GIS Ed Weekly: A fresh look at John Snow's scientific reasoning

GeoData News

Strava Blog: Strava announces Strava Metro, the largest active travel dataset on the planet, is now free and available to cities everywhere - Strava announced that Strava Metro, the largest active travel dataset ("human-powered transport information") on the planet, is now available and free of charge for urban planners, city governments and safe infrastructure advocates. 

NICFI: New satellite images to allow anyone, anywhere, to monitor tropical deforestation - Norway's Ministry of Climate and Environment is funding free access to monthly basemaps for the entire central swath of the world free. The data is from Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) and its partners Airbus and Planet.

GIS Education Weekly: New Geography PhD Coming to New Mexico

Programs and Courses

ESA: Earth Observation - Disruptive Technology and New Space - It's described as a MOOC but really it's a series of videos. ESA and others host more courses on a platform called  Imperative MOOCs.

Twitter: The Governor of New Mexico and the Board of Finance approved a Geography PhD from UNM and NMSU.

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."

Ten Years of Creating and Listening to Podcasts

A few weeks ago I learned that one of my favorite podcasts, one I've been listening to for about ten years, would end. One of the two hosts of For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report, Hobson, has decided to move on. The other, Holtz, is starting a new podcast covering the same content.

I'm saddened because I really enjoy the podcast and the back and forth between the two men, one on either side of the Atlantic. On the other hand, I certainly understand the energy required to put out a  weekly, hour long (or more) show. For many years the podcast came out twice a week!

Maybe ten years is a magic number. The podcast I pushed to start, Directions on the News, ran for just under ten years. My colleague Joe Francica and I didn't end the podcast per se; we both left the magazine that served as its home. The only other GIS focused podcast that I follow, Very Spatial just passed ten years and the hosts are pondering its future. All of these three podcasts have something in common: two or three people talk about a topic once a week.

Are We Listening?

In 2007 Steve Walker ran the Philadelphia Marathon. He's a well-known podcaster, the host of Phedipeddations, a podcast about running. Throughout the podcast he referred to the major river that runs through the city, the Schuylkill. He pronounced the river's name as "shy-kill." The rest of the world pronounces it "schoo-kill." It grated on me as I listened intently to his story. How could a well-educated, tech savvy fellow from western Massachusetts not have heard of that river?

In the past months I've kept up listening to "A Very Spatial Podcast," a weekly discussion of GIS/geography topics by three academics. A few weeks back the trio discussed how a Virginia Tech geography class interviewed Aung San Suu Kyi via Skype. The pronunciation of the name did not match my expectation. More recently, that podcast discussed the newly launched Pleiades satellite. Had I not know of the news already, I'm sure I would not have deciphered the name.

It's interesting that all of these "challenging to pronounce" terms are loosely related to geography. The Sckuylkill is a river. Suu Kyi is an activist from Burma. The Pleiades is the name of the "Seven Sisters" star cluster. The satellite project was named after it.

Why did all of these very smart people mispronounce these terms? I have a guess. These are very mobile and Web savvy folks; all of them speak of their smartphones on their podcasts. I suspect they get most of their news and have many of their conversations via the typed word, either on those devices or others. So, it's possible in prepping for the Philadelphia Marathon, Mr. Walker never had to hear or speak the term "Schuylkill." Similarly, while the folks from Very Spatial may have read about Suu Kyi and Pleiades, it's possible they never heard about them.

Is is possible we are not "learning" via audio as much as we once did? I know of the Schuylkill because my parents spoke of it due to their connection to Philadelphia. I know of Suu Kyi because the correspondents on National Public Radio (NPR) and the BBC (we hear the World Service here in Boston) say her name quite a bit. The Pleiades? One word: Cosmos. I learned all those astronomy words from Carl Sagan himself back in the 1980s.

I do hope the excitement about mobile devices does not cut us off from spoken language. I know I learn  very well by listening. That's why I like my news from the radio and enjoy spoken word podcasts on my runs and walks. Think about it: are you listening enough? Are your students?