Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

Of all of the educational activities I have created, tested, and used over the years, one in particular seems to be often cited by students as memorable and impactful:  Asking students to create sketch maps of their childhood neighborhood.  In this essay and set of guidelines, I describe this activity with an encouragement for you to use it or your own modification of it in your own instruction.  Why use this activity?  1.  It helps anchor the idea that humans are spatial creatures, bound to time and space, and that our brains contain mental maps of meaningful places in our past.  Our childhood maps are among the most detailed memory maps that we carry with us, of a very large scale, of a treasure trove of information: The route taken to school, your friend's house, or the public library, the mean (or nice) neighbor's dog, the tree you sat below and read next to, or climbed, even down to the cracks in your own driveway or sidewalk.  An interesting discussion as well is comparing spatial memories of those who grew up in a single residence or town vs. those students who moved multiple times in childhood.  2.  It provides an excellent source for discussion in class--this activity is engaging, Note below that I include the requirement: "Comment on the maps from at least 2 other students in the class", although this is hardly necessary:  The students are naturally curious about each others' maps, and usually comment on far more than 2 other maps. 3.  As I include the activity toward the beginning of the semester (or in a one day workshop, toward the beginning of the workshop), it greatly assists in my goal of creating community in class, where they get to know each other, and if/when they get stuck in their GIS activities, they can rely on each other, and not just me as their instructor, to get "unstuck."   Often, students build place connections with each other, "Oh, I grew up a short distance away from where you did!", or "we had a community swimming pool as well!".    4.  It provides an excellent bridge to GIS and geographic themes and concepts:  At what scale did you draw your map?  What detail did you include?  How did you symbolize trees, houses, and other features?  Did you use single or double lines for streets?  Is north at the top of your map, or not?  What balance did you choose between human-built and natural features?  What tools did you use for your map--paint, colored pencils, pens, or something else?  Did you include a legend, a scale bar, a title, or other elements?   How can maps tell stories?  What can be a useful supplement to the map--videos, photos, narrative, audio?  The latter question feeds directly into an exercise in story mapping later in the course or workshop.  5.  The activity can be used in face-to-face settings as well as in online courses.  The activity can be used inside and outside of GIS courses (such as in mapping, geography, graphic design, social studies, and others).  It can even be used as an icebreaker activity for a keynote address or a presentation.  It can be used from primary school to higher education.  In fact, I've used this activity with students aged 8 to literally 80 (the latter, in the enrichment lifelong learning courses I teach for the general public). Sample maps that students have drawn for this activity; all of the following are from undergraduates. The above map includes a key and some interesting use of shading, patterns, and color. I like the clarity of drawing on the above map, the very large scale, and the goat in the pasture! The above map reminds me of all the song lyrics and poems that have been drawn on napkins and ordinary scraps of paper over the centuries! The use of a straightedge on the above map adds quite a bit of character, and I wonder if the student had a keen sense of where due north was, and tilted the streets accordingly.  This student's unique handwriting added consistency and vibrancy to the map; also interesting to note that they chose to feature stores and prominent buildings while a simple "residential area" suited the student just fine.  The double-lined streets on the above map, labeling the streets in the middle of the lines, but not overlabeling, and the fact that not all text and buildings faced "up" was intriguing here.  It is interesting to compare what some students included, and what they omitted, and how much or little time they spent with the mapping activity, all lends variety and much discussion to this activity.  The above map I found interesting for the orientation of the houses relative to the street.  That this map was of a smaller scale than most others, but still with filling in some carefully chosen detail are intriguing in the above example. --------------------------- The readings leading up to this activity, followed by the activity itself, are given below as are lifted from the most current version of one of my online courses.  However, you could also use these readings and discussion in a short workshop as well.    Let us begin this week's readings by discussing some core fundamental principles--space, place, and time, then covering scale, map projections, geoids, coordinate systems, and a few other topics.  All of this impacts the way that maps are perceived, how the world can be represented, and thus impacts your work as someone who will use GIS day to day on the job.    Space, Place, and Time.  As you know by now in this course, GIS has value because its data is based on real locations and is concerned with the spatial patterns of those locations. These elements are fundamental to the science of geography (though there are certainly spatial elements in engineering, history, mathematics, design, and many other fields). You may have heard that history is concerned with chronos, time, while geography is concerned with choros, space. Note the difference in these two words! While this has an element of truth, it is not the complete story. History is not the only field concerned with time. Because the way we organize spaces, and the characteristics of spaces, change over time, geography and GIS and cartography are also concerned with time. When cartographic analysts study spaces, they consider how those spaces came to be, how they have changed since then, and what that space will be like in the future. Each of these space considerations has to do with time.  For example, when GIS analysts examine the confluence of two rivers, they think about the underlying rock strata and soil in that spot but also in the surrounding region, the precipitation pattern, and the topography that brought together the two rivers in this location. They examine how past floods may have contributed to the fertility of the soil or the formation of floodplains. They examine how the river junction gave rise to trade, to a source of water for agriculture or grazing and the rise of a town or city on this location. They consider the subsequent impact on land use, water quality, the diversion of the river’s tributaries into reservoirs or ditches for irrigation or for drainage, depending on whether the climate is dry (irrigation) or wet (drainage). They examine current erosion rates and shapes of past river meanders, the biodiversity of the river’s riparian zone, and how the river is connected to migration of birds or animals.   As you will explore in this course, there are many ways you can model time with GIS tools--filtering your data for specific time periods, setting up arithmetic expressions, through animations, and space time cubes, just to name a few.    Space, Time, and Place.  Furthermore, mapping is also concerned about place, not just space.  Space in geographic terms is the extent of an area. While it could be in a relative sense, such as a trade area, or an absolute sense, such as a specific wetland in Cook County Illinois. Space is generally objective, or divorced from values.  Place, on the other hand, is a bigger concept. Place is bound up in the attributes and values that is associated with a location. Therefore, place is much more of a human-derived concept than is space. Think about the place in which you grew up. You most likely still have a strong attachment to it today. You may not have visited that location in decades, but you can describe a vacant lot, a park, a pond, a trail, a city block, or another spot there in great detail (that is, at a large scale).  Not all of the memories are likely to be pleasant, either—the house with the mean dog that chased you on your bicycle, or the place where you sprained your ankle, are all bound up in your connection to place.    You will be asked, in the hands-on activity component of this week, to sketch a map of a place of memory that is important to you.   That place that you are thinking about and connected with is far more than the trees, landforms, buildings, and other natural or human-built objects on the landscape. It has meaning because of the memories and experiences that you had there. Attachment to place is one of the fundamental human experiences; it is what geographer Dr Yi-Fu Tuan termed topophilia (Links to an external site.) —love of, or attachment to, place.    For this course, think about:  How can you convey not just locations or features, but -- the sense of place in maps?   Collections of places that are similar in some ways can be thought of as a region.  A cultural region could be one with a certain housing type, or certain consumer preferences, or language, and a physical region could be one with a specific soil type, a combination of climate and vegetation (such as an ecoregion) or landforms.  Again, think about how you can convey a region in cartography.  Also, how can you convey the sense that regions often have, such as in the case of cultural regions or ecoregions, indistinct or "fuzzy" boundaries?   Should those boundaries be shown as a "zone" and if so, how?  We will examine this more in the uncertainty section of this course.      This week, you will have plenty of opportunities to develop skills with selected hands-on activities.  You will sketch a memory map, explore a variety of ways to map change over space and time, examining a wide variety of data (imagery, bird flu, and more) in the process, and all the while expand your cartographic skills.  Memory Maps.  In your readings you learned about space and place in the context of GIS and cartography and were asked to think about a place that is special to you.  These "memory maps" are a fundamental part of our humanity--we are bound to spaces as much as we are bound to other important things in life, such as people and music.  The place ideally is a location, neighborhood, street, etc., ideally, where you lived as a child, but feel free to think about a place that is special to you as an adult.   Was it the route you walked to school on?  The vacant lot where you played?  The wetland where you explored?  For me growing up in western Colorado, USA, exploring the canals when they were drained in the winter, and the "washes" or arroyos cutting through the landscape were most special to me, including one that was not far from my house.  I probably also could draw every detail of the park I walked through on the way home from middle school.  Each day of the week, I walked a different way through the park.  If it had snowed and the snow stayed long, I had great fun looking at my previous tracks.     Sketch the place you are thinking about on paper, choosing whatever scale, content, and symbols you would like, using whatever pencils or other physical items you might have available to you.  Please don't use any computer tools such as Illustrator, Canvas, or a GIS!  The idea is to make a hand-drawn map.  Don't worry about making the most wonderful looking hand-drawn map but rather, think about while you are doing so,  (1) space vs place; (2) what is easy to show on maps, and what things are more difficult to show on maps; (your feelings, the way the sun struck the rocks or trees, and so on).  (3) the symbology, scale, and other fundamental map elements.  (4)  What is easier to draw with a GIS, and what is easier to draw in hand-drawn mode with markers or pencils.  On your map, include space for a few sentences that illustrate where your place is and why it matters to you so that this information shows up when you take a picture of it.  Take a picture of your map; make sure you name the picture appropriately so your instructor can determine which photo is yours, and submit it to this week's Dropbox.   Comment on the maps from at least 2 other students in the class. Extensions to GIS The discussion points I mentioned above provide several key bridge points to GIS.  Another way to build bridges to GIS would be to geocode each of the student scanned hand-drawn maps to their childhood locations.  If you are working with K-12 students, but even with university students, make sure their names are not attached to the maps and that their own house address is not shown on the maps, for privacy reasons.  The resulting overview map could contain popups with each popup containing the scanned image.  The overall pattern of childhood locations where students are from also provides a spatial point of discussion.  Another way of incorporating GIS into this activity would be to create a survey in ArcGIS Survey123, share it with students, and ask students to fill out the survey with the town in which they grew up, and attach their sketch map to their survey response.  The resulting map is automatically generated from the survey and updates every time students input new data.  You could even keep the same survey for the following semester and over time, the results become richer with information.  -------------------- Do you include this activity or a variation of it in your own courses?  How do you structure such an activity?  If you have not included such an activity in the past, are you encouraged to do so in the future?  I look forward to hearing your reactions. --Joseph Kerski   ... 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I recently wrote an essay about 20 ingredients important for a vibrant and sustainable geospatial program in higher education. I am following that with this essay that you are reading now with 20 ingredients that are important for successful geospatial integration in schools.   This list was not created in a vacuum, but rather, it results from the work I have been engaged in with colleagues during the past several decades in supporting and fostering geospatial programs in schools around the world, I offer these 20 ingredients important for successful implementation of geotechnologies for your consideration.  In fact, the Esri schools program goes back to 1992:  My colleagues and I have a long-term commitment to working closely with schools, doing whatever we can to help them be successful with geotechnologies (GIS, remote sensing, and GPS/GNSS).  As with any "top" list, these ingredients are open to debate.  Therefore, I welcome your comments; the challenges you have faced in building and sustaining your own geospatial initiatives, and your own recommended best practices. Why is such a list and an essay needed?   I and my colleagues frequently write about the rapid evolution of GIS, education, and society in this space and in other venues such as LinkedIn, and for good reason:  These changes affect why, when, and how GIS technologies and spatial thinking can and should be taught and used in education.  We cannot 'do what we've always done' and expect GIS and spatial thinking to thrive in schools if we are not actively considering innovative ways to teach these in the future.  And if you are new to GIS, this is the perfect time to begin, for the reasons I mention here in this essay about the benefits of teaching with GIS but in short, using GIS has never been more engaging, doable, or relevant to teaching, learning, and problem solving for your students in their future workplaces.  First, I would like to remind the reader as I did in the higher education essay that there are higher, nobler goals to teaching and learning with GIS, as seen in the graphic below:   This list of 5 benefits, too, is open to debate, and indeed, they are not the only ones. In fact, in this essay, I describe 10 educational benefits that GIS offers. But whether the list includes 5 or 10 items, the key takeaway is that learning GIS software and tools is one important benefit, one which certainly will help the learner obtain their career goals.  However, learning GIS tools is a side benefit to the higher, nobler goals listed above and in the essay (the higher goals include community connections and content knowledge).  The tools change; they continually evolve:  Thus, keep focused on the most important tool of all--your brain!  GIS has always been a thinker's tool.  Progress and adoption of GIS has been occurring in primary and secondary institutions for many years.  The advent of web based GIS, with no software to install, along with streaming data services, field data collection tools such as ArcGIS Survey123, and web mapping applications such as story maps, greatly increased the rate of adoption from 2010 onwards.  GIS is being used across a wide spectrum of schools from public to private, rural to urban communities, and small to large school districts.  It is also taught by home school groups.  GIS in schools is also a global phenomenon, not confined to just the USA.  It happens wherever educators seek to use an engaging, inquiry-driven set of tools and methods in instruction.  GIS has also been adopted by many after school programs such as Scouts, 4H, geotech clubs, and others.   Success stories abound, which you can examine for encouragement and ideas, such as Roxana Ayala's story here and a wildfires-and-the-unhoused story here.  Most GIS use in schools is as an instructional tool, approach, and source for instructional content, in a variety of disciplines, such as geography, mathematics, history, science, language arts, and others.  Educators here primarily are teaching with GIS.  But there are some places and schools where teachers are teaching about GIS--that is, in named GIS courses, including in the EAST program in Arkansas, the Geospatial Semester in Virginia, and in other places, such as at Windsor High School in my own state of Colorado, where an instructor turned an advanced Geography course into a GIS course over 15 years ago. Before offering this list of 20 ingredients or recommendations, the reader needs to recognize that there is no single pathway for schools to embrace GIS.   Each school needs to carefully consider their mission, objectives, where they want to be in the next decade and beyond, their capacity, their community, their student body, their workforce needs, their existing strengths, and much more.  Indeed, as I have worked with many schools over these past many years, they have been innovating with GIS in many ways.  The best pathway for your campus might not be the same pathway for others.  I also want to remind the reader who is considering becoming involved in GIS education, or is already involved, that they need to spend most of their time listening.  I have had the honor of visiting hundreds of schools over the course of my career, both while at USGS and while at Esri, and I spend a lot of time listening to needs, challenges, concerns, and visions of educators.  I encourage you that if you do the same, your advice will be more relevant and valuable to the busy educators and administrators with whom you are working.  Lastly, this is a rapid time of change for educational institutions, for society, and for all technologies including geotechnologies.  These changes can be stressful for faculty and entire institutions, but they can also bring about innovation, as I recently wrote about in this essay on this Esri Education community space.   The 20 Ingredients The following are my 20 ingredients and recommendations that I believe are important for a vibrant and sustainable schools program, for your consideration.  You may already be engaged in many of these, and if so, share with others!  I do hope that this is helpful as you chart your pathway forward.  Start with what I consider to be 10 key strategies for teaching with GIS, here.  These include making your GIS-based instruction holistic, focused, multi-scale, varied, interesting, and visionary.  Use some new tools such as 3D visualization and artificial intelligence, and some fascinating new data sets such as the 3D buildings data, the 90 million iNaturalist observations, or the Mars 3D viewer!    A chief challenge in any geospatial initiative or focus in schools is articulating its value to faculty so that the faculty will be supported by their administrators and colleagues.  I used to work at USGS so I am going to use an analogy of a core sample of conglomerate taken from the ground:  In such a sample, think of the cobbles and stones as established subjects that everyone recognizes and understands--biology, mathematics, geography, history, economics, and so on.  Geospatial technology and spatial thinking are like the sand and soil in that sample:  If you try to pick up the sand or soil, it flows through your fingers.  The analogy is that geospatial tools and perspectives are not well understood, but they are important:  In the conglomerate, the soil is essential to bind the whole thing together:  In education, spatial thinking and analyzing change over space and time can serve as a bridge to bind disciplines together.  It can bring teachers and students into the same room, or a field experience, for interdisciplinary projects, which many researchers and teachers feel is important to 21st Century education.  Building awareness of the value of spatial, holistic, and critical thinking to education is important.  All faculty want to teach in engaging, meaningful ways that gives students tangible life and career skills; they want their students to care, and they want their students to want to be lifelong learners.  Demonstrating that these objectives can be achieved, and that these skills can be effectively and engagingly taught using an inquiry-driven toolset such as GIS, is a task that every educator interested in using GIS must be able to tackle.  We have no shortage of resources to help those educators articulate this message.         If you are working with a school as an advisor, a parent, a geomentor, or if you are a teacher aiding your teacher colleagues in their use of GIS, focus on what educators care about: Student achievement, student engagement, community connections, world issues, skill-building, problem solving, critical thinking, achievement.   Build from these discussions, rather than starting with GIS, per se.  Start with asking teachers, “What are you teaching and where in the curriculum are students not engaged or where are you using outdated and static maps or other resources you are dissatisfied with? Then focus on how GIS could enhance those parts of the curriculum and then >>> actively listening! …  Instead of saying to a school, “you need to use GIS in all of your lessons….” (which won’t resonate with anyone!). I wish to assure you educators that you don't have to be GIS experts to use it effectively: Just like with other (most?) technologies, students will grasp some GIS techniques more rapidly than you do. It is OK! Your role as educator is still critical: You are framing the inquiry. Another note that I hope is reassuring is that "Using a professional tool in education is a challenge:  Teaching is hard.  Learning is hard!  Don't feel that you need to grasp all of a technology (whether GIS or anything else) to use it successfully.   In fact, I argue here that if you or your students get comfy with just 10 skills, you and they will have superpowers. Schools will get the whole school bundle with their ArcGIS Online organization account, including ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro and other software access.  Most schools globally focus on ArcGIS Online rather than ArcGIS Pro:  The online tools provide capabilities for most needs.  Plus, ArcGIS Online has fewer technological challenges--it works on any device, is connected to vast data sets and lesson libraries.  With schools, the focus has largely been not “teaching GIS” but rather “how can I use GIS to teach ____” (science, social studies, history, math, data science, and other disciplines).   In other words, GIS is seen as an instructional approach and set of tools in an established discipline.   But I submit that I would like to see more GIS courses in secondary schools as we saw with the CAD labs that were common especially in the 1990s.  When we see a map or satellite image, we usually want to first look at our own neighborhood: Therefore, start with students' own school neighborhood and ask questions such as, “where has the nearest earthquake, tornado, or typhoon occurred over the past 60 years?  What is the median age by neighborhood in my city?  The median income?  Why do those patterns exist?” Include examining satellite images of students' own school and neighborhood as a starting point for inquiry and discussion. Start with links of data and maps that I recently taught for educators in a professional development institute, using the following syllabus:   https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/02/19/a-model-professional-development-workshop-for-educators  Then dig deeper with apps listed here,  on  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2017/07/26/10-things-you-can-do-with-arcgis-online-story-maps-apps-and-spatial-analysis-workshops    These are 10 things you can do with ArcGIS Online – using the migration app, the wayback imagery, historical topographic maps, the water balance app, and others, including the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World apps:  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/52ae78c57b3a4924bff9fd490d76ee10.  Anchor each investigation in a spatial thinking discussion of what’s where, why is it there, why should we care?   Many educators start with resources and activities that do not require a sign in to ArcGIS Online.  You could use the wonderful new Esri NatGeo MapMaker or many of the one-page standards-based GeoInquiries lessons for established subjects such as AP Human Geography, Earth Science, or World History, for example.  See short activities listed in  https://esriurl.com/k12gis   More activities are here:   https://teach-with-gis-learngis.hub.arcgis.com/  and in the Learn library:   https://learn.arcgis.com     Show a few videos that I have listed here -  https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/02/28/videos-to-get-students-excited-and-knowledgeable-about-geography  Many educators start with:  Lessons and maps on  www.esri.com/geoinquiries    These all use ArcGIS Online for the maps and spatial analysis.  Start with the Level 1 exercises:  No sign in is required!  Use this model or other models and make it local to your country and region! When students / faculty want to dig deeper, continue with GeoInquiries and move to Level 2, where analysis and saving is now possible and a sign in is required.  One of my colleagues and I completed writing this new course for educators where you dig into the Living Atlas of the World – which you might use a bit of:   https://www.esri.com/training/catalog/5dc1b74ce4212b48e187e837/teaching-with-arcgis-living-atlas-of-the-world/   My colleagues and I have created many short activities (such as in Arcade, joining data to living atlas, how to create a story map, and other items) in our education space and blog on Esri Community that the essay you are reading right now is a part of:    https://community.esri.com/community/education/pages/education-blog      Some educators start with a project in mind:   Use the GeoProjects as examples:   Field mapping of trees, trash, pets, ozone, and many more.  GIS and society:  A resource to get students thinking critically about data is our collection of essays and teachable moments on   https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com    Examine the Google Maps in China, the erroneous map and data points including the 3200 degree temperature reading in Texas, the ethics of mapping, and location privacy. among others. These essays are designed to be short and implementable as conversation starters.  Maps are very useful, very powerful, but they need to be consumed and created thoughtfully and critically:  Don’t just “accept” every map you see! Start students down the coding pathway by building expressions in ArcGIS Online: Teenagers / total pop of that enumeration district and divide the result by 100 for the percentage.  This is powerful yet simple to do and with meaningful math connections (STEM in action!).   See some of my examples here:   https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/using-custom-expressions-in-arcgis-online/ba-p/884516   and on spatial joins, here:   https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/2-short-activities-that-illustrate-how-to-join/ba-p/884947  Then for deeper dives: Use ArcGIS Notebooks or some Python via  https://developers.arcgis.com  Get into the field! The Survey123 field toolset, one of three primary Esri tools to gather and map data, is easy to set up but powerful: See my example here on walkability:  Students could collect walkability data in their own community, but also, fire hydrants, tree species, traffic or pedestrian counts, weather info, noise (with a phone app), historical homes, and much more:   https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/how-walkable-is-your-community/ba-p/883382.  Consider connecting the field data collection to mapping the results, creating a dashboard, and then wrapping the survey, map, and dashboard into a story map, as I have done with the walkability example. These are straightforward to create and yet are powerful tools for teaching GIS technology and connections to the community.    Build a network with other educators in your school and in your district, and with a network of other educators to build community, confidence, and skills.  Don't feel that you need to do this alone!  One example is the T3G Community, in which there are monthly webinars and much more:  https://community.esri.com/t5/t3g/gh-p/t3g  Consider connecting what you do with GIS in the classroom to what your school could be using GIS for--to keep students safe as they are dropped off or get off the bus (logistics in pedestrian and vehicle access to your school), other campus safety initiatives, campus energy use, and campus infrastructure mapping.  For more, see this page.  Consider using web mapping applications such as story maps and instant apps as the "final product" for your students, serving the role that a term paper or report has served in the past.  To be sure, term papers and reports still have their place, but moving some assignments to these configurable web mapping apps allows students ways to be creative, and serves as an effective platform for them to present their results orally to you as their instructor and to their classmates (for examples, see this essay).  It also can serve an effective assessment tool for you as their instructor as you check their app URLs according to a predefined rubric.  These apps can also serve as components of what eventually will become the students' K-12 digital portfolio. Focus on problem solving and less on ‘how to run specific GIS tools’ in your courses; that is, teaching and modeling 'how to be a lifelong learner.’   Content knowledge matters -- to employers such as Esri and others, and it is the reality of what will be the focus on the standardized tests that students must take:  Therefore, focus on selected content that you and your students can apply GIS to: Understanding natural hazards, equity, population change, ocean currents, river systems, habitat, biomes, supply chain, transportation networks, cultural and physical regions, weather and climate, and other aspects of our world.  s), they won’t be as highly in demand in the workplace.  Resources that can serve as examples here include teaching sustainability, teaching about water with GIS, teaching mathematics using interactive mapping, and teaching about weather using GIS. I look forward to your comments. --Joseph Kerski      ... View more

Resulting from the work I have been engaged in with colleagues during the past several decades in supporting and fostering geospatial programs in colleges and universities around the world, I offer these 20 ingredients important for successful implementation of geotechnologies for your consideration.  As with any "top" list, these ingredients are open to debate.  Therefore, I welcome your comments; the challenges you have faced in building and sustaining your own program, and your own recommended best practices. Why is such a list and an essay needed?   I and my colleagues frequently write about the rapid evolution of GIS, education, and society in this space and in other venues such as LinkedIn, and for good reason:  These changes affect why, when, and how GIS technologies and spatial thinking can and should be taught and used in education.  We cannot 'rest on past laurels' and expect our programs to thrive in higher education if we are not actively considering innovative ways to teach in the future.  First, I would like to remind the reader that there are higher, nobler goals to teaching, learning, and research with GIS, as seen in the graphic below: This list of 5 benefits, too, is open to debate, and indeed, they are not the only ones. In fact, in this essay, I describe 10 educational benefits that GIS offers. But whether the list includes 5 or 10 items, the key takeaway is that learning GIS software and tools is an important benefit, one which certainly will help the learner obtain their career goals.  However, learning GIS tools is a side benefit to the higher, nobler goals listed above and in the essay (the higher goals include community connections and content knowledge).  The tools change; they continually evolve:  Thus, keep focused on the most important tool of all--your brain!  GIS has always been a thinker's tool.  I would also like to propose to the reader that there are 3 facets, or audiences, of education to support and that could benefit by the geographic approach, spatial thinking, and GIS:  Instruction (which affects students and faculty), research (again which affects students and faculty), and administration.  Administration could include campus facilities, recruitment and retention, alumni network management, campus safety, and anything else that helps the campus be safe, energy efficient, well managed, and be able to grow to meet future needs.  I also submit that there should be 2 major areas of education focus:  1.  A deeper understanding of GIS, and 2.  A wider understanding of GIS.   A deeper understanding means thinking about and working with GIS as a platform, rather than just "a set of tools at version 3.x".   GIS in its true "GISsystems" meaning is more relevant than ever before, as it has evolved into a platform that enables people to gather data in the field, or from a spreadsheet, or imported from a business system or statistical package, or from data libraries including streaming data services, or from a UAV, or via other means, map that data (including symbolizing, projecting, filtering, and other tools), analyzing that data (using desktop, cloud, or server arrays of capacity), and communicating that data (via web mapping applications such as story maps, dashboards, or instant apps; customized sites such as from Experience Builder), custom applications from working with Jupyter Notebooks or the SDKs and APIs, and/or any other type of multimedia including infographics and video. Importantly, this deeper understanding includes the essence of why GIS was created in the first place--that it leads to action--smarter, more sustainable, equitable, and resilient decision-making.  What I mean by the "wider" understanding of GIS is that the spatial thinking and analysis that it fosters needs to be embedded throughout the campus--not only in teaching, research, and facilities as I mentioned above, but in multiple disciplines.  In short, GIS is just too valuable with its focus on change over space and time to be confined to geography, environmental science, and GIScience on campus:  It needs to be in civil engineering, mathematics, economics, geo-and-ocean-and-atmospheric sciences, sociology, business, urban planning, data science, language arts, biology, and others. I would argue that GIS and spatial thinking can benefit any discipline concerned about empowering their students to be change agents who are able to frame and solve meaningful problems --which should be every discipline.    Before offering this list of 20 ingredients or recommendations, the reader needs to recognize that there is no single pathway for higher education institutions to embrace GIS.  Colleges and universities need to carefully consider their mission, objectives, where they want to be in the next decade and beyond, their capacity, their student body, their workforce needs, their existing strengths in spatial thinking and technology, and much more.  Indeed, as I have worked with campus over these past many years, campuses have been innovating with GIS in many ways.  The best pathway for your campus might not be the same pathway for others.  I also want to remind the reader who is considering becoming involved in GIS education, or is already involved, that they need to spend most of their time listening.  I have the honor of visiting 35 campuses annually (example here), with over 100 webinars each year to campuses, and I spend a lot of time listening to needs, challenges, concerns, and visions.  I encourage you that if you do the same, your advice will be more relevant and valuable to the busy educators and administrators with whom you are working.  Lastly, this is a rapid time of change for educational institutions, for society, and for all technologies including geotechnologies.  These changes can be stressful for faculty and entire institutions, but they can also bring about innovation, as I recently wrote about in this essay on this Esri Education community space.   The 20 Ingredients The following are my 20 ingredients and recommendations that I believe are important for a vibrant and sustainable higher education geospatial program, for your consideration.  You may already be engaged in many of these, and if so, share with others!  I do hope that this is helpful as you chart your pathway forward.  1.      Build a trusted, long-term partnership among industry (with Esri and others), educational institutions, and educational professional societies.  My colleagues and I, for example, have served on many advisory boards in the past and at present, and are willing to come alongside with you to chart a pathway forward.  Plus, of course, these partnerships can aid in gaining meaningful career pathways for your students, as we are always hiring as GIS continues to grow.  Regularly read our postings in this space and tap into the resources on effectively teaching modern GIS, integrating imagery, including coding, and other topics.   These postings are not created in a vacuum; rather, many result of our long term collaboration with the education community!  2.  Establish and fund a geospatial librarian(s).  Our colleague Professor David Cowen recently published an ebook that I highly recommend, entitled University Libraries as Providers of GIS Services:  A Guide.    On many campuses, this geospatial librarian is tasked with providing GIS training, services, coordination, and data hosting, and even more importantly, assisting faculty and students throughout the campus in their use of GIS.  3.      UAV/Drones are a hot topic right now.  Enrich your Remote Sensing offerings with existing or planned UAV/Drones projects on campus, integrating mapping and analysis, including the services of the equipment and student/faculty expertise to university marketing and media staff, and other programs on campus.   In other words, make sure the campus understands that UAVs are not just pretty pictures or videos, but can be a meaningful component in your GIS program, and help the campus become more sustainable, energy efficient, and aid in infrastructure mapping.  4.      A partnership between research and teaching -> and the Facilities Management, recruitment, alumni network, and other administrative people on campus so they see the value of using GIS as well for recruitment and funding, campus safety, infrastructure mapping, energy efficiency in buildings. This must be be regularly communicated to the provost and others who are regularly in budget/enrollment meetings. 5.      Implement SSO Single Sign On to increase access and to make life easier to students, faculty, and the ArcGIS campus administrator(s). 6.      Establish a campus-wide institutional agreement for Esri technology if the campus does not already have one.  This greatly aids in accessing GIS for all disciplines on campus, enabling the "GIS for everyone" goals mentioned above.  7.      Regularly communicate with other faculty on campus to help them think spatially and use GIS in mathematics, economics, business, sociology, civil engineering, history, humanities, and elsewhere to increase student engagement, career pathways, interdisciplinary research and development opportunities, and to increase spatial, holistic, and critical thinking and problem solving throughout campus. 8.      Consider innovative mixtures of modes of instruction – hybrid, F2F, online – and credential offerings – microcredentials, certificates, degrees, and  GIS courses that meet requirements in natural and social sciences, computer science, etc. 9.      Showcase student work on campus media posts, newsletters, alumni networks, in their data portals, ArcGIS Hub, ArcGIS Online main campus page, and in other ways – along the lines of "a map being worth 1000 pictures."  Provide regular venues for students to present often at meetings, conferences, and other events. 10.   Connect students with meaningful internships and job positions in the region and beyond. Forging partnerships with industry, business partners, government agencies, nonprofits.  Research who in the area that the campus serves already regularly uses ArcGIS and GIS technology day-to-day in their work.   11.  Embedding a rigorous amount of app development and coding into GIS course offerings, as GIS continues to become a cloud-enabled technology platform.  12.   Establish a database connecting those in government, business, and nonproits who need student assistance with for their GIS projects with students on campus willing to do the work.  13.   Make fieldwork a key component of many courses:  Start with short activities on campus that can use easy-to-implement tools such as ArcGIS Survey123. Students could map trees, ADA ramps, pedestrian counts, light poles, bike paths, and more, and could participate in the Esri campus mapping program.  14.   Thread ethics, developing healthy critical perspectives of all data including mapped data, rigorous attention to metadata and “trustworthiness” of data, into courses in meaningful and hands-on ways, as is discussed here  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com . 15.   Use the AI ArcGIS tools and discuss their implications.  These tools are already in many ArcGIS products and will continue to expand as they change GIS in the process. 16.   Regularly assess which student work could be shared (with all caveats about permissions for data and permissions from the student) beyond a single university department within the university and outside the university, so these amazing maps and analysis students create are regularly seen by others.  Encourage students to include their web maps and apps in their digital portfolios as story maps, web maps, and other media.  Focus on students as a vital part of your campus communicators!  Together with you as faculty, students can be a powerful force to build meaningful relationships with organizations in the community and beyond.  17.   Consider ArcGIS Online and SaaS solutions as key components of introductory GIS courses and courses in other disciplines, with the objective of generating student interest with an easier to use approach tool for mapping, analysis, and communication.  Use ArcGIS Pro in intermediate and advanced courses. 18.   Focus on problem solving and less on ‘how to run specific GIS tools’ in many courses; i.e. teaching and modeling 'how to be a lifelong learner.’ 19.   Content knowledge matters to employers such as Esri and others – students need to focus on selected content that they can apply GIS to; in other words, if they “just” know GIS, and not, say, demographics or hydrologic processes or natural hazards or some other field(s), they won’t be as highly in demand in the workplace.  20.   Focus on your campus strengths while considering the community, region, and areas beyond in which you serve, F2F or virtually:   If your strength is water and natural resources management, consider tying that to your future GIS program offerings.  Ditto for other strengths.  When I visited Western Kentucky University, I noted how they tied their GIS program to data science in part for pathways for their students to find employment as data analysts at the nearby Fruit of the Loom headquarters.  When I visited Western Illinois University, I noted how they tied their GIS program to two areas where the campus was already strong:  Agriculture and Meteorology.   While you focus on strengths, however, still keep in mind the holistic 'systems' thinking that GIS needs to foster.  I look forward to your comments. --Joseph Kerski    ... 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An intermediate-level story maps workshop was recently developed and taught by my colleague and I for students, researchers, and faculty in a university, but I share it while trusting that it could be used in other educational settings where people want to further develop their story map skills.  The content of the workshop is delivered in a story map, here:  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f66fcd6222fb45ebb973f6073048d382  Students in upper secondary school or university/college level could use this resource to build their story map and mapping communication skills.  Instructors could use this resource in their own environmental science, geography, history, language arts, GIS, or other course.  I have structured the resource to allow learners some hands-on independent time to work through each of 5 activities, but in each activity, I always provide the final product that can be reviewed. The themes central to this workshop are environmental (watersheds, stream gauges, ecoregions) but the same principles can be applied beyond these topics.  The goals for this content is: Provide skills to create and share your research using ArcGIS StoryMaps. Instill confidence that you can use ArcGIS StoryMaps in your work, in and also beyond SLAWR. 5 key tenets guiding this content are: Story Maps are easy to create, yet are powerful, because (1) Maps have long been effective ways of communicating and collaborating; and (2) Story Maps are part of the interconnected ArcGIS platform. Even in our modern era where anyone can create and share maps, maps are still viewed as authoritative. Take that responsibility seriously, and do your utmost to communicate clearly. A good map inspires your viewers to ask questions. Consider the THINK principle: Is your map True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary, and Kind? Understand each data set you are using in your maps: Data and Society blog:  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com  3 Guidelines as you use these resources: Consider your audience and your goals: This should help direct you to the specific methods, maps, scales, and tools you will use in your Story Maps. Consider Twain's statement, "If I would have had more time, I would have made my story shorter." Be focused. Consider these 9 best practices as you create your Story Maps:  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/429bc4eed5f145109e603c9711a33407      Content: Activity 1:  Create an ArcGIS Online Map and a story map (using watersheds, stream gauges, and basemaps). Activity 2:  Create a sidecar. Activity 3:  Create a StoryMap with Media Actions. Activity 4:  Create an Express Map. Activity 5:  Create a StoryMap briefing. These activities are followed by selected guidelines and lessons, and books to continue your learning.  I hope this resource is useful and I look forward to your feedback. --Joseph Kerski      ... View more