Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

Join us for a key opportunity to dig deep into modern GIS tools, methods, and approaches to Explore Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion in a face-to-face, hands-on setting.   The opportunity will be a 4-day workshop, to be held from 7-10 August 2023 at the Central Pennsylvania's Community College's Gettysburg Campus.   This is a GeoTech Center Workshop, funded by the National Science Foundation. I am proud to be one of the 4 lead instructors for this workshop, as I have worked closely with the GeoTech Center for 20 years and have great respect for their mission and achievements.  My teaching colleagues and I will be joined by several wonderful guest speakers, and, I hope, by you reading this essay and choosing to join us as well.  Space is limited to please consider the opportunity and we would love to have you join us.  Plus, get paid for doing so!   This is in one of the country's most fascinating locations, full of history and beautiful terrain. deigraphicanimated.gif For more information, a schedule, and the application form, see:  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/9e0d6621c533476b8ea5db33143607e8 And my video explaining this, here. All tools, including ArcGIS Online, Drone2Map, web mapping applications such as dashboards and story maps, and field tools such as ArcGIS Survey123 will be taught using DEI examples and all activities will be DEI focused.  We will examine inequalities, environmental justice, and selected UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) such as water and health. Participants will also hear from experts in the DEI space through guest presentations. All participants will propose a geospatial DEI project to complete during and after the workshop. A resource repository of DEI geospatial data, maps, and applications will be shared with attendees so that they can continue to develop DEI course content and applications after the workshop. Hope to see you there!     ... View more

What would you do as a young professional if you were asked to do something that was clearly unethical at work?  Even more challenging is when ethical challenges are more subtle.  How would you respond to such a situation?  As GIS becomes increasingly tied to Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, complex models, and increasingly large staffs spread out among many workplaces and organizations, and as the data from GIS becomes increasingly in demand and used in society, ethics in GIS are becoming more of a daily consideration. How can you think about ethics in your GIS work? jjk_question_sign.JPG Practice Ethics in Mapmaking Maps have always been powerful means of communication, whether in the past etched in cave walls, stone, wood, or silver, or, later, onto copper plates, film, and in our own time, in digital form.  Maps are everywhere—on our phones, computers, fitness apps, and news media, communicating in a myriad of ways about changes over space and time and covering scales from local to global, even beyond our Earth to other planetary bodies.  For centuries, creating maps that were used for science, research, and exploration was a tradecraft that only a select few in society had the skill and the position in which to engage.  Today, each of you in the YPN community is not only a map consumer, but you are also a map creator.  Each step that you work through in a GIS, from the collection of data for those maps, to projecting, classifying, symbolizing, and communicating results, is laden with meaning.  Underlying those decisions are ethical choices and considerations.    The YPN community has superpowers—modern GIS at your fingertips to share maps with hundreds or even millions of people instantly.  Thus it is critical that ethics be considered as you journey forward in the professional world.  In so doing, you and others gain confidence that you are making the wisest decisions possible.   5 ethical considerations to make in your GIS work   1)  First, the rise of powerful, web-based GIS brought maps to everyone, everywhere as never before in history.  Be thankful that you have arrived in the GIS community at this time with easy-to-configure tools at your fingertips, rather than having to deal with past laborious processes of gathering, storing, formatting, and projecting data with slow computers with unwieldy graphics cards.  But given that you can make a map and do spatial analysis in minutes, it is critical that you do not rush the process by simply “clicking through”, without considering the questions you are asking the quality of the data and models you choose to use.  2) Web GIS has brought a renewed interest in citizen science, or community science, where people from all life paths gather data on birds, noise, trails, weather, historical sites, and other phenomena from the physical and cultural environment.  3) Awareness of the societal implications of making decisions using technology is rapidly rising.  People are mindful that technology and research are not completely objective—GIS workflows, tools, and the data are all products of people’s worldview and background.  4) GIS is increasingly bound to and supplied by information from big data streams, artificial intelligence, and models that the GIS analyst did not create themselves.  Do you understand the inputs to all of the models and data that you are using in your project?  5) Despite the plethora of maps in our world, maps still have an aura of authenticity–they tend to be believed.  Thus the YPN GIS professional has perhaps an even greater responsibility than those creating other types of data in ensuring that their results are not intentionally or unintentionally misleading—that they are clearly communicating, inspiring, and useful.   Raise Geo-Ethics Awareness in the Workplace One way of raising ethical awareness and knowledge in the workforce is to embed these concepts in workplaces, including organizations that focus on health, planning, engineering, business, transportation, and in other areas in which the “where” question is being asked.  The same GIS tools and workflows that enable mapped data to be created in the first place can be used to foster workplace discussions about ethics.  I also believe that raising awareness of the ethics of GIS in your workplace is a key way in which you in the YPN community can demonstrate leadership.  Aligned with Diana Sinton’s view that ethics is too important to be relegated a topic for the end of a university course, I believe that ethics must be integrated throughout an organization’s normal workflow,  from science to supply chain management.  Many of the ways I describe in this article can be effectively used for a wide spectrum of citizens and community leaders. One way you can explore ethical concerns and help others to do so is through an ongoing series of essays about being critical of mapped data.  Stemming from a book entitled GIS and Public Domain Data that Jill Clark and I authored for Esri Press, these include:  Always thoughtfully consider the class breaks, symbology, projection, source, curation, lineage, and other metadata with maps you create.  Furthermore, examine these same elements in maps you consume (even those that you post about on social media!).   Maps and stories that are shared as fun posts can serve as good conversation starters with colleagues.  These include the story of the SS Warrimoo, a ship that supposedly was simultaneously in two different days, months, years, seasons, and centuries in 1899.  Was this really the case?  Interesting, but it needs to be viewed as critically as more “serious” articles are. Consider the account of a person who wheeled 100 cell phones around Berlin in a little red wagon.  The phones submitted their over-land slow speeds to a mapping service, causing Google Maps to show traffic jams in the local area.  Was the wagon information “fake data”, was the mapping service performing as designed, or was it both fake and real?  Are maps of the “favorite food in every state” also unethical when there is no mention of how high (or low) the sample size was?  Not that “fun maps” do not have their place, but we should treat them critically as well, or else it will be challenging for us to know how to treat a map of a more serious issue where the N value may be very low or unstated.  One of the most effective ways of grappling with these topics is to examine examples of “bad maps”, such as my set here.  What makes a map “bad”?  Erroneous, misleading, and just plain ugly maps abound.    Maps are Representations of Reality Even data in today’s useful libraries such as the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World and data portals spanning multiple themes and scales need to be viewed critically.  Maps are representations of reality—very useful representations, but they all have standards of quality, dates, scales, curation frequency, and rules.  Even live IoT data feeds can be erroneous, as I illustrate in this weather feed where the data are off the scale—even if you were on Mercury!  Even the term “digital twin” needs to be said with caution—a “twin” as a GIS representation of reality is not a perfect representation. Imagery from satellites, UAVs, and aircraft may be even more susceptible to being viewed as “truth” as imagery abounds (including do-it-yourself drone imagery).  Images have distortions and mapping tolerances; they could be intentionally offset from vectors or selectively remove specific items, such as moving vehicles.  They could even be intentionally faked. Despite the plethora of metadata tools, important information may be left out of data documentation.  Some web mapping applications can be created with very little or no metadata whatsoever.  Sometimes, such information gaps can only be resolved by talking to the data creator with an old fashioned phone call or Zoom session, as was the case where declining Lyme disease rates looked “too good to be true” as in my Lyme disease study.  Cultivate the habit of being critical of data that you collect, as I point out in these field work examples.    Ethics When using Multimedia When creating multimedia dashboards, infographics, or storymaps, ask yourself:  “Can I use that picture?” as you consider the use of copyrighted images.  Establish a best practice for your organization, aided by this useful decision-making graphic.  Next, “Should I use that picture?”  Potential harm can occur to natural spaces, from geotagged photographs resulting in a place being “over-loved” or to endangered species. Gloria Origgi, states that “We are experiencing a fundamental paradigm shift from the ‘information age’ towards the ‘reputation age’, in which information will have value only if it is already filtered, evaluated and commented upon by others. Seen in this light, reputation has become a central pillar of collective intelligence today.”  How can we trust a geospatial data set?  Do we determine its “fitness for use” by the reputation of its author, organization, or metadata, or is it on the number of views or “likes?”  Consider the rise of company reputation as a major influence on decision making; use my essay on company ethics and on reputation and geographic information.  Another way to embed ethics is to refer to the GIS Certification Institute’s Code of Ethics:  Obligations to society, to employers and funders, to colleagues and the profession, and to individuals.  The COVID-19 situation and explosion of health-related geospatial data presented an unprecedented expansion of ties between GIS and ethics, but also presented its own privacy and ethical concerns.   Real-world scenarios are perhaps the most powerful way to keep current about ethics:  Ask yourself and coworkers, “when does the obligation to society outweigh the obligation to the employer, funder, or colleagues?”  Many intriguing cases can be found in the GIS Professional Ethics Project.  Another a series of intriguing videos on geoprivacy, including an interview with “repo-man”, a driver who collects license plate data via cameras on his car hood to identify possible stolen vehicles to be repossessed.   The Mapmakers Mantra and Other Resources I also encourage the consideration of new codes of ethics and related resources:  The Mapmaker’s Mantra, authored by my Esri colleagues, including:  Be honest and accurate, be transparent and accountable, minimize harm and seek to provide value, and be humble and courageous.  The American Geographical Society’s EthicalGeo column provides thoughtful essays and a Locus Charter set of guidelines.   As GIS expands into an ever-widening array of disciplines and applications, new ethical considerations arise.  Esri’s social science collaborative showcases the collaborative power and utility of ArcGIS for both quantitative and qualitative social science research.  The American Association of Geographers worked with universities, Esri, and other partners to produce an online seminar series and papers on the issues and imperatives for responsible use of locational data in the public interest. I was proud to be a part of this effort, culminating in a summit in Santa Barbara, a substantive report that we seek feedback on, a research agenda, and other guidance. Sample of images from the ethics resources described in this article.   Fostering an awareness of the intertwining of ethics and GIS can be effectively and engagingly accomplished using these resources. ethics_collage.png Sample of images from the ethics resources described in this article.   Fostering an awareness of the intertwining of ethics and GIS can be effectively and engagingly accomplished using these resources. I trust that these resources and approaches encourage the YPN community to take the responsibility of creating maps seriously.  I provide some of this content in story map form.  Although modern maps can be created in a matter of minutes, it is my hope that these approaches will encourage you as change agents in society work in a thoughtful, ethical, and reflective manner.    ... View more

As GIS becomes more approachable and more powerful as it advances, it is reaching disciplines that were almost inconceivable a few short years ago.  The Critical Approaches to Place: Teaching Narrative Mapping initiative from New Mexico State University is a manifestation of precisely this trend.  This project is bringing GIS to the fingertips of the university's researchers, their teaching faculty, and students, particularly in the arts and humanities.   This effort is a three-year curriculum development and community engagement initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities' Initiatives at Hispanic Serving Institutions, of which New Mexico State University is a part.   The initiative brings diverse faculty together to imagine and bring to reality courses and programs informed by humanities approaches to place, sustainability, and the environment at the university.    I was honored to be a part of this effort, as it embodies one of the core missions of the Esri education team--to bring spatial thinking and GIS tools and methods to disciplines outside its traditional core.   It also meshed well with Esri's new social science research initiative.  I was brought in to conduct workshops in web mapping applications, including but not limited to ArcGIS Story Maps (here is some of the content I created for this effort).   As I often advocate that the audience watching my videos and attending my career workshops seize opportunities to work with a group that is completely "outside of your normal wheelhouse", I jumped at the opportunity here to work with students and faculty in fine arts and humanities.  It turned out that the geo-enviro community and I have much in common with this arts and humanities:  Space and place are intertwined with telling stories through narrative, music, painting, and sculpture.  We have a deep connection with space and GIS can bring the digital and analog tools together in innovative and creative ways.   See a few of the resulting story maps here. nmsu-storymaps.JPG Selected story maps from the NMSU community as a result of this project. I learned a great deal from Professor Kerry Banazek and Professor Eric Magrane and all those involved in this initiative, namely, that environmental and place-based themes are often framed vis-à-vis “problems that require address by STEM disciplines, but the humanities offer essential insights into place, the environment, and entanglement of related issues with cultural dynamics and power imbalances."  Global environmental challenges encapsulated by the designation of the “Anthropocene,” a proposed geologic epoch that marks human impact on the Earth, have facilitated a growth of geohumanities and aligned environmental humanities research, but organized pedagogical programs in this vein remain relatively few--hence the importance of this effort at NMSU. While environmental challenges such as climate change, population dynamics, water, and energy are global in scope, they play out in particular ways in particular places and scales. The university is located in the Chihuahuan Desert, where sustainability issues such as water use, agriculture, and the urban heat island effect are of critical importance—and are intertwined with social challenges along the US/Mexico border.   Slide1.PNG   New Mexico State University:  Photographs I took during one of my campus visits there. It has been wonderful to serve as one of the industry partners to NMSU in this initiative, and it fits perfectly into the university's strong history of educational outreach and successful partnership with business and nonprofit organizations.  I encourage you to investigate this initiative and consider whether components will work on your own campus. ... View more

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.   The responses are listed in text form below and in this video. First, it is not the students fault that they often lead with this question:   Most students have gone through primary and secondary instruction, and indeed, in some university instruction as well, where they have largely been assessed on "right" and "wrong" answers on exams.  Through this, they become focused on the "right" in terms of ticking off boxes on rubrics or assessment instruments.   I encourage instructors to answer this question in two ways:  First, answer with this question, "Does the map help you understand the issue you are examining in a deeper, richer way?"  That will help you determine whether your map is fit for your use.  This is more important than "correctness" as measured by rules or requirements.  To be certain, there are some requirements in cartographic design or analysis that an instructor might have in their assignments, but GIS work is more about guidelines than rules.  Furthermore, the whole purpose of GIS is not to make the "perfect map" but rather to understand our world, and our communities, and to take action about the issues that you are examining, and to encourage others to take action as well.   The second way to answer the "right" question is to ask, "Can you justify the choices you made--the data, symbology, scale, classification, projection, and so on--to create the map or mapped data?  Can you articulate these choices that you have made?"  Students could articulate those choices in video, audio, storymap, or other means as a presentation in a way that others can understand what was investigated, why it was investigated, and the value that spatial thinking and the application of geotechnologies made to the analysis.  I look forward to your comments and how you answer this oft-heard question. censusinternet.PNG jjk_mt_garfield2.JPG --Joseph Kerski   ... View more

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!    These tools and activities can also be used in classrooms ranging from primary, secondary, to college and university level, and I have done so in my instruction over the past year.  They can be taught with one projector and one computer, and also in a lab setting where students have their own computer devices.  The data and tools are online, so they can be taught equally effectively in an online environment just as well as in a face-to-face setting. I created the following story map to support these activities: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/88a6ed6da7044f1b98ff1455f9130f95 The easiest way to teach these activities is for you to open the above story map.  I have loaded all the data and tools in the story map, and it is all ready to go.  I suggest popping each map into a separate web browser tab for more screen space. The original reason I created this story map around this topic was for a recent lightning talk I gave for the University of California Santa Barbara:  https://spatial.ucsb.edu/events/all/2023/spatial-lightning-talks-2023 In my 3-minute lightning talk, I covered all 4 methods, so I know these activities can be accomplished quickly!  But in the classroom, obviously, you'll want to devote a bit more time to each.  However, I contend that they can be accomplished in a short amount of time--I suggest spending at least 15 minutes for each activity.  Warning--some of these tools are so fascinating, particularly the Mars scale and measurement one, that you will likely have to pull students away from them at some point! If you need additional guiding questions, see the 4-part video series I created, where I model how these tools and these topics can be taught: Part 1 - Using USGS topographic basemaps: https://youtu.be/H-VrGsg2wCo  Part 2 - Using demographic data at different levels of census geography: https://youtu.be/vuqsqiO3lYQ  Part 3 - Using hydrography data from the global to the local scale: https://youtu.be/mJ_Of1JPI0U  Part 4 - Using the Earth political boundaries 3D web mapping application and the Mars scale and measurement 3D web mapping application:   https://youtu.be/MuExtLWJ2Uk  I hope you find this topic, resources, and strategies to be useful, and I look forward to your comments! scale.PNG Teaching about scale.  This screenshot is from method 1, described above.  ... View more

Discover how educators, researchers, IT support, and administrators can transform education inside and out, now and for the future with a new book from Esri Press, entitled Creating a Smarter Campus: GIS for Education. Geographic information system (GIS) technology offers a powerful decision-making tool in various aspects of education. It gives educators a new opportunity to teach problem-solving to a tech-savvy generation of learners. Researchers can use GIS for data visualization and integration, and IT professionals can improve the offerings of their cloud-based platforms. GIS offers administrators a way to visualize and manage everything from mapping campus buildings to planning where and when to close schools and open new ones. This book is designed to help those in education focus on issues that matter to them right now.  It is a guide to taking the first steps with GIS, with these stories as inspiration, and applying location intelligence to decisions and operational processes to solve problems and create a more collaborative environment in their organization.  Use this book to identify where maps, spatial analysis, and GIS apps might be useful in your work, and then learn more about these resources.   Creating a Smarter Campus: GIS for Education explores a collection of real-life stories about education organizations doing just that with GIS. Through their ideas, plans, and goals, they help readers understand how to use GIS and integrate spatial reasoning into teaching, research, and management. A “next steps” section provides ideas, strategies, tools, and actions to help you jump-start using GIS for education. A collection of online resources, including additional stories, videos, new ideas and concepts, and downloadable tools and content, complements this book.  I had the pleasure of editing this book with Esri content strategist Matt Artz.  I can personally attest that reading and assembling these stories of people making a positive impact on their very own campuses with GIS was inspiring.  The book is divided into 4 sections -- educators, researchers, IT support, and administrators, and includes stories from a wide range of campuses from schools to universities, from small to large.  Stories include those about water quality, geo-games, water quality, wildlife studies, making GIS accessible across the campus, integrating GIS and CAD for planning, crowdsourcing a university's facility mapping, and many more.  What's more, the problems that students, faculty, and campus administrators are solving extend beyond the campus--many, such as accessibility, recycling, safety, tree management, and more, are some of the same problems that cities are facing.  Applying the spatial perspective through GIS will empower these students to be change agents in whatever sector of society they work in after they graduate.  It empowers these schools, community, technical, and tribal colleges, and universities to demonstrate leadership in their regions and work closely with community leaders outside the campus.    JosephKerski_0-1676400223066.jpeg     ... View more

Dr Yirgalem Habte from the University of North Florida and Dr Joseph Kerski from Esri and the University of Denver recently collaborated on a series of videos focused on the importance, implications, and strategies for implementing spatial thinking in the educational curriculum. It is an honor to meet the many professors, researchers, campus facility managers, and students during my face-to-face university visits and virtual webinars during the course of each year as part of the support provided by the Esri Education Team, and meeting Dr Habte was one of the most wonderful days I spent on any recent campus visit.   The following topics were discussed in this set of 3 videos:   p1.jpgVideo 1: Spatial Thinking: Definitions, Importance p2.JPGVideo 2: Spatial Thinking: Skills, Implications p3.JPGVideo 3: Spatial Thinking: Strategies habte_and_kerski.PNG   graphic_changeagent2.jpeg  We begin the video series with our reflections about what spatial thinking is and why it is important.  Yirgalem’s definition of spatial thinking is that “it involves analyzing, interpreting, and applying the concept of distance, location, and path in daily human activities.” Yirgalem draws parallels to how psychologists conceptualize spatial thinking and built bridges to visual thinking. Yirgalem says that “As a geographer, my understanding of spatial thinking is the ability, skill, and habits to understand and find meaning in the shape, size, orientation, pattern, location, distance, direction or movement, of objects, processes or phenomena.” He describes aspects of our lives where we think spatially and then in education, discussed how spatial thinking contributes better theoretical understanding and educational practice.   graphic_table.jpeg Next, after discussing ties to geoliteracy, Joseph discusses his definition of spatial thinking, as a grouping of 3, 4, and then 3 elements: "Identifying, analyzing, and understanding the location, scale, patterns, and trends of the geographic and temporal relationships among data, phenomena, and issues." We both then discussed the importance of time—the temporal component—in spatial thinking. Yirgalem brings in one of his favorite Japanese sayings that touches on the power of time in changing the value and relevance of objects and phenomena.   graphic_pbl.jpegNext, we discuss that even more important than these definitions is the work we are engaged in, together with the geospatial education community, to ensure that spatial thinking is supported, taught, and put to use in education and in society. One of our goals, along with the National Research Council's report Learning to Think Spatially, is to cultivate the spatial thinking "habit of mind." This habit of mind is the geographic perspective on how the world works, including how systems function, how and why certain relationships exist, and also how we might approach and solve problems.   graphic_inquiry.jpeg How can we cultivate spatial thinking? Dr Habte refers to the study of human intellect’s three broad but correlated domains: verbal ability, numerical ability, and spatial ability. We pay much attention, particularly at the primary and secondary school level, in the first two. However, as spatial ability plays an important role in academic achievement, especially in learning science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, we need to pay it the attention it deserves. Spatial intelligence is important for children as they learn other subjects. Yirgalem then discusses observations that he made on his own son’s developing spatial thinking skills as a toddler. This began with his son’s understanding the concept of location, and pathway: How to reach Point B from Point A while simultaneously developing his own motor and conceptual skills. What could be our measure of success in spatial thinking in education? One way is to assess the number and variety of activities in the curriculum where spatial thinking is used. There is scientific evidence showing that spatial thinking is one of the core domains of human intellect to acquire knowledge and solve problems.    graphic_community.jpeg Hands-on work in solving problems can be achieved through the application of geotechnologies—GIS, remote sensing, GNSS, and web mapping. We discuss the work that nonprofit educational institutions, Esri and other private companies, universities and community colleges, government agencies, and others have been doing to promote spatial thinking through geotechnologies. We state that this work must extend beyond its traditional home in geography and GIScience, to business, engineering, data science, history, economics, sociology, and elsewhere throughout the educational system. However, there is still an important role for geography and GIScience practitioners and instructors: Indeed, geography and GIScience practitioners and researchers need to play a key and foundational leadership role in aiding colleagues in other disciplines to be able to understand where and how to implement spatial thinking concepts in their curricula (and listen to their needs, too!). We end that discussion with the statement: “If our goal is to see spatial thinking through geotechnologies embedded throughout the educational curriculum, from young ages and in multiple disciplines—just imagine the incoming spatial thinking and geotechnology skills that incoming undergraduates at any university could have in the future!”    graphic_content_knowl.jpeg We then discuss the implications of such a focus: We would expect better student achievement in learning science and math due to the integration of spatial thinking in classroom learning. In addition, students will seek to enroll in colleges and universities that focus on spatial literacy. This will create a fertile ground for expanding spatial thinking to other courses and programs in higher education. These students will be accustomed to asking “what’s where, why is it there, and why should we care?” They will be familiar with spatial analytical tools and using maps as not just reference documents (where something is) but as research tools (why something is where it is and the spatial patterns that variables reveal). They will be comfortable asking thoughtful question sand solving problems, equipped with geotechnologies, statistics, and other tools. They will thus be empowered to be a positive change agent no matter what discipline they focus on and no matter what sector of society (nonprofit, academia, government agency, or private industry) in which they work.   graphic_pbl.jpeg We then discuss the need to change our traditional approach of teaching spatial science to make the subject more relevant, practical, and applicable to daily life. In our view, geotechnologies represent the most powerful tools we have in our hands to foster applied spatial thinking. These technologies have already started improving student engagement and enhance their spatial thinking. Access to free spatial data through open data portals, and technologies such as GPS, remote sensing, scanning and web-based GIS maps and apps have a profound impact on the growing demand of spatial thinking.    graphic_community.jpeg These technologies also enable learners to capture their own data—on noise, weather, water quality, litter, animals, planets, historical sites, community gardens, points of interest, and many other types of data. They can use data from open data platforms including ArcGIS Hub sites and the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World. The Living Atlas apps such as the World Water Balance enable students to examine maps and data on evapotranspiration and precipitation over space and time, globally. The Landsat Imagery Explorer app enables them to examine such variables as urbanization and healthy vegetation. The ArcGIS Wayback imagery allows them to interactively examine changes in forest cover, coastal erosion, glacial retreat, and other changes using terabytes of satellite imagery at their fingertips. Students are able to organize their work, perform spatial analysis on their data, visualize, and share results. They can present their own research projects using infographics, dashboards, storymaps, and other tools. Most importantly, students can apply geotechnologies to understand and explain the implications, associations, networks, and interconnections among people, places, and phenomena.   graphic_inquiry.jpeg Next, we discuss the skills students are gaining while working with these data sets and with GIS and remote sensing tools. Students who use GIS are obviously gaining software and technical skills. But more importantly, they gain skills in communication, analysis, critical thinking, and using data from a wide variety of sources, scales, and formats. They also actively practice and apply spatial thinking to solve problems in locating a store or a service, determine areas for smart city development, find areas that are situated in multiple natural hazards zones, determine which trees or coral reefs are most at risk, and/or determine optimal routes for vehicles, trains, or packages. These skills that we are discussing are in much demand in the workplace—science including the emerging data sciences, but also in business (supply chain management, marketing, risk assessment), engineering, design, mathematics, city planning, transportation, energy, natural resource management, public safety, social work, communication, and in many other fields. And that demand will only increase in the future.   graphic_changeagent2.jpeg  We then ask the question, “What can the person watching this video do to promote spatial thinking in their own personal and professional networks?” We answer this by mentioning several ways: Advocate for spatial thinking in your kids’ school, your alma mater college, or a school, community college, or university in your own city. Refer people to the recent article in Directions Magazine–Geography in our Everyday Lives. In this article, Joseph Kerski and Barbaree Duke included a survey that you can fill out about these topics, and you can visualize your own and others’ survey results via an ArcGIS Dashboard.   We ask the readers of this essay and the viewers of our three videos:  What is your definition of spatial thinking? When, where, and how do you think spatial thinking should be put into practice?   graphic_changeagent.jpeg We close the videos and this essay by asking the viewers to leave their comments, thoughts, and questions here and/or in the videos to promote spatial literacy throughout all educational institutions and in all disciplines. ... View more

I was recently asked to keynote a secondary student STEM geodesign competition called FutureCity.  As the topic of this keynote focused on how GIS is integral to climate science, I want to share the Story Map I created for this event in the hopes that it will be helpful in your own work.   The StoryMap is entitled "Why 'Where' Matters in Climate Research and Resiliency.   futurecity.PNG Front portion of the StoryMap described in this article, with arrow meant to signify--keep learning and moving forward. The StoryMap begins with a map tour that asks "why choose location as a framework for study?", followed by a redirect of the prevailing notion that maps are just reference documents (what is where) to a focus on maps as analysis tools (why things are where they are, and how mapping technologies can help build a more sustainable and resilient future).  Since the audience for this StoryMap was secondary school students, I then state that mapping and spatial analysis gives them superpowers and that they are tied to real-world issues and the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  I end the first section with the following message:  You are already a leader:  By participating in this event today, you are demonstrating that you are curious about the world, and are a lifelong learner.   In the next section, to connect with the audience, I briefly discuss my own career pathway which touches nonprofit, industry, government, and academic sectors of society, and mention that when I was their age, I loved to get outside and explore, to read, and to make maps.  The next section begins with "at no time in history have we been so empowered, and yet so challenged".  This and the following definitions of GIS are meant to convey to these students that we have some very serious issues on our planet that we need to understand and to solve, and that GIS can help us to do that.  I then discuss how people are critical to this effort, show the GIS for Science website, and the Women in GIS book to especially encourage the female students in the audience to consider using GIS in their careers--even starting right now in their schools with a free ArcGIS Online school organizational subscription.  As a firm believer in "seeing is believing" with regard to maps, GIS, and visualization, I then show 6 engaging and accessible sets of spatial data and GIS tools:   The Ecological Marine Units app, the ArcGIS Wayback imagery, the Drought Aware app, the Esri climate hub, the Living Atlas Indicators of Planet Earth, and a demonstration of mapping field data in ArcGIS Online.  Next I outline 5 forces that have brought us - and the audience - to a pivotal moment in geotechnologies in education and society--geoawareness, geo-enablement, geotechnologies in the cloud, citizen or community science, and storytelling with maps. I then discuss the implications of our increasingly measured world, and how GIS helps us visualize things in new ways that go far beyond what paper maps could ever do.  Next, I discuss 3 guidelines for all learners:  Go beyond the map, don't get too attached to the tools, and to not *just* focus on skills, but on content knowledge, holistic thinking, and the geographic perspective.   I follow this with a discussion on why and how should students learn geotechnologies in the 2020s, with several examples of student work with UAVs, story maps, and spatial analysis.  I then address the students' teachers in encouraging them to use GIS in their instruction.   I then discuss what I believe are the 7 most important skills for students to cultivate:  Be curious, get a free ArcGIS Online subscription and make maps and apps, be able to work with data and be critical of it, know your geographic and geotechnical foundations, be adaptable and flexible, read, and cultivate good communications.    I close with 5 recommendations--be inspired by the GeoInspirations interviews I have conducted, listen to my Thinking Spatially and other podcasts, view some focused GIS-education videos, get a free ArcGIS subscription, and go through some Esri GIS lessons to keep growing and learning.  I encourage you to use segments of this StoryMap in your own work to modify for your own needs.  I look forward to your reactions.     ... View more