Education Blog

This Earth Day, explore resources that can help get your students excited about the planet.

I have written a fundamentals of mapping and GIS in the Fourth Edition of Key Methods of Geography textbook, published by Sage Publications.  If you are seeking a single chapter about what GIS is and why it matters, this might very well fit that need.  Beyond my chapter, the book contains a great deal of pertinent content about, as the title indicates, key core methods essential for the geographic sciences, including field data collection equipment and methods, statistical analysis, spatial analysis, remote sensing, and much more. 

This is the 2nd blog in a 6-part series highlighting the core concepts of a Modern GIS.

Over the past few years, Esri’s Education team have been discussing the technology shift and the need for GIS coursework to move from desktop-centric patterns to those that include the web. Desktop GIS is still an integral part of the story – but it is no longer the focus of the story. Desktop GIS is vital for data management, advanced analysis, and cartographic production – but many of those workflows are now part of a web-based context. Desktop tools can now seamlessly consume web-based services published by authoritative geospatial agencies and individuals across the globe. Desktop GIS can publish map services and layers to the cloud – to be consumed by web-based applications and tools, and desktop GIS can edit and manage web-based data and layers.

Imago Mundi, Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

How do I change the layer visibilty on this thing?

Esri recently launched Maps.com, a website showcasing the maps that are helping people better understand the World.

A new course in data, GIS, and society invites you to work with real data to solve problems and foster skills through a set of readings, hands-on activities, discussions, quizzes, and a final project.  This course may be taken by students or other learners as an independent study, or used wholly or in part by instructors for their own courses.

How can Earth changes be effectively, quickly, and engagingly taught?  How can remote sensing principles be taught in an interactive way?  The new Landsat Explorer app can serve as a tool, method, and a data set to do just that, as this essay and lesson explains. 

Powerful tools to help students quantify change and predict the future!

The February 2024 update to MapMaker is all about improved access to maps! It’s easier to find the maps and layers you need, work with the contents of the open map, learn about maps, and find what you need in the help. And yes, of course we’ve added some new maps and layers that are ready for your classroom.

You and your students can powerfully and easily examine current events using Web GIS data and tools.  This essay models the examination of one such current event, the Smokehouse Creek wildfire, which is sadly consuming much terrain in Texas and impacting many lives. 

“Building web applications,” “updating dashboards,” “automating geospatial processes,” “performing data collection,” “implementing enterprise-wide GIS projects,” “maintaining layers,” “creating maps,” “managing servers.”

While each job posting alone doesn’t tell us much, after a few hours of perusing, one can get a clear sense of the core skills and knowledge that employers are seeking in today’s job market.