Trends in Geospatial Technology: Revisited

Teaching the Future of Geospatial Technology

I taught a course called Trends in Geospatial Technology as part of the Penn State MGIS program in 2010 and 2011. My students and I evaluated a variety of software and hardware trends that we thought might be significant as they pursed their careers. I selected most of the topics; the students selected, and lead discussions about, the remaining ones. In 2016, some five years on, I wanted to review the topics we covered and offer a status update on them.

Website vs. App

One big question was which type of mobile implementation of location-based solution would win, browser-based ones or dedicated apps?

My sense is that today the pendulum is swaying toward the app. Why? Apps can provide the organization behind the solution with far more data about the user, which is very important when the user is the product. Apps win, even though developing for more than one platform costs more and often mean a multi-part part launch, with the iOS app first, then Android, then maybe Windows and others.  

GIS Education Weekly: Investment in Location-based Learning, AAG GIS&T Course, Student Awards

Investment in Location-based Learning

A press release from Ambient Insights, "an integrity-based market research firm that uses predictive analytics to identify revenue opportunities for global learning technology suppliers," suggests mapping is hot this year:

Another interesting trend is the investor interest in digital cartography and mapping companies. These companies develop what Ambient Insight defines as Digital Reference-ware and Location-based Learning. Maps are inherently related to procedural learning in the same way recipes, product manuals, flowcharts, periodic tables, architectural diagrams, star charts, and schematics are related to learning. In the first three quarters of 2015, $72.0 million was invested in ten cartographic and mapping companies. This is significant considering that there were no companies of this type funded in 2014. 

"Some of the most extraordinary mapping innovations are now emerging around so-called indoor mapping and Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) that work inside locations where GPS does not function," comments Adkins. Six of the ten mapping companies funded in the first three quarters are selling new IPS products. "Museums, galleries, and tourist venues are now avid adopters of IPS systems. For example, the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and the Royal BC Museum in Victoria have both installed IPS for their patrons."

A white paper on International Learning Technology Patterns (pdf) identifies some of the companies: Mapbox, CartoDB, Mapsense (recently acquired by Apple) and IndoorAtlas. Of these I know CartoDB is actually marketing in education, Mapbox started to do so, but then went rather dark. IndoorAtlas (with a US$10M infusion from Baidu) offers indoor tools for museums and exhibits but best I can tell malls and airports are more interested thus far than museums.

Geo-Literacy Projects Build Students' Understanding of Our Complex World

The article appeared in September on Edutopia. It's by the same woman who wrote a post titled Students Map Real-World Issues with (Free) Geospatial Tools on Edutopia last summer. There's nothing too earthshattering or different in this post: discussion of Geospatial Semester, Big Fork High School in Montana and links to Story Maps, NatGeo tools (via Gooru, of which I'd not heard), EAST and GeoMentors.

Early Feedback on Geo-MOOC

On Feb 21 Penn State announced it would be working with Coursera to offer Massive Open Online Classes (MOOCs). Among the first five courses is what I and others believe is the first planned geography/mapping related MOOC, Maps and the Geospatial Revolution. As is typical of the whole MOOC movement, there was a lot of excitement and response, even though the course is barely outlined and won't be live for its five week run until July of this year.

Here are some of the responses, all from industry insiders, that gave me pause.

‏@RIGEA1 wrote:

Want to learn #GIS but not sure where to start? This free MOOC "Maps & the Geospatial Revolution" is for you!

The course webpage uses the term geographic information system just once; it certainly does not promise that students will learn GIS. It does say they will make maps.

@SkipCody wrote:

I am excited to attend! ...

Both the intro video and webpage text make clear this course is not for geogeeks. The webpage includes: "If you're already a Geospatial Guru, then you might find this work a bit basic, in which case I hope you'll consider taking the online courses that we offer at Penn State." The tweet author is a "Product Manager for a SaaS GIS Company."

Some MOOCs have been overrun by "experts," making me wonder about the experience of the real newbies. See for example stats shared here in section titled "students" describing a machine language MOOC at Stanford.

Among 14,045 students in the Machine Learning course who responded to a demographic survey, half were professionals who currently held jobs in the tech industry. The largest chunk, 41 percent, said they were professionals currently working in the software industry; another 9 percent said they were professionals working in non-software areas of the computing and information technology industries.

Of course, when a course is free, it's hard to dissuade interest, and I'm not sure any company, educational institution or instructor would want to do so. Hopefully this sort of interest by experts will die down as the MOOC concept is more familiar to all.

@jodygarnett wrote:

... better cover open source?

While I'm sure it's possible to run a five week course that uses, or covers, open source GIS, I don't believe that's the goal for this very first Geo-MOOC.

@SS_Rebelious wrote:

finally a GIS course! But unfortunately ESRI's software will be used(((

The course will use ArcGIS Online. Could it use something else? Sure. Will it really matter what software the students use for a five week course if the goal is exploring mapping and geospatial technology and making a map? As an educator, I think not. Equally importantly, I think think Penn State pushing ArcGIS Online in this way is a good thing.

All of these comments are from people inside the geospatial industry. What will be far more interesting will be the comments from students outside geography and GIS after they take the course.