Education Blog

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

ArcGIS Online public accounts are great – for teachers.  Most importantly, they can be quickly created and logged into with one of your existing social profiles like Google, Apple, or Facebook.

Want to have a little fun with earth science? Check out the "special days" using National Geographic MapMaker!

Hey, educators in high school and college, are you and your colleagues ready to face new students with multiple years of GIS experience?

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. 

February 2024 update of ArcGIS Online brings lots of exciting new Features.  To assist you in getting up to speed with the new features, here are the key highlights from this update:

This article describes the Barbara Petchenik Children's Map Competition, which is open to US students 15 years old and under.

In his activities with young people, Nick Okafor, the founder of trubel&co, models the nature and power of GIS. In understanding his story, these truths stand out.

1. Our world has innumerable layers, everywhere across space and time.
2. Not everyone sees, acknowledges, understands, or considers all layers.
3. Mapping data makes more visible even that which is hidden, which gives it more power.
4. Exploring and integrating data geographically illuminates the patterns within layers and the relationships between them.
5. One can understand better the nature, quality, value, and power of data by generating data, ideally about something that affects one personally.
6. Once someone learns to see and think in layers, it is hard to stop.
7. The intersection of layers can compound impacts though feedback cycles.
8. Grasping the interplay of layers can help one conceive alternatives; how things are is not how they must be.
9. Young people have a keen sense of justice and power, and generating maps that show injustice builds power.
10. In profound ways, GIS propels experiential learning, critical thinking, problem-solving, project-based learning, and a STEM-based modus operandi, useful personally in any number of careers, and helpful for communities.

For centuries, maps have meant knowledge … and power. Young people can grasp this truth and harness the power of maps with just a few basic GIS tools. See how this remarkable educator is building vision within communities.

Know why you should attend the Education Summit @ Esri UC 2024?