Education Blog - Page 3

The Critical Approaches to Place: Teaching Narrative Mapping project from New Mexico State University in southern New Mexico brings GIS to an expanded array of disciplines.  This article explains why and how faculty integrated GIS into research and instruction, particularly in the arts and humanities.  

We are excited to announce the 2023 ArcGIS StoryMaps Competition on Earth Day. The competition opens July 10th, but you can get a head start.

In this essay and video, let's examine an oft-heard question from students, "Is my map right"?   Let's explore some valid responses to this question that enables students to think about what "right" actually means, and also what would be better questions to ask.

Scale is an important topic not only in teaching GIS, but in geography, economics, mathematics, environmental science, planning, business, and many other disciplines.  Scale is a cross-cutting theme that enables better understanding of change across space and across time, and the phenomena that cause those changes. This essay features 4 different ways to teach about map scale.  Each way uses easy-to-use tools and maps in ArcGIS Online, requires no sign-in, and yet each is powerful in teaching this concept in hands-on mode!

ArcGIS labs are the newest self-paced e-Learning option at Esri Academy. Use them to explore topics you're curious about, understand how GIS capabilities are enabling actionable insights on pressing issues, and grow your ArcGIS knowledge and skills.

Most of us in the United States are not wealthy enough to not work.  By work, I mean to say that we trade our time (skilled or not) for money.  It most cases, the more skills one has, the higher salary one can draw.  When our skill set is in high demand, either from market expansion or scarcity of skilled laborers, our salary increases.  What’s the point of the arm-chair economics lesson?

A new book from Esri Press entitled Creating a Smarter Campus: GIS for Education features a collection of real-life stories about education organizations successfully using GIS technology to improve teaching, learning, research, and administration.  

Dr Yirgalem Habte from the University of North Florida and Dr Joseph Kerski from Esri and the Unviersity of Denver recently collaborated on a series of videos focused on the importance, implications, and strategies for implementing spatial thinking in the educational curriculum. This essay describes that collaboration, its result, and invites you to participate in the discussion. 

This lesson provides an opportunity for students to deepen their skills in mathematics, statistics, and GIS by creating and interpreting charts, and plotting the coefficient of determinations. 

Resources to incorporate GIS tools into core disciplines are increasingly in demand.  This article reviews one such resource, a book entitled Navigating the World with GIS:  A Companion for World Regional Geography.  The book could be very useful for instructors and students seeking to not only build GIS skills, but to foster learning of core content, and build spatial and critical thinking skills.