Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

Introduction SENCER (Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities), the signature initiative of the National Center for Science & Civic Engagement, is a national project focused on empowering faculty and improving STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) teaching and learning by making connections to civic issues.  As someone who admires and respects the tenets of the SENCER network, I was honored to recently accept the invitation of the organizers of one of the conferences that SENCER sponsors.  SENCER--Science Education for New Civic Engagements and Responsibilities Science at Esri Science is fundamental to the work that my organization, Esri, was founded on back in 1969 and it continues to guide our day to day work.  We work closely with weather and climate science, ocean science, solid earth science, geographic information science, and social science communities.  Esri currently leverages and contributes to over 200 open-source projects while delivering over 350 open-source projects of its own. In fact, our Chief Scientist, Dr Dawn Wright, explains that "Science underpins everything that Esri produces. We're very excited about all the things that we're doing across all of the environmental sciences. This is embedded in what we do, to strengthen the foundation of our software and services; to research, publish, communicate, and serve alongside the scientific community; and to inspire positive change in society."  These statements are aligned closely with the SENCER goals of communication and empowering students and faculty to be change agents. Connecting GIS to Science Narratives I firmly believe that the spatial and critical thinking and problem solving that the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) fosters is very well aligned with science research and teaching.  I also believe that the web mapping applications such as story maps, as well as dashboards, infographics, and interactive maps that students and faculty can create with GIS is well aligned with communication in science, or, said another way, science narratives.  As the conference theme stated, "As scientists, science educators, and science communicators, we employ narrative in a variety of ways to shape the stories we tell about our work. Narrative can be a powerful way to connect the public to the work that we do. For more, see this recent article from the Chronicle from Higher Education discussing the need for civic education intertwined with science education.  The presenters at the virtual SENCER conference focused on the many ways that they use narrative to teach science and engage the public. Over 100 participants from all over the USA and abroad spent some glorious and fruitful hours networking and learning from each other. My keynote presentation, which I delivered as a story map, is entitled Spatial Research and Communications:  Using geotechnologies to solve problems and foster dialogue.  I showed examples of how web GIS tools such as ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Insights, ArcGIS Pro, the 3D scene viewer, and others can be combined with spatial data to tell compelling stories about key 21st Century issues.  But even more importantly than showing tools and ways to use them, my main message was that scientific phenomena, trends, and patterns are often spatial, and hence, maps and GIS are the perfect tools to highlight those spatial patterns, to understand the whys of where.  I showed how visualizations empowered by smart mapping technologies, citizen scientists, spatial statistics, and 3D tools move us from mapping "what is there" to "what should be there".   Telling stories through maps is powerful, inviting people to take action--about land use, health, habitat, and other key issues.  Dozens of SENCER practitioners gave compelling presentations about innovative use of tools, data, and approaches on a wide variety of topics ranging from climate change, health and sustainability, atoms in art and culture, citizen science, concept sketching, microbial communities, urban trees, animal behavior, and even "broadening the science storytelling toolkit with quilts!" Yes, quilts!  The other keynote presenter was Jeffrey Perkel, Technology Editor for Nature magazine.  For the full program, my keynote, and all recordings from the presentations, see this link [ncsce.wildapricot.org].  I especially appreciated the collaboration and support from St. Johns University, Paula Lazrus and Alison Hyslop, and the others for inviting me and who helped make it a success.   The Science Narrative Movement  While the conference was wonderful and a joy to be a part of, what excites me most is the movement that the conference represents--the idea of "science narratives." Science narratives brings together, as the event above well illustrates, people from a wide diversity of backgrounds and expertise--from A to Z, literally, anthropology to zoology, and most every discipline in between.  And these people come from multiple parts of the world and from levels of education, filling many roles--primary, secondary, university, community college, educators, researchers, administrators, and others.  Our present day and time sees an incredible need for holistic and scientific thinking, for open data portals, for rigorous and accessible tools such as geotechnologies, for the research and teaching community to band together, and for clear communications. As through my presentation at this event I sought to illustrate, GIS tools, spatial data, lessons and tutorials, and a community of practitioners exists for you also to become a "science narrator" and to encourage your students to do the same.   Take Action How are you using maps and visualizations to tell the story about the work you are doing in science?  How are you using GIS to encourage your students to do so?   I encourage you to comment below.  ... View more

A new article from our colleague Dr Wing Cheung from Palomar College in the Spatial Reserves data blog describes how to find and obtain imagery taken from Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS, or Drone) platforms.  It is my hope that the strategies and resources that Dr Cheung describes and my addendum will be of assistance to the community in this rapidly expanding field.   Sample UAS imagery, over Illinois, USA.  ... View more

Connecting GIS Education to Bloom’s Taxonomy One of the most influential and commonly used frameworks guiding the creation and teaching of educational content over the past 60 years has been the Taxonomy of Educational Objectives from Benjamin Bloom and colleagues (1956).  The framework from Bloom et al. included six major categories:  Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation.  These categories have been organized in many graphical forms over the years, but one of my favorites has long been the ‘light bulb’ graphic from Fractus Learning, shown below:   Graphic showing Bloom’s Taxonomy verbs and descriptions.  Creative Commons, from Fractus Learning.  One of the reasons why I believe that Geographic Information Systems (GIS) is such a powerful instructional tool is because it ties in so beautifully with Bloom’s taxonomy and moreover, with sound educational practice.  By “sound educational practice” I refer to the core tenets of what drew all of us to education in the first place—teaching and learning that truly excites students about their communities and their world, being curious, discovering, analyzing, investigating, collaborating, and communicating.  Using GIS engages students in using real-world tools to solve real-world problems.  In so doing, students act as scientists in engaging ways that build data and media literacy.  Using GIS builds spatial thinking, as students use and create 2D and 3D maps, infographics, dashboards, and other visualizations.  As they collect data in the field, they become familiar with data collection tools (such as Survey123) and instruments (such as smartphone apps and water quality, weather, and other probes and other digital environmental sensors), along with field methods and data quality issues.  As students consider the atmosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and anthrosphere, using GIS encourages “systems thinking” and a holistic view of the Earth.  Indeed, one of the Bloom’s objectives is synthesis—the putting together of elements and parts so as to form a whole.”  The “S” in GIS is, after all, “System.”  It is a system of software, hardware, tools, procedures, and people.  Using GIS also fosters awareness of the interconnectedness of such systems and the complexity of these interactions.  Using GIS also builds critical thinking—about the data that they are using (“Who created that data?  At what scale?  How often is it updated?  Can I trust the data?”), about how the methods that students choose can influence the research results (“intersect vs. union” for example), and about the tools themselves (“Do these tools meet my needs?”).  All of the verbs in the above graphic—from stating to defending to concluding and dozens more, are ones I have used countless times in GIS instruction over the years.  Using these terms is not forced in GIS instruction—rather, using them is a natural consequence of using these tools. Indeed, many of these terms, such as select, classify, analyze, summarize, and many more, are built into the GIS tools and are the actual names for these tools!  The aim in using GIS is typically not to learn more about GIS.  Using GIS in education is almost always a means to higher goals—the ultimate goal is not to “learn more GIS”.  Certainly, GIS skills are in high demand in the workplace. Rather, the higher goals are the ones I mentioned above, such as critical and spatial thinking, with an aim for deeper understanding of an issue or a theme.  Even in GIS programs in a university, learning GIS is aimed at understanding GIScience in a deeper way.  When students use GIS, they gain skills, content knowledge, and the geographic perspective on a typical lesson’s theme, whether it is plate tectonics or renewable energy or ocean currents or a historical battle.  I explain what I believe to be a three-legged stool of geoliteracy and why it matters, here.  As my colleague Charlie Fitzpatrick has written, GIS is and always has been a “thinker’s tool.”  It was created during the 1960s to be a toolset for solving problems, and this remains its focus today.  Professionals use GIS daily to solve problems in human health, supply chain management, transportation, energy, land use, and in hundreds of other sectors of society.  In education, students from primary school to university level use GIS to solve problems in biology, environmental science, earth science, geography, mathematics, history, data science, computer science, business, and in many other subjects.  They make keen use of the geographic inquiry model:  They ask geographic questions, gather data from a wide variety of sources, scales, and formats (tables, maps, satellite imagery, ground photographs, point clouds, and more, including their own collected data), assess the data quality, analyze patterns, relationships, and trends using GIS tools on that data, make recommendations, and present their results graphically and orally using story maps, other web mapping applications, videos, and other presentation tools.  This leads to additional questions and the cycle continues. Let me use a fundamental activity that is frequently taught using GIS at multiple levels of education and in geography and science courses and show how it is anchored to Bloom’s Taxonomy—teaching about plate tectonics through GIS.   You could open this map in ArcGIS Online to see what I am referring to, or go through this lesson in Teach With GIS or this Learn Path with geoinquiries using plate tectonics data. Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs Example from teaching plate tectonics with GIS Knowledge Learn about faults, the zones underneath the Earth’s surface, continental vs. oceanic crust, types of plate boundaries such as transform, converging, and diverging, types and heights of volcanoes, and the magnitude and depth of earthquake.  Learn these terms, what they mean, and be able to use them in a sentence.  Point to them and refer to them in an interactive ArcGIS 2D map or 3D scene, seeing where these features are located, and the underlying processes that are occurring.  Use cardinal directions (north, northeast, etc.) and other spatial terms (adjacent to, clustered, dispersed, linear, etc.) in describing the mapped data. Comprehension Change the symbology and the classification method of the earthquake and plate boundary map layers to visualize the map layers in different ways.  Interpret the earthquake, volcanic activity, and plate data to determine how many earthquakes typically occur each month, the pattern of the earthquakes by magnitude and depth, and how many have occurred within 10 km of a heavily populated coastal area, or within 250 km from a plate boundary.  Application Determine how many earthquakes have occurred over the past 10 years within 100 km of your own city.  Consider soil types and building construction materials used, and how these influence potential damage from a major earthquake on the types of buildings in your community.  Extrapolate plate movement data to determine where the Hawaiian Island chain will be in 10,000 years.  Assess continental vs. oceanic earthquakes and apply this knowledge to earthquakes in each scenario. Analysis Analyze the relationship between frequency, depth, and magnitude of earthquakes to converging vs divergent boundaries.  Measure the offset from the Nazca-South American plate boundary to the Andes Mountains, and investigate the reasons for the offset.  Open and sort the data tables behind the map layers to determine the largest and deepest earthquakes that have occurred over the past 30 days.  Measure the distance from your community to these earthquake, and the distance from these earthquakes to the nearest plate boundary.  Investigate specific earthquake events such as Peru 1960, Alaska 1964, Indonesia 2004, and Japan 2011, damage, and resulting policy changes. Synthesis Consider population density, earthquake and volcanic activity, proximity to coasts, construction materials, soil types, and other variables to understand risk and vulnerability posed by plate tectonic-related natural hazards around the world.  Create a presentation about earthquake risk around the world and in your own city using maps and applications such as story maps and spatial data, and present your results visually and orally to your instructor and peers. Evaluation Compare the ocean floor base map to the plate boundaries layer and assess the spatial differences between the two, consider the reasons for the differences, and discuss the implications.  Make recommendations on how to build resilience in cities and among individuals and households in the face of increasing population and continued Earth dynamism.   As I hope the above details communicate, despite the tendency by some to discount or give short-shrift to the “lower order thinking skills” and pay more attention to the higher order thinking skills at the expense of the “lower”, using GIS requires all of them.  Instructors and students move from knowledge to evaluation and back again, frequently, during their use of GIS.  I believe each component plays a key role in the inherent nature of teaching and learning with GIS—that it is interactive, emulating real scientific investigation.  The components are not linear in that one can ignore knowledge and comprehension once one is working in the analysis and synthesis zones.   In the above example, when students are exploring the notion of resiliency in their evaluations, they reach back to knowledge and comprehension of this term and its implications.  When they are analyzing data, they reach back to application, as they create new maps and visualize the existing map layers in new ways.  There are many ways in which GIS—even the above plate tectonics lesson, can be taught, but one thing is clear—using GIS is not “memorize these terms and concepts, fill out this worksheet, and prepare for the exam”.  Exams and worksheets have their place, but teaching with GIS is not linear, it is multi-directional.  This implies that choices can and must be made in GIS-based instruction, which is both wonderful and challenging at the same time.  To help educators meet these challenges are one reason my colleagues and I write essays in this education blog on GeoNet, and why we and others create resources such as GeoInquiries and ArcGIS Learn lessons.    Space doesn’t allow me to go into the many other uses of Bloom’s Taxonomy, but I will encourage the reader to consider the following:  (1)  Use Bloom’s Taxonomy’s framework to help plan and deliver appropriate instruction, design valid assessment tasks and strategies, and frame course goals when using GIS.  (2) Use the revision of Bloom’s Taxonomy with the title A Taxonomy for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (Anderson, Krathwohl, et al. 2001)  as an additional guide.  This title and the verbs used nudges people away from the notion of static educational objectives and toward a more dynamic environment.   The revision includes a cognitive process dimension and a knowledge dimension.  The cognitive process dimension represents a continuum of increasing cognitive complexity.  A set of  “action words” describe the cognitive processes by which thinkers encounter and work with knowledge.  The six cognitive processes of remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate, and create are all inherent to what happens when students use GIS to investigate their world.    Visualizing Bloom’s Taxonomy, Creative Commons, from Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. These cognitive processes can be effectively taught using a myriad of GIS based activities; selected examples are indicated below: Cognitive Process Example through GIS Instruction Remember Define terms such as variables (median age, land cover, migration), spatial analysis tools (enrichment, intersect), spatial patterns (hierarchy, flow, adjacency), or earth features (continent, ocean current, biome).   Understand and define concepts (fronts and weather, urbanization, business site selection) and illustrate with real-world examples. Understand Create maps using different classification methods and compare results for median income in a region; describe the relationships between lifestyles and health variables; explain how patterns of commuting have changed over the decades and their impact on urban patterns and city size; explain the relationship between flood control, land use, and flood hazards. Apply Use symbolization, classification, and data skills to make a new map for a different demographic variable or in a different region; create a drive time, walk time, and distance map to a school campus and compare the results; interpret the relationship between extreme high and low temperatures at different times of the year to proximity to coasts, elevation, and latitude. Analyze Compare and contrast different physical or cultural regions; question the difference that imagery at a different scale would make on your assessment of land use change; organize your story maps on 3 types of wildlife in a grassland steppe region into a collection.    Evaluate Create a plan for urban greenways in your community; defend a policy on tree planting in a city and where trees are needed while considering material and labor costs; consider ethical and communications implications of your choice of variables, colors, and map projections in your final visualizations on the routes of historical Antarctic explorers; critiquing advantages and challenges in using the wildfire perimeter data set you chose. Create Design, create, and give a presentation using multimedia web-GIS maps and web mapping applications on proposed wind power facility; investigate the feasibility of bike-sharing program and locations in your community. The second part of the revised Bloom’s is the knowledge dimension, representing a range from concrete (factual) to abstract (metacognitive).  In this revised taxonomy, knowledge is at the basis of these cognitive processes, but the types of knowledge here includes factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge, procedural knowledge, and metacognitive knowledge.   Applying the plate tectonics example again to these types of knowledge: Type of Knowledge GIS instructional example in plate tectonics activity Factual Understanding terms such as plate, continent, ocean, fault line, crust, volcano, earthquake, depth, magnitude, and others. Understanding relative sizes of oceans, continents, and countries and where they are located on the planet.  Knowledge about a subset of major volcanic eruptions and earthquakes of the past. Conceptual Understand types of plate boundaries and volcanoes.  Understand the theory of plate tectonics including seafloor spreading and subduction zones.  Understand the interrelationship between plates, faults, volcanoes, and earthquakes.  Explain how different variables (conductivity, pH, etc.) affect overall water quality of a river or lake. Procedural Learn how to perform specific tasks in a GIS—run a proximity buffer, create a map of statistically significant hot spots, add a summary field to a table, create and share a web mapping application.   Learn how to create a crowdsourced field survey, collect data into it, and map the results.  Understand the temporal and spatial distribution of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.   Design an efficient GIS-based project workflow. Metacognitive Apply strategic knowledge about how to approach a problem using GIS, spatial data, and the spatial perspective.  Reflect on what you learned and the value of the spatial perspective and tools on this newfound knowledge.  Identify strategies for mapping change over space and time.  Predict the impact of current agricultural land use in Saudi Arabia over the next generation.   Deconstruct one’s biases in analyzing certain variables or using certain colors on maps.   Consider the following:  Get the students involved in their own learning by self-reflecting about it.  Ask students to create a list of verbs indicating the things they have done when they have been working with a specific GIS-based activity (or, the activities of the current semester), and then give a short sentence describing each verb.   Sample list of verbs that are intertwined with using GIS in instruction. Also use Bloom's Taxonomy to connect it to the tasks that GIS professionals do on the job.  Ask students to watch selected videos (such as those in our Virtual Job Shadow series, here:  https://www.virtualjobshadow.com/partners/esri/ or the people I have interviewed in the Geoinspirations column in Directions Magazine, here:  https://www.directionsmag.com/playlist/6651).  Then, ask students to identify 10 tasks that their selected person(s) in the videos and interviews do routinely day to say, along with the verbs associated with Bloom's cognitive processes).   This I believe would help students see that the tasks they are working through in your courses are actually used in the workplace!  It might also help students focus their own career pathway to the tasks that they find most rewarding.   In addition, for those of you already in the GIS workplace, see one of the comments to this essay, below.  Share with us the tasks and domains that you most frequently use, and consider how you can deepen your own journey in geotechnologies. Finally, I think it is worthwhile to also examine the skills identified as important to GIS professionals, by the researchers at the GeoTech Center. For more information See Iowa State University’s helpful grid of the cognitive processes and the knowledge dimension.  See  Andrew Churches’ thorough Bloom’s guide.    See Larry Ferlazzo’s helpful guide and graphic.   Common Sense Education’s video discusses a digital revision or addition to Bloom in this video.  This chapter by Mary Forehand in Instructional Methods, Strategies, Math, and Technology to Meet the Needs of All Learners provides additional background and reflection. Use these connections to demonstrate the value of teaching with GIS to your colleagues and administrators. Use these connections as a guide for planning your own GIS-based curricular activities and course goals. While the linkages between GIS and Bloom’s have not been extensively discussed, some researchers are beginning to investigate these linkages to help educators incorporate spatial thinking into the classroom.  One reason I created this essay is to spark such a discussion.  I look forward to hearing how you are using Bloom’s in your own instruction and your reactions to this essay. ... View more

What did you do for GIS Day 2020?  I hope you had a spatial time!  Over 1,200 events were registered and hosted all over the world, by universities, schools, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private industry.   GIS Day clearly showed that in our current disrupted, changing world, GIS is more relevant now than ever before.   I was privileged this year to be invited to speak in a number of fascinating virtual events, which I will briefly describe here.  I also would love to hear what you were up to for GIS Day!   I spoke with people in industry and in K-12 education during the multi-day Texas GIS Day event.  One of my favorite things about this event was hearing from innovative teachers, and the student GIS essay contest.  South Dakota State University's GIS Day event featured a career panel where I joined colleagues such as Mark Freund, GIS coordinator for the state of South Dakota, Matt Gerike, Geospatial Program Manager for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Ross Scott from South Dakota Game, Fish, and Parks, and Lauri Sohl, GIS Manager for the City of Sioux Falls.  For the California State University San Bernardino event, my colleagues and I created this GIS definition, trends, and careers video, and we were joined by CSUSB faculty, AAG past President Dave Kaplan, and others.  I was also honored to speak with several HBCU's and Minority Serving Institutions for GIS Day, including innovative faculty from Fayetteville State University and Morgan State University.  At Florida International University's GeoWeek event, I conducted an overview and then a hands-on workshop on connecting 4 components of the ArcGIS platform--maps, story maps, field data gathering via Survey123, and dashboards.  I also presented at the University of the Potomac's GIS Day event which included some fun geospatial games, including a few I have shared in this "ideas for hosting events" essay here.   I was also invited to participate in several international events, including for Bangladesh and India, and this one from the University of Pecs, Hungary, and Esri Italy.  I was also honored to participate on an education panel in the Tribal GIS 2020 conference, in which Jack Dangermond, Esri founder and president, keynoted.  This was not a GIS Day event per se, but happened to fall during the same week; it is an annual event that we have long been honored to support.  At the event's education panel, I spoke about the work we have been doing with tribal colleges and schools in GIS and spatial thinking over the past 25 years. I also sought the community's input on how to tackle the challenges that remain.   Many of these events used ArcGIS Hub as a way of publicizing and managing their events.  Why?  The event organizers found that ArcGIS Hub provided a convenient way for collaboration, hosting resources, and organizing a variety of content and speakers.  ArcGIS Hub as a framework was used for an event that I keynoted, hosted by the GeoTech Center, by the University of California system (below), this Hub from Vassar College highlighting food share mapping, a natural resource inventory, gentrification, and more, and this event from the City of Dallas.   At the GeoTech Center's event, my topic was about data quality, entitled Good Maps, Bad Maps, You Know I've Had my Share), which you can view in this link. The University of North Texas used the ArcGIS Experience Builder, which allowed them to feature their open data services, projects, COVID campus maps, and more.  Let me highlight a few additional events that were wonderful and innovative, such as the three day event from the University of California system, including hands-on workshops, regional and urban GIS, risk assessment, remote sensing, public health, and policy.  Another hub in California, including their GIS Day event but also their campus map layer and much more, is this one from California State University Dominquez Hills.   On the international scene was this event from Alejandro Báscolo and his colleagues at the National Technological University of Tucumán, Argentina.   I also liked the fact that the University of Wyoming's GIS Day event included a "My Favorite App" sharing section. My colleagues on our Esri health team hosted a Celebrating GIS in Health event where they discussed how ArcGIS Community Health Users from different sectors (health systems, health plans, and public health) are using GIS in the health industry.  This event included speakers, a free ArcGIS license raffle, and more, using a Survey123 to gather registration information and to spread the word: https://arcg.is/0iPrvH. Mapping spatial inequity was the theme of the Yale GIS Day event.  The event included lightning talks and keynotes on What We Share in our Common Humanity, and, Leveraging spatial data for examining historic and present environmental injustice, with examples from New Haven.   The above events represent only a few of the many GIS events hosted by innovative GIS users and enthusiasts all across the globe.  I invite you to access the events map on the GIS Day site to investigate more of these.  The resources on the GIS Day site, which will continue to be maintained, include posters, videos, lessons, data sets, and more, and could be useful for students and instructors far into the future. I invite you to make use of them.    What did you do for GIS Day this year?  I welcome your comments, below!  Alternatively, submit the highlights of your event to the story map, here!   And use this same story map to check out what others did this year that are not mentioned above!  --Joseph Kerski    ... View more

An article in Nature magazine about the FAIR guiding principles for scientific data management  by Mark Wilkinson, Michael Dumontier, IJsbrand Jan Aalbersberg, and about 25 other authors I believe has thoughtful implications for us as GIS practitioners:  How should we manage and serve our GIS data?  What should be included in that data?  The FAIR guiding principles-–Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable–-are good ones to keep in mind when setting up sites such as open data portals, ArcGIS Hub sites, and other tools and means to make data available. These four FAIR principles should serve to guide data producers and publishers as they overcome challenges in serving data.  As time advances, the power and ease of use of ArcGIS Hub and other tools diminish the technical challenges.  But the organizational challenges, such as long term support, funding, staffing, gathering stakeholders, and establishing a vision, remain.  The article also seeks to identify the value gained by contemporary, formal scholarly digital publishing.  The authors state that the FAIR principles apply not only to ‘data’ in the conventional sense, but also to the algorithms, tools, and workflows that led to that data. Interesting.  The authors make the claim that all scholarly digital research objects–-from data to analytical pipelines-—benefit from application of these principles, since all components of the research process must be available to ensure transparency, reproducibility, and reusability. All of this makes me re-question some key elements of GIS workflows:  What should we include when we serve data?  Is it only the vectors or rasters and metadata?  Should we also consider including not just the raw data, but our methods as well?   Including the methods will make our research more replicable and, potentially, more widely adopted, and potentially beneficial.  But I'm a realist--I have been publishing for 30 years. I know publishing original research is critically important to many professions.  I have also seen paragraphs I've written that have been used in others' articles and not attributed to me.  Should I be stressed that these paragraphs were copied and I didn't get the credit, or honored that they were deemed valuable by someone else?  What are the implications if someone copies our methods and claims them as their own?  Or should we care so much about ownership nowadays in the face of the very serious community-to-global problems that we face?  So many questions!  But, I think, worthy ones to ask. Of note is the FAIR webinar series (https://www.ands.org.au/working-with-data/the-fair-data-principles/fair-webinar-series) that, while dated, offer additional information as recordings.   FAIR principles. One of my favorite points the authors make is that “Good data management is not a goal in itself, but rather is the key conduit leading to knowledge discovery and innovation, and to subsequent data and knowledge integration and reuse by the community after the data publication process.”  The authors touch on a problem I have encountered in my own GIS work–-that research results are usually published without providing access to data.  Certainly this is understandable when human subjects and other sensitive data are involved, but even then, couldn’t some steps be taken so individual identities are removed?  The authors state that “Partially in response to this, science funders, publishers and governmental agencies are beginning to require data management and stewardship plans for data generated in publicly funded experiments.”  If this were to happen across all disciplines and at many scales, the entire global society would benefit. Imagine the variety and volume of data we could access to address societal issues and problems if this goal of the authors were realized:  “Beyond proper collection, annotation, and archival, data stewardship includes the notion of ‘long-term care’ of valuable digital assets, with the goal that they should be discovered and re-used for downstream investigations, either alone, or in combination with newly generated data.” It’s clear to me that the current publishing and scholarly process is increasingly out of date with what society needs from research, particularly if we are going to solve problems in energy, water, human health, climate, economic inequality, biodiversity, agriculture, and other areas.  A research article is valuable, but the data, the methods, the recommendations, are also increasingly needed.  I salute the authors for nudging the community forward in thinking outside the box. The authors seek to define what good data management actually is, and acknowledge that it is generally left as a decision for the data or repository owner. Therefore, their goal in this article and in the webinar series was to bring “some clarity around the goals and desiderata of good data management and stewardship, and defining simple guideposts to inform those who publish and/or preserve scholarly data, would be of great utility.”  The authors recognize that this isn’t an easy task, because it involves numerous, diverse stakeholders with different interests, and it is intertwined with publishing, credit, data providers, service providers, academics, and others.  But it is worth pursuing.  ... View more

Join me in a live stream from Facebook for GIS Day!  Wednesday 18 November 2020.  Twelve 5 minute blocks featuring music, maps, apps, and more.. how you can learn more about GIS and why it all matters.    https://www.facebook.com/events/1753930484776438  0900       Welcome – What is GIS?  What’s where, why is it there, why should we care?   Holistic and specialized.  Enterprise wide.  What is GIS Day?  Resources there; virtual GIS events.  My series of GIS Helps videos.  A new series of videos focused on the theme of "GIS Helps" that is now online in the following playlist:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZtjGSwC0B4&list=PLiC1i3ejK5vsAraUOjp3wKadPeX0e2ivr Resources to discover more! 0905       My 3 favorite web mapping applications to understand the whys of where.  My 3 favorite mapping tools.   0910    My 3 favorite phone mapping applications to explore the world. 0915       Geo-Songs Break!  Part 1 of 2. 0918       GIS Crossword Puzzle.   5 clues.  GeoNet blog. 0919    Shakespeare and maps! 0920       The best geography and mapping related books I read in 2020 and for all time.  0925       My 5 favorite data sets. 0930       5 everyday and fun examples showing why it is important to pay attention to mapped data quality:  Spatial Reserves.   0935       Geo Quiz:  Name that Place.   5:  Urban rivers, waterfalls, etc.   Show answers.  0940       5 Forces bringing us to a pivotal time in GIS. 0945       5 Key Trends in GIS. 0950       5 Skills Important in your GIS journey. 0954     Key Messages. 0955       Geo-Songs Break!   Part 2 of 2.  0958       Ways to Keep Learning. 1000       End. ... View more