GIS Education Weekly: World's Largest Lesson focusses on Sustainability, Global Literacy Survey has Bad News

Programs, Degrees and Courses

Delta State University has a new program, I'm not sure of the name, but it's in partnership with the United States Marine Corps. The program was a major force behind the development and accreditation of a new degree, a Bachelor of Applied Science in Geospatial Analysis and Intelligence.

Penn State's Maps and the Geospatial Revolution MOOC begins its 4th offering beginning Sept 10. Registration is open until Sept 15. The course was updated to the "new" course vision for Coursera: "Each course is like an interactive textbook, featuring pre-recorded videos, quizzes and projects."

GIS Education Briefs: #GISed, Water on Mars Story Map, Geography Textbook Spat

#GISED

Esri's Joseph Kerski (@josephkerski)  made a suggestion this week regarding the hashtag #GISED and the Esri twitter account @gised.

Keep in touch with all that is happening in GIS education via #gised @gised

I find the hashtag and account quite valuable. The most active users of the hashtag are Esri folks (Kerski, @trbaker, and @GISEd), AAG GeoMentors (‏@AAGGeoMentors) and me (@adenas). I use the tag to highlight content of interest to those involved in GIS education, using any technology. I'd love to see more GIS education tweets tagged!

Questions About the Mars Story Map

You know what didn't get the #GISED hashtag on Twitter this past week? The Discovering Liquid Water on Mars story map. It got a lot of praise including these terms I found in tweets: "fantastic, " "awesome," "stunning," and "amazing."

The story map prompted lots of questions for me. What questions? I wrote them down as I worked through the story map. Each number below is a "dot" in the story map table of contents.

1) I really liked the opening time series from Horowitz Crater that shows the changes in the streaks made by water over time. I guessed that the MY had something to do with the Martian Year and looked up the details. The data shown in the time series are from 2006 through 2011. 

Location of Horowitz Crater

I clicked where indicated to "see Horowitz Crater on a satellite map of Mars." Since I have no specialized knowledge of Mars' geography the locator map didn't mean much to me. I wanted to see where the crater was on the globe of Mars. For example, was it northern or southern hemisphere? 

2) Next was a video of similar streaks on Hale Crater. I wanted a link to the source video so I could get more information about the time frame covered. I think I found the video source here. I also wanted to know where Hale Crater was relative to Horowitz. I tried a few online Mars maps including NASA's Mars Trek and Google's Mars Map but didn't find an answer.

3) The  next image showed Garni Crater with multiple streaks "many of them several hundred yards long." I found it cool to know how long they were! I wanted a scale so I could perhaps see how long they were in relation to other features. I found more information on the image in a NASA image of the day post. 

4) Palikir Crater, like Horowitz, includes a time series. Did Esri create the two time series? I can't tell from the credits/sources. 

The story map collects a lot of interesting images and animations and raises many geographic questions that require additional research to answer. That makes it a great starting point to learn about spatial thinking. The story map reinforces the value of time series imagery to show change over time.

What questions did the story map prompt you to ask? Did you follow up to try to find answers? Did you/would you use the story map in a geography or science class? How?

Slavery and "Workers" in Geography Textbook

World Geography is a textbook from McGraw-Hill Education. It includes a section called “Patterns of Immigration.” A caption of a map reads:

The Atlantic slave trade between the 1500s and the 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations.

A ninth grade student found the wording and his mother took the issue to Youtube. McGraw-Hill agreed something was amiss on its Facebook page . The company plans to remedy the situation by immediately updating the online version of the book and including the change in the book's next printing. The Chronicle of Higher Ed offers other choice quotes from the text. Update: Reuters  reports the company will send stickers to cover the errant caption. (Read more: CNN, Buzzfeed)

Strategies for Linking to a Story Map or ArcGIS Online Map

Sharing that Great Map

Lots of time and energy have gone into producing your latest online map. Now it's done and it's time to tell the world about it in a press release, article or via social media. What URL do you use and how do you include it in the text? Here are  few strategies that work well.

City of Vista Interactive Planning Projects Map - A Story Map

Most of the stops on the City of Vista Story Map Tour of projects.
Different colored pin distinguish those pending review, approved,
under construction and completed.

The San Diego Tribune last week highlighted a new interactive map from Vista, CA showing proposed projects in that city. Here's why the map was created.

The new web page, posted last week, follows a year of uproar after uproar from different neighborhoods throughout Vista, which after years of stagnation in new-home construction is in the midst of a building boom primarily focused on apartments and other multifamily projects. ...

Homeowners who live near many of the proposed projects have flooded City Hall with concerns over traffic, parking, property values and more — and many have complained that they didn’t know about a project until it was near the end of the approval process.

Four Reasons I'm at Peace with Esri Story Maps

The story maps name can lead to
unrealistic expectations.

Esri story maps appeared in 2011. Since then the story map concept and some of the implementations left me uneasy. But, after some research and reflection, I've made peace with story maps. Here's what I learned.

Story Maps is a Name, not a Definition

Why story maps? Esri offers answers in the 2012 white paper Storytelling with Maps: Workflows and Best Practices (2/13/12, pdf).

Story maps are meant to:

• Spread the word about the power of geography and GIS,
• Demonstrate that ArcGIS is an effective communication platform, and
• Enable ArcGIS users to create their own web maps through examples, templates, and best practice documents.

There is no mention of stories here. That's ok because the term story, as I now understand it, is a stand-in adjective. The discussion below of the meaning of "story" is from a draft version of a white paper titled Telling Stories with Maps (2/13/12, pdf). I suspect this draft was a precursor of the one noted above, which does not include these important statements.

“Story” in this context is not a traditional text-based narrative; rather, it’s the concept or message that a story map is intended to communicate. Text is an essential component of most story maps, but it plays a supporting role, with the map or series of maps taking center stage. 

The best story maps deliver a clear message to a well-defined audience, and are useful to that audience by providing a service, presenting interesting and useful information, or providing entertainment. Their content and user experience should be appropriate to the audience’s level of knowledge and ability.

I agree with Esri's choice of names. "Concept maps" or "message maps" does not have the marketing punch that story maps does.

Bottom line: Don't expect a narrative story.