Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

As a geographer, GIS professional, and educator, I have long been interested in the challenge of teaching something as technical and rapidly advancing to the general public.  I know that many others in the GIS professional community have a similar desire to share what GIS is and why it matters to friends, family members, and perhaps even the general public.  Ways to engage the public include BioBlitz and other citizen science efforts, writing for newspapers and appearing on local TV newscasts, hosting GIS Day open houses, public library workshops, Earth Day/Earth Science Week initiatives, and through courses and workshops.  In this essay I describe a course that I have developed and have taught many times over the years. Here I share its latest incarnation in the hopes that this model will provide inspiration for you as you teach your own workshops and courses.  Before we go any further, you might, and rightfully so, ask "Should the general public be taught about GIS?"  If so, why?  I would contend that (1) because all 21st Century problems -- including energy, supply chain management, natural hazards, water, climate, population change, economic vitality, health, and so many others -- are spatial in nature--they are global issue that affect the general public's everyday lives; (2) to solve these problems and to build spatial literacy "takes a village" and must include stakeholders from all backgrounds and ages, I contend that yes, the general public should be taught about GIS; and (3) The general public is engaged in a wide variety of fields and disciplines.  GIS and education is ultimately tied to the future of the workforce that keeps their own organization (business, government agency, university, nonprofit) vibrant and healthy. I also believe that to engage the general public and help them to care about GIS and ultimately fostering care for the planet, such a general public course must be fun and interesting.  How can we do that?  Any topic can be taught in an interesting way or a dry, boring way.  For engagement, my course contains several key elements:  (1)  It fosters dialogue, discussion; it is not me lecturing about the wonders and glories of GIS.  (2) It is heavily "why maps matter" focused rather than diving deep into the theoretical underpinnings of GIS (though I do find ways to make the shape of the Earth, different ways to make a map, and other elements appealing).  I also lay some foundations with geographic innovations, past and present, including segments of my book Interpreting Our World.  I ground the course into a correct understanding of geography and geographic processes.   (3) It ties into current events: There is never a shortage of events to turn into "GeoNews" segments; when I taught this course in September 2022, I included mapping the live feed of Hurricane Ian in ArcGIS Online, for example. Along the lines of engagement I ask a series of questions during the course that are the types of questions that I hear in stairwells, airport shuttles, in public libraries, and other everyday places.  These take many forms and you can be creative with them, but I almost always include these three:  1. Haven’t all the maps been made?  2. Are paper maps still relevant in our digital age? 3. How can maps help us solve our 21st Century challenges?  Another way to keep the audience engaged are through polls such as those offered in Zoom and other platforms, and also using ArcGIS Survey123, which offers the further advantage of mapping the results instantly and having a discussion of how this is possible.  Any general public course must also engage a broad spectrum of people where they are.   Most people either (1) like to get outside, (2) like maps and visualizations, or (3) like technology and cool things technology can accomplish:  Hopefully all three! My course uses a variety of interesting maps and apps to draw them in.  I sprinkle a variety of scales and themes into each of these courses--literally there are choices from A to Z - archaeology, anthropology, and architecture--to zoology, and nearly every letter in between. People also have a deep sense of place and space--like music, these elements are fundamental to the human experience.  Thus, three things I always do in these courses are:  (1) ask the participants to make a sketch map of a memorable place they remember from their youth--their neighborhood, a map of their school, or a place they regularly traveled to; (2) zoom to where they live on a variety of different base maps--satellite image, open street map, and others; (3) focus at least part of the course on issues in the region where I am teaching the course.  Here in Colorado, that sometimes means mapping ski areas, 14,000-foot Rocky Mountain peaks, rivers and reservoirs and our water issues, perimeters and tracks of wildfires, hailstorms, landslides, and tornadoes, precipitation, the economy, and urbanization and population increase.  What are the most pertinent issues in your region? Furthermore, people really do want to see problems solved in our world and are interested in how this can happen.   Solving problems with spatial thinking and geotechnologies helps these courses remain positive amidst so many variables (ocean acidification, losses from hazards, crime, health, and so on) trending in the wrong direction.  People are also interested in something they feel they can contribute to--and geotechnologies offer a variety of in-the-field and using-a-mapping-app in a crowdsourcing environment that the everyday person can engage in to make a positive impact in their community or around the world.  I have had the honor of teaching this course or some of its components over the past 25 years in such settings as GIS Day, for the Academy of Lifelong Learning, for the University of Denver's Enrichment and lifelong learning programs, for community groups, at public libraries, in BioBlitz outdoor environments, at the Colorado State Fair, and in other settings.  These groups have ranged from primary and secondary aged students to university aged students, lifelong learners, senior citizens and retirees, a wide swath of the general public literally from age 7 to 90, and also to specific interest groups such as flyfishers.  I don't do the same thing twice; I always tailor the course to the audience and their needs, ages, whether it is inside or outside, whether I have a computer in front of me, and whether the audience has a computer or device in front of them or not.   I keep the course up to date and given the rapid advancement of GIS, the course is in the process of continual refinement.  As so much of modern GIS is web based, the course lends itself well to face-to-face and online settings.  I have taught it far more often online than face to face over the years. The full course is about a half-day, four hours, but I have taught numerous 1 hour versions of this course and also up to 8 hours.  The modular nature of the course and the topics lends itself well to being taught over several sessions, such as every Friday afternoon for 1 hour over the course of a month, for example.  In fact I would argue this is the best approach, rather than the whole set of contents at once.  When you break it up, you can assign short and fun homework assignments.  These assignments include asking the participants to fill out a Survey123 that I have designed where they map a tree or two in their neighborhood, identifying the condition, height, and species, or current sky conditions, a storm drain, or something else.  I also frequently assign a web map or app URL and ask them to name the most intriguing thing they learned while using it.  I use a variety of engaging web maps and apps to get the participants excited about the content and also to illustrate the importance of GIS and mapping in our world.  Many of these apps are from the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, but I also include maps that I and others have made in ArcGIS Online or via story maps.  I also include visualizations from Gapminder, Bouncy Maps, Worldmapper, and other sources.  We examine the Starbucks map, the story map of the Titanic, the Esri Wayback imagery app, the water balance app, the drought aware app, the USGS Esri historical topographic maps, the Landsat imagery app, and the Landsat Lens app. I include maps that I have made of the distribution of state high points and extreme temperatures, among others.  After showing the JHU Covid dashboard, I also show my Walkability story map, web map, survey, and dashboard, and after doing so, say " I care about walkable neighborhoods.  What do you care about?"  This illustrates the connectivity of the ArcGIS tools which are straightforward to configure and yet so powerful.  Themes that I repeat during the course with the above web maps and apps examples are:  Holistic thinking, patterns, relationships, and trends, the coupling of time and space, the connection of the hydrosphere, lithosphere, anthroposphere, cryosphere, biosphere, and atmosphere, that the Earth is a dynamic, the geographic inquiry process, and the differences and similarities between geology, geography, GPS, GIS, remote sensing, and cartography.  Undergirding it all are the questions, "What's where? Why is it there?  Why should we care?" On the technical side I do discuss and illustrate the mapping of real-time data and static data.  I also want the participants to develop a critical eye for maps: Therefore, I show a good deal of maps that are of questionable quality, or are just plain wrong.  I want them to realize that all maps are representations of reality--very useful representations, to be sure, but representations nonetheless.  And, nowadays, everyone is a mapmaker and can share their maps on open platforms such as ArcGIS Online.  Therefore, maps need to be viewed critically, realizing they all have errors and distortions.  I usually give at least one spatial analysis demonstration to solve a problem about hazards or energy, anchoring spatial analysis in the John Snow cholera map and analysis of 1854.  Maps and GIS is inherently and increasingly personal, so one way of engaging the public is to talk about what data they are sharing via their phone apps or media posts about their location.  I discuss key societal issues from our data blog, Spatial Reserves that I want them to think about.   These include copyright, location privacy, and the ethics of mapping.  In every course, I encourage participants to follow along and use my techniques to make their own maps. I also make sure they know how to create a free ArcGIS Online developer account or how to purchase a personal use license, or purchase a storymaps.com account, and how they can engage in citizen science projects, so they can keep on mapping after the course ends.   I also mention the NRC's Learning to Think Spatially report and encourage the participants to reach out to their alma mater university, their childhood or neighborhood school, "geo-mentor" style (see my educating the next generation story map, here).   I also make the course personal by including discussion on: 1)  Please share your favorite map!    I discuss my own favorites, which include the Erwin Raisz Landforms maps of the 1940s, the USGS Thelin and Pike first digital landform map from 1992, Lisa Berry's ArcGIS relationship maps, and the Orleans Indiana USGS topographic map of this fantastic karst landscape.  I also show some hand-drawn maps I made as a teenager.  But I refrain from giving too many because I want to hear what the participants have to say. 2) Please share your favorite geography or mapping book!  Some of my favorites are The Cartographers (a novel), The MapMaker's Wife, Land, Isaac's Storm, The Age of Islands, the Perfectionists, The Invention of Nature, The Map that Changed the World, Measuring America, Undaunted Courage, and of course, Longitude.  And I am rather fond of my own authored books including Interpreting Our World and Essentials of the Environment.  Again I refrain from giving too many because I want to hear what the participants have to say. I also recommend making your general public course lively by including map quizzes.  I frequently show my Weird Earth or Name that Place ArcGIS Online based quizzes, my ground photograph quizzes such as this one, and my new landforms quiz that uses map actions.   I also give encouragement to the participants to keep learning after the course ends!  I advice as to how to keep learning when using mapping tools:   Don't get too attached to the hardware or software.  These change--therefore, develop the most important tool of all--your brain. Don't just map--> ANALYZE. Be critical of data, including and maybe most importantly, spatial data. Ask questions. Be tenacious. Set goals and establish high standards. Keep moving forward in your use of geotechnologies (through hands-on work with the mapping tools!  You can learn through lessons, podcasts (such as Thinking Spatially), MOOCs, videos, and other means).   Multiple times during the course, I refer to the course philosophy: Encourage the participants that problems are being solved with mapping technologies and the spatial perspective. Empower the participants with skills to create their own maps! State that "This is your course. Ask questions to enhance the learning experience!" My course, which is provided in this presentation with links and in this video playlist, includes the above elements.   It is also provided as a category instant app, here. genpublic_animated_gif.gif Images from the general public GIS course described in this article. The sections of the course include the following: Section 1:  Course goals and objectives.  Haven't all the maps been made?  Are paper maps still relevant in our 21st Century world?  How can maps help us solve our 21st Century challenges?  Live demo:  Current hurricanes:   Adding content, changing symbology, changing classification.  Discuss implications of everyone nowadays being a potential mapmaker. Section 2:   What is GIS and how does it help make maps and analyze our world?  Analyzing ground photographs and thinking spatially.  Mapping the highest elevation of each state. What's where, why is it there, and why is it there?  What is geography--its ancient roots, its high-tech nature, and its relevance.  Geography as the science behind GIS and mapping.  Holistic and systems thinking, with examples.  Phase 2 of mapping:  Seeing things with new ways with a traffic accidents example.  The geographic inquiry process.  What is Esri and what is its role and mission?   Section 3:  Field work and its role.  Mapping field collected data.  GIS as a set of layers, analytical tools, and ways of communicating.  What comprise the geotechnologies?  What careers use geotechnologies?  What is cartography?  What are 5 forces acting on geotechnologies and society?-- geoawareness, geoenablement, geotechnologies in the cloud, citizen science, and story mapping.  My background and why I care:  Think about your own background.  Hands-on demo:  Starbucks map and business applications.   My favorite maps:  The Thelin and Pike digital landforms map.  Historical USGS maps, and more. Section 4:  Cultural geography mapping:  Culture, population, music, and more.  My favorite map-related books. The Map that Changed the World, Longitude, The MapMaker's Wife, Measuring America, Isaac's Storm, others.  How do you think spatially in everyday life?  How can you think spatially in a purposeful way in everyday life?   Section 5:  Recap of core course themes and objectives.   How mapping is incredibly relevant to understanding 21st Century challenges and to solve them: Health, water, energy, hazards, political instability, equity, population change, habitat, and more.   Map data libraries, beginning with the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World.  How can I know if I can trust a map or a geographic data set?  Hands-on example:  The Drought Aware Mapping App.  Metadata.  The Esri Wayback imagery app:   Applied to urban sprawl, and surface water declines.    Section 6:  Examining coastal erosion, agricultural expansion, the Three Gorges Dam, your own neighborhood, and other changes from natural and human causes with maps and imagery powered by GIS.  Landsat discussion. USGS historical topographic map in Esri historical maps mapping app.  Focus:  West Denver access to Rocky Mountains for the last 100 years.  ArcGIS Living Atlas Indicators of Planet Earth.  GIS as the nervous system for Planet Earth.  Section 7:   How does data get into a map in the first place?  ArcGIS Dashboards with examples, including JHU Covid map, Joseph's walkability dashboard.  Connecting ArcGIS apps---maps, story maps, Survey123, dashboards, and others.  Boulder County 2013 flood story map analysis.  Titanic voyage story map illustrating the power of mapping.  Maps confirm and also challenge our preconceived notion of how the world works.  Discussion of map resolution and spatial accuracy.  Mapping litter from a field survey in ArcGIS Online:  Symbology, classification, and saving and sharing. Section 8:  Continuing with litter mapping, and making a predominance map, relationship map, pie chart map. Ways to get free and low cost accounts so you can create and save maps in ArcGIS Online.  Story maps, their impact, analyzing a few story maps in the gallery.  Maps are analysis tools, not just reference documents. John Snow cholera 1854 analysis example.  Analyzing zebra mussels distribution and spread over space and time with GIS.  The advancement of GIS in schools and universities.  Map quizzes:  Name that place.  Weird Earth.  Discuss how these quizzes were made in ArcGIS Online.  Ethical issues:  Map errors, location privacy, fee vs free data, copyright, and more.  Resources for learning and moving forward.  ArcGIS Gallery through which you can access the course materials. I would love to hear how you approach teaching GIS to the general public, and what you include. You could even include some of the above elements in your own secondary or university courses, or even your GIS Day presentations! --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

I was recently asked by a secondary school to give a presentation for a capstone course for seniors focused on what research is, why it matters, and how students can embrace it.  To support this presentation, I created a story map that you are welcome to use wholly or in part for your own secondary or university courses and students.    As I often do, I presented this content as a story map.  Story Maps offer several advantages--the ability to easily embed maps and other multimedia, the ability to share, and the ability for you to go to wherever you are presenting and access it on any device:  The students could also do the same thing on their own devices and follow along with you, investigating the links that you want them to investigate.  My primary goals of the presentation were not to provide an all-encompassing definition of research but rather, in a short but compelling way, to: 1)  Help students see that research is far from "boring" - that it is important, and that it can be an exciting endeavor where they investigate what they are passionate about.   2)  Help students see that research doesn't end when they graduate from secondary school or university; that research is a lifelong endeavor.  Research: can help us understand 21st Century issues and solve them. builds knowledge and learning. can increase public awareness. helps build a vibrant economy. helps us build a more sustainable, equitable, resilient future. promotes a love of and confidence in reading, writing, analyzing, and sharing valuable information. provides nourishment and exercise for the mind. provides a way for you to pursue the curiosity you first exhibited as a little kid! 3)  Empower students with skills and tips to analyze their investigations spatially using GIS and other tools, statistically, through other means. 4)  Aid students in communicating their results via dashboards, story maps, infographics, video, and other means. My story map, provided here, entitled "Why Research Matters", with a video version available here, begins with definitions of what research is and why research is conducted.  Research is the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.  Research is a process of systematic inquiry that entails collection of data; documentation of critical information; and analysis and interpretation of that data and information, in accordance with suitable methodologies set by specific professional fields and academic disciplines. research_why.png Research is conducted to: Evaluate the validity of a hypothesis or an interpretive framework. To assemble a body of substantive knowledge and findings for sharing them in appropriate manners. To help generate questions for further inquiries. Next, I talk about what research is not, to dispel any notions that it is boring or antiquated.  Then I discuss why research matters--that it is modern, field-based, lab-based, high-tech, exciting, and needed.  I mention some key things that we enjoy (recorded music, the web, electricity, cell phones) and are necessary for life (medical advances, food security, water quality) that are the results of research.   After this, I discuss "what does research accomplish?" - and mention things such as:   It can help us understand 21st Century issues and solve them: health, energy, climate, sustainable fisheries, population change, erosion, habitat, water quality and quantity, transportation, supply chain management, natural hazards, and many more. It builds knowledge and learning. It can increase public awareness. It helps build a vibrant economy. It helps us build a more sustainable, equitable, resilient future. It promotes a love of and confidence in reading, writing, analyzing, and sharing valuable information. It provides nourishment and exercise for the mind. I then encourage the reader of the story map that "You are a researcher! You were a scientist beginning when you were a little kid! Research enables you to pursue your curiosities!" My story map then asks a question that I think is often neglected, which is, "How much research do you need to do?"  I ask  the following questions:  It depends on your task and your job. How much is enough? Allow a block of time. Allow some time for discovery. Recognize your own bias and world view. Don't get stuck in the weeds - keep the goal in mind. Next, I provide examples of my own research, beginning in the valleys and canyons of Colorado when I was a little kid, through university level, and to today, focused on teaching and learning with geotechnologies.    I then explore 10 skills that I believe are most important to a researcher. These include: 1.  Ask questions. 2.  Use well-rounded sources. 3.  Understand how to use data. 4.  Understand how to think critically. 5.  Understand how to think holistically. 6.  Know how to communicate a wide variety of information to a wide variety of audiences. 7.  Read!  A wide variety of types, genres, authors.  8.  Travel!  Or at least (1) get outside, and (2)  go beyond your disciplinary "comfort zone".   9.  Build your network, with care. 10.  Seek to be at the intersection of the "ikigai" circles:  What you love, what the world needs, what you are good at, and what you can be paid for. I close the story map with the statement:   In sum, research is interesting, it matters, and you can do it!       ... View more

Why should you, Young GIS Professional, care about educating the next generation of spatial thinkers?  First, all 21st Century problems are spatial:  Energy, equity, water, health, biodiversity loss, habitat, political instability, climate, natural hazards, sustainable development, supply chain management, and much more.  To solve these problems requires a continued flow of people who learn about GIS while at their educational institution, and then enter the workplace empowered with skills and perspectives to tackle these problems.  Second, each of you in the YPN community has an education connection:  You have alma maters from which you received your education, from primary school to your college or university, you have kids in school or know people who do, and you care about the future of the profession and the future of planet Earth.   I serve on the Esri education team, focused on expanding use of GIS in instruction, research, and facilities management in schools, colleges, libraries, museums, and universities.  Our goal is to engage students with GIS so that they become empowered to be positive change agents in their future workplaces.  Despite the fact that my team has been working in GIS education since 1992, it is a massive global effort, involving thousands of educational institutions worldwide.   Encouraging students of all ages to become engaged in GIS and empowering them to do so requires more than the effort of my small team.  In short, we rely on you, the YPN community, to partner with us in the noble effort of deepening and widening the use of GIS throughout education.   Deepening implies encouraging students and faculty to think about GIS as a platform that can be built upon.  Widening implies the use of GIS beyond GIScience, environmental science, and geography, into history, economics, data science, mathematics, civil engineering, planning, business, and many other disciplines.   Why should you consider connecting with the education community?  First, the GIS industry has a continued need for people to work in this growing field:  Acute GIS workforce shortages exist, and the lack of awareness of geospatial as a viable career path is one of the chief obstacles.  By working with educators, you help build this awareness.  Second, this is a way for you to give back to your alma mater, a school or college near you or one you have a particular affinity for, or an after-school program.  It is a way for you to shape the future.  Third, helping others use GIS and think spatially will help you learn more GIS as well--sometimes, teaching others is the best way to advance our own knowledge.   animated_gif_geomentoring.gif How can you connect with the education community?   One way is to be a "geomentor".   As a geomentor that is connected to an educator, education administrator, or someone else in education, you can assemble data, maps, and apps for them to teach with, give presentations and workshop for their class, guide them in other ways through advice and strategies, sponsor an educator for them to attend professional development opportunities such as education conferences or the Esri Education Summit or UC.   You can connect with educators through events such as the Esri Education Summit, Esri UC, or other conferences, through friends and colleagues, through your own connections in LinkedIn, through your alma mater, through educators who have submitted story maps competition entries, and via other ways.  You can work with a school, a college, a university, or an informal program such as 4H.  You can focus on specific aspects of geotechnology that you have expertise and a heart for.  This could be a technical aspect of GIS such as visualization or coding, or an application of GIS such as public safety or water quality.   Specific strategies to think about when you mentor a course, a class, individual students, or faculty, are to (1) make it personal--tell your own story about how you journeyed into GIS.  But don't just focus on your own story--be sure to listen, and to discuss what others do with these tools in fields that your audience is interested in.  (2)  Anchor your approach in key societal trends, such as geo-awareness, geo-enablement, web GIS and visualizations, citizen science, and storytelling with maps.   (3)  Anchor your approach to key trends in GIS, such as 3D analytics, the joining of the BIM, CAD, and GIS worlds, real-time data and analytics including the IoT, enterprise and web GIS, and artificial intelligence and machine learning.   (4)  Anchor your approach to 5 top skills that are needed for geotechnology professionals:   Be curious.  Ask good questions.  Be able to work with data and be critical of it.  For examples on data and societal issues around data that make for good discussion topics, see our Spatial Reserves data blog.  Know your geographic and geotechnical foundations.  Be adaptable.  Go outside your disciplinary and/or geographic comfort zone.  Nurture good communications, including your "elevator speech". Be sure to listen to educators and speak their language.  For primary and secondary educators, this includes discussing how GIS is connected to state and national content standards in social studies, language arts, and science, for example.  If you are working with primary and secondary students, you will need to start with the teachers and the school for permission to work with minors.  For all levels of education, be able to articulate why GIS matters to decision making and society without resorting to technical jargon.  Focus on what's important:  Don't stop at putting data on the map, but the three-fold mantra of what's where, why is it there, and why should we care?   Don't focus just on the tools.  The tools change!  Focus on geographic and scientific inquiry--asking meaningful questions, acquiring data, analysis, mapping and visualization, assessing, making recommendations, communicating the results of your research, inspiring others to take action; all of which leads to asking additional questions.  Using GIS in educational settings involves 3 legs of a stool of geoliteracy:  Content knowledge, skills (not just GIS skills, but skills in communicating, researching, and more), and the geographic perspective. Focus on career opportunities, particularly in technical, tribal, and community colleges where workforce development is one of the chief goals.  Discuss how GIS can be a relevant tool and way of thinking in fields literally from A to Z - agriculture, archaeology, and anthropology, to zoology.  Anchor how GIS fits into the world employment and industry outlook.   Employ educational strategies that reflect the changing nature of GIS.  This includes focusing on problem solving, using GIS lessons that already existed in a curated library, and elements of the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM).   It is good to show what GIS professionals can do with the technology, but make sure you showcase student work as well.  Consider showing this GIS and the data citizens project, a secondary student's work with UAVs,  a student's research on right whale deaths, a teacher who lets students be creative, and many more examples that exist.    When you present to any educational institution, since GIS is so visual, make sure you focus on demonstrations over static slides, and a workshop format over a "presentation".   Use real-world examples of what is happening now in your community, region, or the world, showing how GIS is helping, in a "geo-news" format.  Pose questions, model inquiry.  Use "name this place" and other fun quizzes that use GIS.  Use the ArcGIS Living Atlas apps, the cool maps gallery, activities from my colleague, here, and these resources that I created as a source of ideas.  You may ask, "Do I have time for this"?   What is the return on investment?   I ask you to consider:  What are the consequences of you NOT doing this?  You not doing this could mean that GIS will continue to be smaller in scope and influence than it could be, and that decision-making will suffer with the lack of geographic approaches.  If not you, who will step up?  I can also assure you that in the work I have done over the years with educators and students, that I have gained far more than I have received.  It is gratifying to be involved in touching the future.  You may also ask, "Am I the right person to get involved in education?  I'm not a GIS guru!"   I would respond by saying "You don't need to be a guru.  The world of education needs your expertise.  None of us feels 100% competent in all aspects of our jobs."   For more details, examples, and recommendations, see this story map that I have created on this subject.   ... View more

One of the most popular capabilities with web GIS with educators over the years has been the ability to create a web mapping application that presented content, themes, or locations on the Earth in a series of "frames" or "slides".   Frames doesn't fully describe its capabilities, though, because the advantage of Web GIS has always been that these "frames" or slides are not static, but able to be interacted with.  That is, on each frame or slide, the presenter or user can zoom, pan, click on features for further information, and do additional things with the map.  Some readers of this essay might remember the "presentation" mode that was a part of the classic ArcGIS Online map viewer.   With the advent of the new ArcGIS Online map viewer, that capability lives on in the Exhibit App!  The Exhibit App is part of the set of Instant Apps, so named because you can quickly and efficiently create them right from the ArcGIS Online map interface.  Exhibit allows you to emphasize different aspects of your map and your data on each slide with the available layer and  basemap options. You can turn on and off the visibility of feature layers in your map depending on the intended purpose of the individual slide.  To learn more about the capabilities in this app, see my Esri colleague's essay about it, here.   A geomorphology exhibit app:  Use my geomorphology-themed exhibit app to explore, teach about, and learn about landforms:  What makes landforms unique and fascinating?  What do they look like on topographic maps and via ground photographs and satellite images?   Landforms connect well both with human geography and with physical geography and Earth sciences.  They affect local and regional weather and climate, and hence, land cover and land use.  They influence river systems and local transportation routes.  The study of landforms touches a core theme in many of the sciences--change over space and time across the Earth. Use the forward and back arrows to navigate between the slides to learn about each landform featured:  Where is it located, why is it there, how large is it, and is it protected in a park?  How persistent is it over space and time--what did it look like in the past, what will it look like in 1, 5, or 100 years from now?  Do humans modify the landform, and if so, how?  Use the measure tool to determine the length, width, or area of each landform and compare the results to the size of other landforms.  Use the contour lines to determine the height of each landform and to calculate slopes.  Use the search tool to search on landforms that are outside of this collection.  You could use the Exhibit app in conjunction with my landforms quiz that uses the Map Actions feature in ArcGIS Online, which I created here and wrote about here.  I used the original "set of 100" core landforms from the USGS to guide me on the choice of landforms and the "classic example" of each; for example, the Cedar Creek Alluvial Fan at Ennis Montana was a natural choice for the alluvial fan landform.   Oh, it is perfect!  Look at that fan shape!  geomorphology_exhibit_animated.gif   How did I create this exhibit instant app?  To support the above landforms quiz, I had created this web map in ArcGIS Online with a set of landforms.  I used the USA Topo basemap throughout the map, because the USGS topographic maps are perfect for a landforms focus.  Each landform in my map already had its own bookmark.  Creating the exhibit app was as easy as going to the left side of the map, selecting Create App, and selecting the Exhibit App.  My bookmarks were converted all at once to 27 "frames" or "slides" in the Instant App.  Sweet!  When you create any of the apps, you are asked to customize your final experience in a series of steps, which I did, adding things like measure and search tools, a home button, and a front screen showing a few instructions that I typed in.  You can always modify these settings later.  Then I added popups to each of the landforms with explanatory text and an image.  I made sure that I cited my sources and used public domain or creative commons images, just as I advise students to do.  Because landforms don't just stand alone, that human impact on the landscape also matters, I included 4 land survey locations at the end of the landforms exhibit app, showing the public land survey system, metes and bounds, long lots, and land grants.  Again, ArcGIS Online and the USGS topographic basemaps were perfect to illustrate the differences in these land survey systems.  Once done, I tested and shared my Exhibit app with everyone.  The Exhibit Instant App lets you page through each slide one at a time, or with one touch, play through all of the frames.  You can also reorder your slides and apply transitions, giving you some of the capabilities you have with PowerPoint, for example, but with much more interactivity and potential engagement by students.  I created the landforms Exhibit Instant App as a springboard for additional ideas.  How could you use this exhibit app to teach and learn about landforms in your own region?  How could you use this exhibit app to teach about other topics and areas?  For example, you could use the exhibit app to teach about different types of land cover, ecoregions, climate zones, specific cities or regions of the world, demographic characteristics in your own city by neighborhood, or much more.  I am already planning to use this in an urban geography course that I teach to illustrate the differences in urban forms and how urban areas evolved particularly with the advent of streetcars and the automobile.  You could also ask students to create an exhibit app as a communications tool for their own research topics.  In this way, the exhibit app becomes not only a presentation tool, but an assessment tool for you as their instructor to evaluate student research and an communications tool for the students.  You can use the Exhibit app with time-aware bookmarks and with 3D maps as well.  A fossil sites Exhibit App in England:  My colleague here at Esri created this fascinating exhibit app of fossil sites in England.  This app makes use of map notes.  This app includes the Lyme Regis coastal site where Mary Anning found the first ichthyosaur fossil as a young person.  So, you could read that story, well told in one of my all-time favorite books, Stone Girl Bone Girl, to your students as they explore the app.  I look forward to hearing how you are using this app in your teaching and learning.    ... View more

I have created a complete course in environmental GIS and am offering it here for faculty to use or modify as they see fit, and for students to take to further their environmental GIS journey. It is my hope that this course provides a useful model of how Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can be effectively woven into a university environmental sciences program.  This course introduces students to ways in which geotechnologies (GIS, remote sensing, GPS/GNSS, and web mapping) can help them put their environmental interests into action by fostering skills in data collection, mapping, analysis, and communication in tandem with an ethic of caring for and protecting the water, air, soil, plants, animals, and ecosystems of Planet Earth and the people who dwell there.  This course and these strategies can be used in universities, technical, tribal, and community colleges, and even in secondary school classrooms where there is a particular focus on outdoor education, field work, and STEM.  animated_gif_of_course.gif Some of the investigations, data, and maps in the GIS course that is described in this essay. All environmental issues—water quality, habitat loss, energy, climate, natural hazards, invasive species, and many more—take place somewhere, affecting people’s lives as well as their environmental surroundings.  In addition, these issues often exhibit spatial patterns that can be mapped and analyzed, and require the analysis of data in the form of 2D and 3D maps, aircraft and satellite imagery, real time data feeds from the Internet of Things, and much more. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is an exciting way for students to put their interest and passion for all things about the Earth and the Environment into action in ways that are in demand in the workplace by nonprofit organizations, government agencies, academia, and private industry and incredibly relevant to our 21st Century world.   GIS provides theoretical foundations and practical applications for social and ecological problem-solving.  I developed this course and have successfully taught it twice so far at the Au Sable Institute, refining the course each time with updates to tools, approaches, and based on student feedback.  Through a series of readings, videos, and hands-on exercises covering a variety of environmental themes, issues, and scales, the course invites the students to learn the fundamentals modern mapping, including projections, symbology, classification, and analysis.  Students build their own web mapping applications, including dashboards and story maps.  They gain skills and confidence to empower them to be able to conduct their own field studies and use maps as analytical tools to build a brighter, more sustainable, more resilient tomorrow.  Attached is the syllabus, and the entire course is presented in a story maps collection of 28 story maps, as follows:    Each of the 5 weeks of the course contains 1 story map for the readings and videos, 1 for the discussion about the readings and videos, 1 for the hands-on activities, 1 for the discussion of the hands-on activities and the sharing of maps and apps, and 1 for the quiz.  These comprise 25 story maps.  In addition, I provide 1 story map for the course outline, 1 for the overview, syllabus, and course maps, and 1 for the implementation plan, where I ask students to articulate how they will apply what they have learned in this course.  On the technical side:  I make extensive use of story maps and a story map collection.  Story maps and story map collections are straightforward to set up, can be accessed from anywhere, can incorporate web maps, video, images, text, and other multimedia elements, and can be easily edited and updated.  Faculty:  Consider how you could deliver your own course content via story maps, as I did here.  In addition, consider using a story map collection to bundle together content you want students to examine.  Students:  Consider the story map collection to showcase work that you have done.    Part of the story map collection that provides the content for this course. Part of the story maps collection through which you can access the content for this course. I am sharing the course so that you can modify it for your own needs.  The six course learning outcomes are to:  Identify ways in which GIS, maps, and geo-visualizations are providing a common language and framework for communication and solving problems. Apply cartographic design principles such as symbology, color, and classification methods to create, modify, and critically evaluate effective maps and visualizations.   Analyze environmental and other data spatially with web GIS tools using a variety of techniques, including visualization, filtering, map overlay, routing, mean center, and proximity. Demonstrate how to create and map data from spreadsheets, from GPS data, from field surveys, from joining data, and from pre-existing maps. Identify how society influences mapping, and how mapping influences society, through data availability, data quality, map projections, crowdsourcing, location privacy, the Internet of Things, and design, and examine the connections between Christian ethics, GIS, and environmental science. Create multimedia 2D maps and 3D scenes that effectively communicate an environmental issue, event, or theme, via results of a research investigation. Purpose:   The purpose of this course is to lay a firm foundation for the successful use of GIS by introducing students to the ways that digital maps from GIS can be created, symbolized, and used in visualizations to solve problems and serve as communication tools in environmental science and beyond.  Through this course, students gain fundamental skills in cartography and spatial analysis with an environmental focus through hands-on work.  But equally importantly, they gain understanding of the technological and societal implications that these tools have on 21st Century society and how students can chart their own pathway forward using these tools and perspectives. Prerequisites:  This course has no prerequisites, other than a willingness to learn, an inquisitive mind, and a desire to be a positive change agent in the world 🙂.   It is highly advisable, however, for students to be comfortable with operating a web browser, understanding the difference between file types (DOCX, JPG, PNG, XLSX), and be comfortable with managing files and folders on their own device (laptop or tablet).  Required Texts and Materials:  Given the rapidly evolving nature of geotechnologies, rather than choosing a GIS text, I have created and assembled my own required readings and videos for this course. These are given in sequential order in each week of the 5-week course.  I believe however that GIS textbooks still have a relevant and viable place, as I have written about elsewhere in the Esri community space and in video form. Videos:  Students will watch and reflect upon a set of 1 to 3 short videos each week that I created. Readings and Discussions:  I have created 5 sets of readings, one set of each week.  Videos are sometimes embedded within these readings.  Activities (hands-on work with GIS and maps) build on the reading content of each module and allow students to work in a problem-solving mode with the topics raised in the readings.  Therefore, I recommend that they work through the readings first before completing the hands on activities for each week.  At the end of each week’s readings, students are asked a short set of questions.  If you are using this in a face-to-face course or in an online course using a Learning Management System, I encourage you to include these questions in a discussion board or as in-class discussions, so that students can all be learning from each other. References:  Students are provided with a reference list of articles and other resources in this course.  I encourage them to feel free to explore these as they have time, or even after they complete the course, to keep learning and moving forward.  They are not graded on any of these outside readings unless they are included in the main readings for each week. Hands-on Activities and Discussions:  Maps and geo-visualizations are inherently so compelling, so visual, and so appropriate for addressing real and serious issues in our world (from population to water, from biodiversity to health, from equity to energy, and more) that each week students have the opportunity to work with data, tools, and maps to address these issues.  For this component, students will need to have a creator/publisher role within their ArcGIS Online organization, from their personal use account or their account at their school or university.  At the end of each hands-on activity, they are presented with a short set of questions to respond to in a discussion forum.  They are often asked to share the URLs of the maps they create in this courses so everyone can see these maps and learn from each student's work. Quizzes:  At the end of each week, students are given a short quiz of 6 questions.  Rather than viewing them as a stress-inducing item, I encourage students to use them as a self-assessment opportunity to gauge how much they are learning and moving forward. Weekly themes:  The course runs asynchronously and online for 5 weeks and is organized around the following themes:  Week 1:  Get Mapping!  Introduction to GIS in Environmental Science Week 2:  Space, Place, and Time.  Week 3:  From the Field to the Lab. Week 4:  Surveys, Stories, and Spatial Analysis. Week 5:  The Future is Now. Each week, students learn core content, develop a set of technical skills, and address a societal issue associated with geotechnologies.  Each week, I present a course map of content, skills, themes, and societal issues that will be investigated; a sample of which is below:  JosephKerski_2-1662155422968.png Assessment:  As I frequently receive questions from the academic community about how course content is assessed using GIS, for this course, I assessed it this way: Activities Discussions:             5 activities x 10 points each =                                                     50 points Readings Discussions:            5 discussions x 5 points each =                                                  25 points Quizzes:                                     5 quizzes (each is 6 questions) x 3 points each =                   15 points Implementation Plan:             1 plan x 10 points =                                                                      10 points Total:                                                                                                                                                  100 points Evaluation As of 2022, after teaching the course twice, I offer these reflections: 1.  Students respond well to the hands-on nature of the course.   The hands-on activities and the migration of GIS to the cloud, manifested in ArcGIS Online, made the perfect match. 2.  Students respond well to the use of ArcGIS Online.  ArcGIS Online provides ways for them to gather field data (we primarily used Survey123), map data, analyze data, and communicate the results of their investigations.  3.  ArcGIS Online meshes well with any Learning Management System (LMS).  I have used ArcGIS successfully within Populi LMS, Moodle, Blackboard, D2L Brightspace, Canvas, and probably others I cannot recall right now! 4.  I first taught the course I developed during 2021, while COVID was in full swing.  Traditionally, the institute I taught it in would offer many of its environmental short courses on its beautiful campus in Michigan, but that obviously wasn't happening in 2021.  Offering this course online was a natural fit and continues to work well even after this institution resumed its face to face (F2F) offerings.  The course as I built it could be easily transformed to a F2F course at any time in the future.  This same story can be applied to many institutions that I have the honor of working with. 5.  The course integrates well within an educational institution's environmental mission, helping students to become interested in the institute's other offerings and the environmental offerings on their own campuses.  The course also is opening up conversations with the other GIS offerings (currently environmental GIS applications with a focus on UAVs) and how to integrate GIS workflows and tools into other courses on campus (ethics, biology, conservation, and others).   GIS has great applicability to any university (or school) focused on environmental issues or STEM.  The recent expansion of the ArcGIS Climate Hub and other environmental tools is only a small piece of the massive amount of initiatives, data, and other resources to come.   I hope that this provides a meaningful way of integrating GIS into your environmental science program, starting slowly but powerfully, and building from there.  It also shows how GIS augments and enhances any environmental program by aligning to that program's needs.  ... View more

A new introduction to GIS open short course offers educators and students with a hands-on set of 10 engaging activities covering a variety of themes and scales.  I created these activities based on frequent inquiries from faculty and students across a wide variety of disciplines who seek a rapid but firm foundation in building GIS skills and spatial thinking perspectives.  The activities are aimed at university faculty and students new to GIS, but can be used at the secondary level as well.  It is my hope that these activities are useful and instructive and help you build skills and confidence in inquiry and problem solving with GIS.  Along with the Learn ArcGIS library, Esri MOOCs, and Esri Press books, these activities can be used in your geospatial learning journey in a variety of ways to further your own learning, to teach your students, and to share with colleagues! Part 1, available here, includes: Activity 1:  Gaining confidence with using the ArcGIS Online map viewer, with a study of the Human Development Index by Country. Activity 2:  Creating a map from a data table, with a focus on a litter survey in a city. Activity 3:  Symbolizing, classifying, and charting data, building on the litter survey in a city. Activity 4:  Uncovering patterns and relationships in data, with a focus on internet access by households at different scales. Activity 5:  Examining patterns using visualization effects, with a focus on wildfires and population. Activity 6:  Creating web mapping applications, including a basic instant app and a story map. Part 2, available here, includes: Activity 7:  Spatial Analysis in ArcGIS Online, with a focus on geologic hazards and flooding impacts on populations. Activity 8:  Creating a field survey in Survey123, with a focus on mapping trees on campus or in a part of a community. Activity 9:  Creating a web map from surveyed data, using the survey you completed in the previous activity. Activity 10:  Creating an ArcGIS Dashboard from surveyed data, using a more populated tree inventory data set.  This activity is extended into "10b" with more advanced dashboard techniques.  The 10 activities are offered in a story map format so the instructions and the interactive web maps can be viewed side-by-side for rapid skill building and understanding; see graphic below. intro_to_gis_minicourse.PNG The side-by-side (sidecar) story map format that enables immediate learning from the Introduction to GIS content. The 10 activities cover all of the core skills that I identified in a recent essay about the 10 most important skills, making the case that if you and your students build these skills, the "sky is the limit" with what you can do with GIS.  I also believe that working through these activities and reflecting upon the questions I pose touches firmly on the 10 benefits and strategies in teaching with GIS. The 10 activities, which could be considered as an e-book or mini-course in the fundamentals of GIS, begin with a definition of GIS, why GIS matters to education and society, a discussion on spatial data and its formats, and the ArcGIS platform.  The course's goals are to: 1. Develop geotechnology skills, including foundational underpinnings, cloud data sources, data formats, communicating with maps, data quality; projections, symbolizing, georeferencing, measurement, classification, databases, and mobile workflows.   2. Develop spatial thinking through the use of geotechnologies. 3. Develop workforce awareness of the applicability of GIS across a variety of disciplines for instruction and research. 4. Provide confidence that you can use these skills and perspectives to move forward with your own career. The course's philosophy is that: This is your learning. Let us know how we on the  Esri education team  can help you today and in the future as you use geotechnologies. Using geotechnologies effectively is a journey that will require building a network with your colleagues. The course does not cover every GIS tool and data set that exists, but builds a foundation so that you will be empowered and feel confident. The activities include core themes and skills that can be used in many topics, disciplines, and scales from local to global. The course's themes are that: (1)  Geotechnologies are critically important tools in the natural and social sciences, engineering, design, and in many other fields to build a healthier, more equitable, more sustainable, more resilient future. (2)  Geotechnologies are essential tools for your career, no matter the field:  They enable you to apply your skills and knowledge and contribute to the work that nonprofits, government agencies, private industry, and academia is using everyday. But, the most important tool is your brain--GIS is first and foremost a thinker's tool. (3)  Modern cloud-enabled GIS tools and spatial data mean that it is easier than ever to learn how to apply GIS to solve problems, and for teaching and research. But the world is a complex place and hence - using GIS is a lifelong journey. Tools: The course uses the following GIS tools:  ArcGIS Online, web mapping applications including ArcGIS Dashboards and Storymaps, and the Survey123 field data collection tool.  For more advanced work, the course discusses ArcGIS Pro and selected other tools in the resources section.  Feel free to use the course in its entirety, as modules for segments of your own courses, or modify the course to suit your own needs, student background with GIS, and themes.  I look forward to your reactions. ... View more

ArcGIS Dashboards combine interactive maps, charts, tables, indicators, and other visual elements to communicate the results of any place-based investigation.  They offer a rich display of information in a small amount of space--such as a single screen.  They provide faculty and students with powerful and compelling tools that make it very useful for teaching and research.  How can you get started with ArcGIS Dashboards, particularly if you are a student, or teacher, or professor, or researcher?  The workshop described in this essay includes video and text components, along with a set of hands-on activities that you can follow to create the dashboards in this workshop and extend to dashboards on topics that you are interested in.   animated_gif_dashboards.gif Selected images from this ArcGIS Dashboards workshop. The purposes of this workshop are to: 1.  Understand where and how dashboards fit into the ArcGIS system. 2.  Gain skills in creating and maintaining dashboards. 3.  Gain confidence that you can use dashboards in your instruction, research, campus operations, and in your own career path. 4.  Connect you to Esri support and resources available to you as instructors, researchers, operations managers, and students. See the attached slides and the videos in this playlist for the workshop's content.  The playlist includes the full workshop, and also the contents as split up into 6 parts if you prefer.  Each part builds on the part before it in a scaffolded way designed to enhance learning and skill-building.  I would like to acknowledge my Esri colleague Eric Wagner for his technical assistance in helping me with this workshop.  The workshop focuses on mapping and analyzing tree species and health in New York City, but you can apply these ideas and techniques to study literally any topic or theme. ArcGIS Dashboards are map-centric web applications containing interactive elements to draw the users' attention to specific items or data feeds.  They are intuitive and quick means of sharing data within an organization or with outside audiences.  They simplify the display of complex information.  They look clean and are simple to configure, with no coding required.  But with some coding skills on your toolbelt, they offer even more power.  Dashboards offer several advantages in education: They are a part of the ArcGIS platform and are therefore connected to maps, apps, layers, analysis tools, and more.  They allow for quick and powerful visualizations.  They allow you to share data within a research team, between universities, or with a wider audience such as the general public.  They are in high demand in the workplace, are compelling, and help people understand the world and solve problems.  They encourage you as the dashboard creator to consider scale, symbology, classification, and other mapping and communication skills.  They focus attention to where needed, communicate at a glance, and help people spot what really matters.  Especially relevant to education is that dashboards can be used and created by students and faculty who are just beginning their journey with GIS, but also can be used by intermediate and advanced users who extend dashboard capabilities with Arcade scripts and other tools.  Everyone on the planet with a device has seen the JHU Covid Dashboard.  This, and tens of thousands of other dashboards, have been created and are used on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis to examine everything from human health, water quality, weather, traffic accidents, crime, real-time wildfire perimeters, energy use, work orders, citizen science projects, and a myriad of other disciplines and settings in scales from local to global. What do you need to get started?   You need a focused idea of what you want to show for others to see, GIS data layers and a map, attributes that you wan to summarize, show, or count, and a creator license in ArcGIS to build the dashboard.  In the workshop I recommend to keep in mind your higher goals--what are you trying to communicate, who is your audience, and use those goals and your audience to select the most appropriate tools to use for communication--story map, Experience Builder, dashboard, or something else?   This workshop's slides also include a rich body of resources for you to continue your learning, such as videos, lessons, documentation, tips, an Esri MOOC, and educational tips such as how to modify an existing dashboard with a short URL adjustment.   Why use dashboards in instruction?  In short, students who understand how to think spatially and use GIS can be a powerful and positive force in your university, in their future workplace, and in the global economy.  Empowered with employees who use GIS, workplaces will become vibrant and efficient, enabling a prosperous economy and sustainable environment for all.  ... View more

How can Geographic Information Systems (GIS) be effectively woven into a university environmental sciences program?  This example represents ways in which geotechnologies (GIS, remote sensing, GPS/GNSS, and web mapping) can help students put their environmental interests into action by fostering skills in data collection, mapping, analysis, and communication in tandem with an ethic of caring for and protecting the water, air, soil, plants, animals, and ecosystems of Planet Earth and the people who dwell there.  These strategies could be used in other universities, or in technical, tribal, and community college programs, and even in secondary school classrooms where there is a particular focus on outdoor education, field work, and STEM.  au_sable_gis_animated.gif A sample of the investigations in the GIS course described in this article. All environmental issues—water quality, habitat loss, energy, climate, natural hazards, invasive species, and many more—take place somewhere, affecting people’s lives as well as their environmental surroundings.  In addition, these issues often exhibit spatial patterns that can be mapped and analyzed, and require the analysis of data in the form of 2D and 3D maps, aircraft and satellite imagery, real time data feeds from the Internet of Things, and much more. Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is an exciting way for students to put their interest and passion for all things about the Earth and the Environment into action in ways that are in demand in the workplace by nonprofit organizations, government agencies, academia, and private industry and incredibly relevant to our 21st Century world.   GIS provides theoretical foundations and practical applications for social and ecological problem-solving.  One approach to integrating GIS into an environmental program at a university is through a course I developed and taught through the Au Sable Institute. Through a series of readings, videos, and hands-on exercises covering a variety of environmental themes, issues, and scales, the course invites the students to learn the fundamentals modern mapping, including projections, symbology, classification, and analysis.  Students build their own web mapping applications, including dashboards and story maps.  They gain skills and confidence to empower them to be able to conduct their own field studies and use maps as analytical tools to build a brighter, more sustainable, more resilient tomorrow.  I am sharing the syllabus as an attachment with you in several formats so that you can modify it for your own use, and I will shortly publish the entire course contents as a story maps collection.  The six course learning outcomes are to:  Identify ways in which GIS, maps, and geo-visualizations are providing a common language and framework for communication and solving problems. Apply cartographic design principles such as symbology, color, and classification methods to create, modify, and critically evaluate effective maps and visualizations.   Analyze environmental and other data spatially with web GIS tools using a variety of techniques, including visualization, filtering, map overlay, routing, mean center, and proximity. Demonstrate how to create and map data from spreadsheets, from GPS data, from field surveys, from joining data, and from pre-existing maps. Identify how society influences mapping, and how mapping influences society, through data availability, data quality, map projections, crowdsourcing, location privacy, the Internet of Things, and design, and examine the connections between Christian ethics, GIS, and environmental science. Create multimedia 2D maps and 3D scenes that effectively communicate an environmental issue, event, or theme, via results of a research investigation. Purpose:   The purpose of this course is to lay a firm foundation for the successful use of GIS by introducing students to the ways that digital maps from GIS can be created, symbolized, and used in visualizations to solve problems and serve as communication tools in environmental science and beyond.  Through this course, students gain fundamental skills in cartography and spatial analysis with an environmental focus through hands-on work.  But equally importantly, they gain understanding of the technological and societal implications that these tools have on 21st Century society and how students can chart their own pathway forward using these tools and perspectives. Prerequisites:  This course has no prerequisites, other than a desire to learn, an inquisitive mind, and a goal to be a positive change agent in the world 😊.   It is advisable, however, for students to be comfortable with operating a web browser, understanding the difference between file types (DOCX, JPG, PNG, XLSX), and be comfortable with managing files and folders on your own device (laptop or tablet).  Required Texts and Materials:  Given the rapidly evolving nature of geotechnologies, there is no suitable required text for this course.  However, there are required readings and videos for this course, which are given in sequential order in each week of the 5-week course.  Videos:  Students will watch and reflect upon a set of 1 to 3 short videos each week that I created. Readings and Discussions:  In the student overview in Populi, the course's Learning Management System (LMS), they find a main set of readings for each week.  There are 5 sets of readings total, one set of each week.  Videos are sometimes embedded within these readings.  Labs (hands-on work with GIS and maps) build on the reading content of each module and allow students to work in a problem-solving mode with the topics raised in the readings.  Therefore, I recommend that they work through the readings first before completing the hands on activities (labs) for each week.  At the end of each week’s readings, they are asked a short set of questions to respond to in discussion mode so that we can all be learning from each other. References:  Students are provided with a reference list of articles and other resources in this course.  I encourage them to feel free to explore these as they have time, or even after this course ends, to keep learning and moving forward.  They are not graded on any of these outside readings unless they are included in the main readings for each week. Labs (Hands-on Activities) and Discussions:  Maps and geo-visualizations are inherently so compelling, so visual, and so appropriate for addressing real and serious issues in our world (from population to water, from biodiversity to health, from equity to energy, and more) that each week students have the opportunity to work with data, tools, and maps to address these issues.  At the end of each hands-on lab, they are presented with a short set of questions to respond to in a discussion forum.  They are often asked to share the URLs of the maps they create in this courses so everyone can see these maps and learn from each student's work. Quizzes:  At the end of each week, students are given a short quiz of 6 questions.  Rather than viewing them as a stress-inducing item, I encourage students to use them as a self-assessment opportunity to gauge how much they are learning and moving forward. Weekly themes:  The course runs asynchronously and online for 5 weeks and is organized around the following themes:  Week 1:  Get Mapping!  Introduction to GIS in Environmental Science Week 2:  Space, Place, and Time.  Week 3:  From the Field to the Lab. Week 4:  Surveys, Stories, and Spatial Analysis. Week 5:  The Future is Now. Each week, students learn core content, develop a set of technical skills, and address a societal issue associated with geotechnologies.  Each week, I present a course map of content, skills, themes, and societal issues that will be investigated; a sample of which is below:  ausable_coursemap.PNG Assessment:  I frequently receive questions from the academic community about how course content is assessed using GIS, and for this course, I assessed it this way: Labs Discussions:                     5 labs x 10 points each =                                                            50 points Readings Discussions:            5 discussions x 5 points each =                                                  25 points Quizzes:                                     5 quizzes (each is 6 questions) x 3 points each =                   15 points Implementation Plan:             1 plan x 10 points =                                                                      10 points Total:                                                                                                                                                  100 points Evaluation As of 2022, after teaching the course twice, I offer these reflections: 1.  Students respond well to the hands-on nature of the course.   The hands-on activities and the migration of GIS to the cloud, manifested in ArcGIS Online, made the perfect match. 2.  Students respond well to the use of ArcGIS Online.  ArcGIS Online provides ways for them to gather field data (we primarily used Survey123), map data, analyze data, and communicate the results of their investigations.  3.  ArcGIS Online meshed perfectly with the institute's Learning Management System.  In this case, the institute used the Populi LMS, which I found to be very useful to teach on, with embedding capabilities (important in teaching GIS), and not over-engineered:  Simple, straightforward, easy-to-learn. 4.  The course began during 2021, while COVID was in full swing.  Traditionally, Au Sable would offer many of its environmental short courses on its beautiful campus in Michigan, but that obviously wasn't happening in 2021.  Offering this course online was a natural fit and continues to work well even after Au Sable resumed its face to face (F2F) offerings.  The course as I built it could be easily transformed to a F2F course at any time in the future.  5.  The course integrated well with the Institute's environmental mission, helping students to become interested in the institute's other offerings and the environmental offerings on their own campuses.  The course also is opening up conversations with the other GIS offerings (currently environmental GIS applications with a focus on UAVs) and how to integrate GIS workflows and tools into other courses on campus (ethics, biology, conservation, and others).   GIS has great applicability to any university focused on environmental issues.  The recent expansion of the ArcGIS Climate Hub and other environmental tools is only a small piece of the massive amount of initiatives, data, and other resources to come.   This is an excellent illustration of a thoughtful way of integrating GIS into an already-successful environmental science program, starting slowly but powerfully, and building from there.  It also shows how GIS augments and enhances any environmental program by aligning to that program's needs.   ... View more

As GIS has evolved to become a web based platform, Python is now an essential tool for many GIS practitioners to be successful with GIS. Silas Toms and Bill Parker’s book Python for ArcGIS Pro from Packt Publishing provides a hands-on, engaging way to gain these core Python skills in a GIS context. Indeed, as Rene Rubalcava states in the foreword for this book, if you need to perform analysis, there’s a Python library available for it. The book provides ways for the new as well as the experienced programmer to start engaging with these tools right away, through a wide variety of tools including ArcPy, the ArcGIS API for Python, and Notebooks. I have long had great respect for the GIS books from Packt, and this book upheld my high regard for this publisher. The book’s two authors have a combined 30+ years of GIS experience behind them, and this experience shows through their attention to detail. They are knowledgeable and they make good instructors, which is a wonderful combination. As a GIS instructor, I appreciate the fine line that GIS book authors need to take in terms of the amount of detail and guidance they provide in instruction. The book’s authors provide the right amount of detail for each activity, not too much minutae but just enough to keep the reader on task without getting lost. The screen shots are in black and white but are in sharp detail, are very helpful, and again, are provided in just the right amount. The data for the book including code files are stored on GitHub and are easily accessed. The book is available in digital and in print form. The book’s organization makes its content wonderfully digestible: Part I’s introduction includes describing what Python for GIS is and why it is an important set of tools, and the basics of programming, including data structures, data types, and conditionals. ArcPy basics and the ArcGIS API for Python are also covered in Part I. Part II focuses on applying Python through modules, including publishing to ArcGIS Online and automated map production. My favorite part of Part II is where the authors explain how to turn scripts into tools. These tools become a custom toolbox which can be run like any ArcGIS tool and which also can be shared—very powerful! Part III digs into geospatial data analysis, an introduction to Pandas, vector and raster data structures, and NumPy for geospatial data processing. Part IV’s case studies are varied and interesting, covering such topics as crop yields and other themes at a variety of scales. This book can be used by people new to coding and new to GIS, as well as by seasoned GIS professionals who seek to keep learning. It can be used in its entirety or by selecting specific tools and activities that the reader is seeking to learn more about. I found the book to be extremely valuable (my review on Amazon is here) in my own journey forward, and I trust you will as well. python_for_arcgis_pro_book.jpg ... View more