GIS Ed Weekly: Beaver dams, 15 minute cities and a virtual field trip to the Adirondacks

Resources for Teaching and Learning 

 

Fast Company: This map tells you if you live in a ’15-minute city’ - The idea of the 15 minute city was discussed earlier this year when the Paris mayor touted the idea as part of a re-election bid. Fast Company tackled it this week with an embedded app from Here meant to identify U.S. cities that meet the criteria. 

 

Wikipedia: Dan Rather - I never knew this: "Rather began his career in Texas, becoming a national name after his reporting saved thousands of lives during Hurricane Carla in September 1961. Rather spontaneously created the first radar weather report by overlaying a transparent map over a radar image of Hurricane Carla. In his first national broadcast, he helped initiate the successful evacuation of 350,000 people." Via reddit/GIS.

GIS Education Weekly: Looking at Data Portals, U.S. Building Footprints and News Deserts

Resources

Open Data Inception puts open data portals on a map.

GIS Lounge: Awesome Public Datasets - A look at the Open Data Inception website.

NY Times: Where We Live: A Map of Every Building in America - Spend some time with maps showing almost every building in the United States. Afterward, see how some cartographers discussed its value.

GIS Education Weekly: Mapping Money and Students

Idaho's National Merit
Scholars

Mapping Education

Idaho Ed News: Map Where Idaho's National Merit Scholars are From - "Thirty-four Idaho high school seniors are among 7,000 students from across the nation who’ve received a prestigious National Merit scholarship."

EdWeek: Map: Per-Pupil Spending, State-by-State - The publication mapped data from the Quality Counts 2018 report. The U.S. average was $12,562.

GIS Education Weekly: What Can the National Geographic Bee and Oxford University Teach Us About Geography Education?

Resources

GPS.gov: I'd not been to the U.S. government's GPS site for quite a while. It's aimed at the public and includes information on how to submit map changes (graphic at right) and a STEM curriculum for middle schoolers.

BBC: 100 Women: Gladys West - the 'hidden figure' of GPS - When Mrs West started her career at the Naval Surface Warfare Center in Virginia in 1956, just one other black woman and two black men worked alongside her. She went on to work on GPS.

GIS Education Weekly: Save the University of Wyoming Department of Geography

Courses and Programs

gvSIG poster featuring
crime applications

The gvSIG Association launched a free course (several video tutorials) focusing on GIS applied to criminology. The materials seem to be from Universidad Miguel Hernández de Elche.

The Tribune (India): GNDU, PRSC join hands for geospatial research - "Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU) and Punjab Remote Sensing Centre (PRSC), Ludhiana, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on cooperation in the field of geospatial technology on Thursday."

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: Changes in National Geographic's Alliance Network

The Future of the National Geographic Alliance Network 

From what I understand, the National Geographic Society held a meeting at the NCGE conference earlier this month to discuss changes in the Alliance program. Lara Bryant, the New Hampshire Alliance Coordinator, explained the changes in the organization's newsletter.

Now, National Geographic is re-affirming their commitment to geography education... through a highly interactive and integrated community that includes educators, explorers, storytellers, and photographers. 

National Geographic is moving toward a model that will provide full-time National Geographic staff in each of six regions across the country.

Fox Buys 73% of National Geographic: End of the World?

21 Century Fox did What?

Exactly what did Rupert Murdoch's 21st Century Fox do? NPR reports:

In a $725 million deal, the 127-year-old National Geographic magazine is leaving behind its nonprofit status and becoming a key piece of a new venture between its parent organization and 21st Century Fox.

Fox is Already in National Geographic

If you've not kept up on cable TV deals, 21st Century Fox already owns about that much of National Geographic TV. That deal went down 18 years ago. The channel currently reaches 500 million homes worldwide.

GIS Education Weekly: UA Impact Map, DroneEDU, Scholarships Abound!

University of Arizona Impact Map

University of Arizona Impact Map 

A new impact map shows how the University of Arizona's three campuses, 160 telemedicine sites and Cooperative Extension offices reach far beyond its main campus in Tucson. There's data on the number of UA students, alumni and employees in Arizona, as well as the number of degrees awarded throughout the state. University Relations, the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and the UA Enterprise GIS — a service of Planning, Design & Construction —and others helped create and populate the map.

The maps is very pretty. I see ArcGIS and Terraformer involved but you'd not recognize it as an Esri map. This seems like a useful map for many schools to put together to justify both their mission and their investment in GIS!

ISU EOC uses GIS

Illinois State University’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) is the only one its kind at the state's schools.

Computerized maps provide layers of information about campus buildings, and that detail comes from a partnership with the Department of Geography-Geology. John Kostelnick, associate professor and director of GEOMAP, consulted with Hodges on data-driven mapping, along with Daniel Moore ’14. Moore spent months capturing, manipulating, and storing data that provides floor plans for every building, along with other details, such as parking spaces and utilities.

Where are the Printers on Campus?

Apparently, it's tough to find printers at Christopher Newport University. (My cousin goes there!)

Student Assembly came to an agreement with Auxiliary Services and the library to allow for the creation of signs that detail the location of campus printers instead.
These signs will be posted at each printer and may also include maps that display the location of all the printers on campus.

There's a plan to the the information in the campus app, Navigator, too.

GIS Education Weekly: Competitions, MOOCs, Geography in Arkansas

The Growth of Colleges in America

Competition News

National Geographic Competition for College/Grad Cartographers

Undergraduate students and master's-degree candidates can apply for the National Geographic Award in Mapping which recognizes student achievement in the art, science, and technology of mapping. Awards are $900 and $300 for first and second place and National Geographic products for honorable mentions.

The award is administered through the Association of American Geographers (AAG) Cartography Specialty Group (CSG). Static electronic submissions are judged by a panel of professional cartographers working at National Geographic and are due March 1.

- via Robert Roth at Wisconsin

Map Competitions at FOSS4G Events to Support International Map Year

Four events will have competitions. Details are still being worked out. I want to suggest the geospatial community needs to think of other activities besides competitions to recognize these events.

Map of Growth of Colleges in the U.S.

Glenn Letham at GIS User shares an "Impressive Map Effort [that] Showcases the Growth of Colleges in America." The map (above) is from "ecollegefinder.org" one of many sites offering to help students find "the right" school. Fuzzing up my eyes as a watch the animation I think I see a population growth map.

New GIS Education Resources

Jarlath O'Neil-Dunne of the UVM Spatial Analysis Lab offered a 44 minute  VCGI webinar on Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) or drones.

The term “drone” is often associated with a human-piloted, video-enabled system that is used for recreation, movie production, surveillance, or targeting. In this webinar we will take a look at a different class of drones, those are are developed solely for the purposes of creating accurate 2D and 3D mapping products using photogrammetric workflows. UAS workflow and output data products will be presented along with an assessment of the capabilities and limitations of these “mapping grade” drones.