the end of last year, here's a Q&A with Nick Santos on the state of the UC Davis five course Coursera GIS specialization. Thanks to Nick for taking the time to answer my questions.

1) How’s it going teaching desktop users remotely? So far as I know, you were the second MOOC instructor to do so. You noted that as a key distinguisher of the specialization.

It's going well - the biggest challenge for me is volume of students. [When] things in an in-person course don't go perfectly, you're around to address [them] with the students. [In the specialization,  issues must be] smoothed over and made clear online. The great thing is that this format allows for rapid iteration, so fixes for unclear items can be made as soon as we have them ready, but it's still a lot to deal with so many students who understand instructions a little differently.

GIS Education Weekly: Geography Instructor Finds VR Wanting, Maps MOOC Finds New Home

Teaching and Learning Resources

Exploration Remote Sensing Webinar: What Every Geologist Needs to Know About Technology and Trends for 2017 - From DigitalGlobe, Wed Feb 22.

TES: The virtual geography field trip versus learning outside the classroom? - A year 7 geography instructor in the UK offers candid thoughts about the value of Google Expeditions as a substitute for field trips. Bottom line: It was cool, but students didn't seem to learn much from experiences with a VR version of the seven wonders of the world.

GIS Education Weekly: MOOCs, Down with Data, Learning the National Grid

MOOCs 

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) - Key Concepts for New Users is a new MOOC from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. It's two weeks long and begins February 6.

Peggy Minnis from Pace University is offering her Desktop GIS MOOC starting January 23rd. It's twelve weeks, with badges and certificates available. More info: syllabus/FAQ, registration.

Esri's Earth Imagery at Work and Do-it-Yourself Geo Apps MOOCs begin February 1.

GIS Education News: UC Davis Coursera Specialization Update

UC Davis Specialization Update

The UC Davis GIS specialization, hosted on Coursera, includes five courses, two of which are now live. The third course, Geospatial and Environmental Analysis, is expected to launch in the next few weeks. I wrote about the specialization back in January; the first course launched in February.

The first two courses are getting positive reviews. I found this recap of the first course, Fundamentals of GIS, by someone named William. That course gets a high score on Coursera: "4.8 out of 5 of 229 ratings." The second course, GIS Data Formats, Design and Quality, gets the same 4.8 score based on 51 ratings, as I write this.

I contacted Nick Santos, the lead course developer and instructor, to get his perspective on the first few months of the specialization. He explained that "the vast majority of students continue to get access to the courses for free" while "enough students are paying for the courses and specialization" to defray the significant development costs.

The monthly offerings have allowed him to identify "the common questions - both ones because of errors or inadequacies in the materials as well as ones related to language barrier, and diversity of student backgrounds." He's put together an FAQ to address them. Santos is looking forward to completing course development so he can spend more time interacting with the students.

He's already updated both the final assignment and its assessment method for the second course. He's pleased with immediacy and flexibility of teaching via Coursera: "The thing I really like about this platform is that we can constantly make changes, so when I see an issue with the course, I can update the materials and students get the new materials right away."

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GIS Education Weekly: Introducing Spatial Thinking to K-5 Students, MOOC, How Much Coding?

Students work with puzzles
in the STEM+C project

Spatial at the NSF STEM for ALL Video Showcase

The University of Redlands wants you to vote for its Spatial STEM+C video voting page so it can win a Public Choice Award in the NSF 2016 STEM for ALL Video Showcase. "Spatial STEM+C is an exploratory integration project that is introducing K-5 students to spatial thinking as a way of improving computational thinking and mathematical performance. This video will provide a glimpse into the process of developing and pilot testing curricular activities for the project." Last year the GRACE program won a Public Choice Award.

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Resources

USGS National Geospatial Program Director Mike Tischler was featured on Sunday's CBS Sunday Morning news program. He speaks about the National Geographic Bee, emphasizes the importance of geographic knowledge, and gives a shout out to USGS mapping. h/t Mark at USGS

GIS Education Weekly: Open Education GIS Degree, MOOC News from UC Davis and Elmhurst

Team Submitting Proposal for Funding to Open Education Initiative for GIS Degree

Achieving the Dream announced the Open Education Initiative Degree Initiative on February 24. A team is already putting together a proposal to develop content for an open source GIS degree. Philip Davis reports he's part of a team including Adam Dastrup and Kurt Menke representing DelMar College, Salt Lake Community College and Central New Mexico Community College respectively. Per an update from Philip Davis: Del Mar College will not be proposing to this round of ATD. Adam Dastrup reports SLCC is preparing its own initiative unrelated to geospatial.

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MOOC News

The UC Davis GIS MOOC will start approximately monthly, not every two weeks as originally suggested. The next session is already scheduled to start March 21.

About two weeks ago Coursera launched Mentor-Guided Courses. Per Class Central, it's "a new initiative which allows learners to pay extra and get mentor support. 'Mentors' in this sense are professionals who work in the industry that a given eligible course is based upon." There's a fee (full cost $248, but "mentors" are currently "on sale" at $149) and currently only ten courses offer mentors. Should GIS MOOCs have mentors? Would you want to be a mentor? Would you pay for one?

Esri is supporting Elmhurst College’s Skills for the Digital Earth MOOC, which runs from April 3-30 2016. Registration opened March 1. Here's the brochure (pdf) and an infographic (pdf) with stats about previous iterations. The course content remains the same as previous offerings.

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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GIS Education Weekly: UC Davis Launches Five Course GIS Specialization on Coursera

UC Davis Launches Five Course GIS Specialization on Coursera

Basics

In February the University of California Davis will launch a series of five GIS MOOCs, the Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Specialization, on the Coursera platform. The four "lecture" courses can be taken individually. But if you pay for all of them, along with a capstone project course, and pass all of them, you can earn a specialization in GIS.

Nick Santos, Geospatial Applications Researcher and Jeff Loux, Ph.D., Chair, Department of Science, Agriculture and Natural Resources & Associate Adjunct Professor are the instructors.

The specialization is in partnership with Esri and uses its software. Esri's David DiBiase described the company's participation this way:

At their request, we’re helping UC-Davis to provide no-cost Student licenses of ArcGIS for Desktop.

The specialization includes five courses:

1 Fundamentals of GIS
2 GIS Data Formats, Design and Quality
3 Imagery, Modeling and Applications
4 Geospatial and Environmental Analysis
5 Capstone: Geospatial Analysis

2015: Where is GIS Education in the Top EdTech Trends?

Every year Audrey Watters ends the year with a set of posts covering the last 12 months' edtech trends. I read the ones posted up until Dec 18 and here ponder where GIS education fits. 

The Politics of Education Technology

Common Core, the election, Arne Duncan stepping down, paying for college .... most of these are of little concern to GIS educators.

The federal government's interest in geography and edtech (where GIS falls) are of concern. Geography graduated up in the latest education bill (Every Student Succeeds Act) in that it's now considered part of a well balanced breakfast, I mean education. That to me says there's still quite a lot of advocacy and grant writing at the state level needed for any measurable changes in the coming years.

GIS Education Weekly: TED Prize, Geographer to be Minister of Science, NEARC Educators Day

Satellite Using Archaeologist Sarah Parcak Wins $1M TED Prize

Sarah Parcak (Image via UAB News)

What'll the University of Alabama at Birmingham associate professor of Anthropology and director of the Laboratory for Global Observation do with it?

Our 2016 TED Prize winner, Sarah Parcak will reveal a big idea to take her work to the next level on February 16, 2016 at the annual TED Conference. In a session that will be broadcast for free to the world, she'll reveal a wish to allow curious minds everywhere to play a part in preserving our global heritage. It's a wish about the wonders of archaeological discovery and our connection to the past.

I note this because it sounds like a crowdsourcing opportunity that might be interesting for students of all ages. You might have heard of Parcak before because she was a National Geographic Explorer.

Matt Rosenburg Retires from About.com Geography Site; MapLab Team Leaves Wired

Matt T. Rosenberg ‏(@mrgeog) is no longer operating the geography site at About.com. He'd been there for 18 years. Per a Facebook post, he plans to pursue other interests. I'm not clear who will take over the position but can confirm he did a great job and will be missed.

In other leaving news, the MapLab team from Wired is moving on per a tweet. Via: Anthony Robinson (@A_C_Robinson)

A Geography Resource from Cheapo Air?

The link from Cheapo Air was shared by the Girl Scouts (@girlscouts). Then it was retweeted by CanGeo Education (@CanGeoEdu) and AAG GeoMentors (@aaggeomentors).

The resources seem ok, and the links I tried are all live. I wonder who put the list together? I wonder why the list is on a cheap travel site? I wonder when it was published? Is this authoritative content? Would you retweet it?

GIS Education Weekly: Getting Skills at Community Colleges, MOOC Stats, Economically Diverse Colleges

Those with Bachelors Flock to Community Colleges for GIS

The end of a long article from the Hechinger Report (+1) about those with degrees returning to the community college for job skills is this factoid:

At California’s Foothill College, employed workers from nearby tech companies have flocked to the community college for advanced training in geographic information systems, said Kurt Hueg, Foothill’s vice president of instruction. The school has embraced its role helping Silicon Valley, he said, but it’s difficult letting educated workers know about opportunities at community colleges.

“Marketing is a big part of our function here,” Hueg said. “As much as people think they know about us here, they don’t really know us.”

University of West Florida GIS MOOC Update

A press release this week detailed the impact of the school's Introduction to GIS MOOC offered this past May.

Takeaways:

• 3400 students
• Content used by the University of Hawaii to teach professionals and academics in Mozambique
• Mentioned at Esri Education GIS Conference plenary
• Will be taught again next May

We Are HERE

A few weeks ago I noted Hexagon's "I am Hexagon" features profiling its employees. This week HERE has started a similar effort called "We Are HERE."

Before HERE technology happens — people happen. It may seem like magic, but there are a lot of people behind the scenes bringing things to life. How do they do it? This blog series will provide answers as we interview HERE employees and pull back the curtain.

First up is an interview with Mahmoud Abid, a Sr. Dev Ops Engineer, based at the HERE office in Schwalbach, Germany. Via: Glenn Letham (@gletham).

GIS Education Weekly: Making Videos Interactive, Using Snapcat Geofilters to Attract Students

EDPuzzle: Make ANY Video an Interactive Lesson

I follow just a few active K-12 educators on Twitter. One, Jennifer Maze (‏@JenGrayScience) went to a Google for Education Global Summit in Colorado and tweeted about EDPuzzle with the comment "Mind blown." Yes, I agree.

This free tool allows educators to add interactive quizzes, audio or text comments and even crop videos to just the valuable part. I enhanced one of my own videos in just 15 minutes using all of those tools below.

If I wanted to track student responses you (aka "the students") would need to long-in. But for you to just see what can be done, I'm using "guest mode."

Suggestion: Esri, please consider adding some of these enhancements to your videos in the Location Advantage MOOC!

Universities using Snapchat's Geofencing to Attract Students

Today reports on how universities are using geofencing (Snapchat calls it geofilters) to get information out to potential students. Best I understand it, you can follow public snaps based on geofences. Via: Jeff Harrison (@jeffharrison)


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