Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTpn5VU8XEM&feature=youtu.be A recording of my recent work with Grade 4 students on #geography via @ArcGISOnline  & @neprisapp  Nepris is a platform that connects classrooms to industry and I had a great experience working with them. --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

Esri supported student work in remote sensing by donating ArcGIS software to each member of the winning team of the NASA DEVELOP video presentation contest.  NASA DEVELOP is a national program that fosters an interdisciplinary research environment where applied science research projects are conducted under the guidance of NASA and partner science advisors. The program is unique in that young professionals lead research projects that focus on using NASA Earth observations to address community concerns and public policy issues.  DEVELOP nurtures future science leaders, and therefore it was a pleasure to support NASA’s efforts in this way and to give students software that will enable them to continue working with GIS and remote sensing data.  We have supported the winners with software donations for many years and truly believe in the value of this program.  This year, the contest included 138 researchers conducting 30 projects across 12 DEVELOP locations.   The virtual posters, featured on IEEE Earthzine, were scored by a 26-member panel based on content clarity (including community concern, project partner, NASA Earth observations, and products created), along with production quality, and professional communication. Parts of the video from the winning project team. The grand prize winner of the DEVELOP VPS video presentation was Say No to the Glow: Using NASA and NOAA’s Suomi NPP Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite to Model Artificial Sky Brightness, by a team of four participants at DEVELOP’s Wise County, Virginia location. Their study focused on this issue: "As more outdoor lighting is installed for safety and development, light pollution has become a growing problem that threatens the quality of life for humans and wildlife. The onset of light pollution in cities and dark sky areas hinders humans from seeing the stars and the Milky Way and has been linked to health disorders in humans and behavioral changes in flora and fauna. Park officials at Grand Teton National Park are concerned about light pollution’s impacts on visitor experience and the environment. Thus, in collaboration with the National Park Service and Wyoming Stargazing, our team created the Skyglow Estimation Toolbox (SET), a Python program that calculates images of artificial sky glow from the vantage point of a viewer on the ground."  See the project's highlights in this video. Mentors and advisors included Dr. L. DeWayne Cecil (NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Science & Technology), Dr. Kenton Ross (NASA Langley Research Center), and Bob VanGundy (The University of Virginia’s College at Wise).   The People’s Choice Award for the most popular video this summer goes to “Tree Health Time Machine,” conducted by three participants at the NASA Ames Research Center DEVELOP node in Moffett Field, California. Congratulations to all who participated in the NASA DEVELOP program.  By engaging in real-world issues with geospatial technologies, you are all winners! ... View more

GIS Day is drawing near!  This year, it will be held on 15 November 2017.  I wanted to share 6 things about GIS Day with you.   What is GIS Day?  The theme of GIS Day is "Discovering the World Through GIS".  GIS Day provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society.  The first formal GIS Day took place in 1999. Esri president and co-founder Jack Dangermond credits Ralph Nader with being the person who inspired the creation of GIS Day. He considered GIS Day a good initiative for people to learn about geography and the uses of GIS. He wanted GIS Day to be a grassroots effort and open to everyone to participate. Host an event at your organization -- school, community or technical college, university, nonprofit organization, library, private company, government agency, or even in a park outside--sometime during or close to GIS Day week (15 November 2017).  Post an announcement about your event on www.gisday.com.  It doesn’t have to be elaborate or something that consumes a lot of your employees’ time, but something where you open a section of your organization to the community, other departments in your organizations, or local schools, universities, community colleges, and clubs, to showcase what GIS is and what you are doing to make a positive difference in the world using GIS.  It doesn’t have to even be on the actual GIS Day; the point is that your event is promoting the benefits GIS brings to communities, your organization, and society.  Or, look at the map on the GIS Day website to find an event near you that you can attend! Find resources on the website www.gisday.com.  Together with a few other good people at Esri, I have made about 75 changes to the website since last GIS Day.  The resources improved on the website include story maps, hands-on activities, videos, strategies on how to work with students and the general public, and much more. Stay tuned for updates of the press releases, and so on. Get some geo-swag!  The first 250 organizations that register for GIS Day this year around the world will receive 1 box of some wonderful GIS-related items that you can use for promoting your event.   Be a GIS champion!  I am seeking organizations who are GIS and GIS Day champions around the world to highlight the good things they are doing, to be featured in articles on GeoNet, ArcNews, and other outlets.  Videos too!  If you know of an organization that should be included, or think that yours should be, please let me know via [email protected].  Questions?  Please email [email protected].  I am on the receiving end of those emails and respond to these on a daily basis.   I hope this is helpful.  Thank you for promoting and supporting GIS Day!   --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

Folks:   A few researchers and I are working on a project about the solar eclipse on 21 August. I thought it would make an excellent opportunity to introduce these researchers to the benefits of using Survey123 and ArcGIS Online.  We are looking for stories of those who witnessed the event.    Feel free to fill it out and circulate it to friends who celebrated the event and to colleagues and students.  But – no obligation.   Here is the survey: https://survey123.arcgis.com/share/ba8c72d4b5b8496788a82a751d623eb8   The lead researcher is: Stanley D. Brunn, Ph.D., Emeritus University of Kentucky email: [email protected] Office Phone: (859) 257-6947 or 2931; Home  266-9737 www.uky.edu/AS/Geography/dept/brunn.htm http://www.uky.edu/AS/GeographyDept/brunn.htm   Joseph  Kerski ... View more

Why teach about migration?  Migration is inherently a geographic issue.  It touches on themes of physical geography (such as climate and landforms), cultural geography (political systems, political instability, political boundaries, demographic trends past and present), sociology (perception, push and pull factors), and many more.  It changes over space and time and is an excellent way to teach spatial concepts and skills. Since the dawn of humankind, migration has always been present; thus, it ever remains a current issue. It is also relevant, causing deep and long-lasting changes in culture, language, urban forms, food, land use, social policy, politics, and much more.  Migration is a global issue that affects our everyday lives. It is also a personal issue, because each of us has a migration story to tell about our own ancestors and families.   One of the maps in the Esri coolmaps gallery enables you to visualize migration data over time and space in a 2D and 3D tool that is a powerful and effective tool, yet it easily works in any standard web browser without any software to install.    The map opens in 3D mode and in Play mode, showing a set of data for selected countries (the UAE, Mexico, China, and Singapore during the 1990s, 2000s, 2010, and 2013.  This selected set provides a good introduction for teaching about the patterns, relationships, and trends in the data.   The time periods are shown below the lower part of the map, with the out-migration and in-migration available for each of the four time periods.  The thickness of the lines coming out from or going to each country selected indicates the amount of migration, and the end points of each line indicates the countries sending people to or receiving people from each country.  For each country, the raw number of out- and in-migrants is indicated, along with the percentage of that country’s total population for each time period.  After viewing the introductory data, use the “pause“ button to stop the Play mode and to select among the list of the world’s countries.  The interactivity--being able to select countries, years--the compelling cartography, and the ability to switch between 2D and 3D modes combines to make this an incredibly useful teaching and research tool.   As with any web GIS tool, always ask the students, “Where did the data come from?  Can you trust it?”  In this case, the data came from the United Nations Trends in International Migrant Stock:  The 2013 Revision is provided by the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs.  Use the “i” button to go to the data’s source.  Encourage the students to investigate the data at its source, and to study how and when it was collected.   According to this data set, how long does a migrant have to live in a country before he or she is no longer considered a “migrant”?   I also encourage you as the instructor to have the students use this map to help them understand migration patterns and number.  As we have written elsewhere in GIS education essays, this could be an excellent supplement to the other sources you use.  For example, ask, “How has Australian immigration changed in amount and in the countries sending migrants to Australia over the past 25 years?  What are some of the social and political changes that are occurring in the country with the changes in migration?  What do you think Australia will be like in 25 years if current trends continue?”  These questions illustrate that the visualizations help students understand geographic phenomena, but can also be used in tandem with other sources – such as journal and newspaper articles, the Census Bureau’s international database, ArcGIS Online maps and story maps from Esri, and other resources that could shed light on the topic, changes in demographics in cities and rural areas, and much more.    One of my favorite things about teaching with maps is that they often confirm some hypotheses and shatter others.  These maps confirm some of what I knew about migration, but they also raised questions and shattered other preconceived notions I had.  For example, I expected the amount of migration to the USA to be high in raw numbers and as a percentage of the USA’s population, and I also expected the in-migration list of countries to include most of the countries around the world.  But I didn’t expect to see such a high percentage of Reunion Island’s population moving to the USA.  Is it part of climate-induced sea-level rise migration, perhaps?  Also, as expected, I found the number of countries that sent people to Somalia to be small, and the number of countries receiving Somalians to be somewhat higher.  But I did not expect to see so much flow from Russia to the UK, and vice versa, nor did I expect to see that Australia currently has the highest percentage of migrants living there of any country, at nearly 50% of the total population.   For a few more ideas on how to teach with this tool, along with a short tutorial on how to use it, see my video.   If this map intrigues you, be sure to explore the other maps in the “Esri coolmaps” gallery.  These maps cover a wide variety of topics from economics to natural hazards and much more.  They rotate in and out periodically, so be sure to check back often.  All of them make effective teaching tools. ... 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GIS Day is drawing near!  This year, it will be held on 15 November 2017.  I wanted to share 6 things about GIS Day with you.   What is GIS Day?  The theme of GIS Day is "Discovering the World Through GIS".  GIS Day provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society.  The first formal GIS Day took place in 1999. Esri president and co-founder Jack Dangermond credits Ralph Nader with being the person who inspired the creation of GIS Day. He considered GIS Day a good initiative for people to learn about geography and the uses of GIS. He wanted GIS Day to be a grassroots effort and open to everyone to participate. Host an event at your organization -- school, community or technical college, university, nonprofit organization, library, private company, government agency, or even in a park outside--sometime during or close to GIS Day week (15 November 2017).  Post an announcement about your event on www.gisday.com.  It doesn’t have to be elaborate or something that consumes a lot of your employees’ time, but something where you open a section of your organization to the community, other departments in your organizations, or local schools, universities, community colleges, and clubs, to showcase what GIS is and what you are doing to make a positive difference in the world using GIS.  It doesn’t have to even be on the actual GIS Day; the point is that your event is promoting the benefits GIS brings to communities, your organization, and society.  Or, look at the map on the GIS Day website to find an event near you that you can attend! Find resources on the website www.gisday.com.  Together with a few other good people at Esri, I have made about 75 changes to the website since last GIS Day.  The resources improved on the website include story maps, hands-on activities, videos, strategies on how to work with students and the general public, and much more. Stay tuned for updates of the press releases, and so on. Get some geo-swag!  The first 250 organizations that register for GIS Day this year around the world will receive 1 box of some wonderful GIS-related items that you can use for promoting your event.   Be a GIS champion!  I am seeking organizations who are GIS and GIS Day champions around the world to highlight the good things they are doing, to be featured in articles on GeoNet, ArcNews, and other outlets.  Videos too!  If you know of an organization that should be included, or think that yours should be, please let me know via [email protected].  Questions?  Please email [email protected].  I am on the receiving end of those emails and respond to these on a daily basis.   I hope this is helpful.  Thank you for promoting and supporting GIS Day! --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

Planet Earth is a noisy place. Some sounds are made objects on, above, or below the natural landscape, and others by things that humans have constructed upon that landscape. Test your knowledge about those sounds by using my new "Sounds of Planet Earth" story map.  This story map contains 100 sounds.  After listening, take the quiz for each sound to test your answer on what each sound is.  Some are easy, and some are intentionally very challenging! Each point on the map is associated with a sound.  You can navigate to each sound through the map interface, or use the navigation bar on the left side of the map to move to each sound in numeric order, or feel free to skip to specific sounds.  One you choose a sound, a player appears, allowing you to listen to it.  A link appears below each sound for you to submit your guess as to what that sound is.  The quiz is optional but is a fun way to engage with the content.  Each sound player shows the interactive web map next to it; for example, Sound #20.  In this case, the map gives a mighty good clue, but in other places around the Earth, the map provides very little additional information! Here is the answer for Sound #20.  In this case, I provide a few answers that would be acceptable, instead of just one answer.   Oops, I just gave the answer for this sound away! How did I create this story map?  1)  I created a spreadsheet with city, state, country fields for each sound.  My goals included wanting to have sounds of nature and sounds created by people, a diversity of different places around the world, to spark spatial thinking, and for them to be interesting. I used my own sounds because I own the content and did not need to seek permission to use them. 2)  In ArcGIS Online, I added this spreadsheet and created a feature service and a map from it.  In the map, I used a custom sound speaker graphic created by a wonderful artist that I know for the point symbol.  Using the technique to access the new basemaps that I discussed here, I used the Modern Antique basemap for this story map for something fun and different.  I used the new functionality with Arcade expressions to label my features.  I shared the map with everyone.   3)  I selected and downloaded 100 of my videos from my YouTube channel and used Camtasia from TechSmith to separate out the audio.  Web utilities exist that allow you to download audio files from YouTube but beware--most of them contain nasty malware and worse.  Camtasia works very well for this task, and is much safer; plus, you can trim your sound clips.  Why did I download the videos in the first place?  Well, I originally wanted to point directly to my YouTube audio from my story map but after several tries, I could not get this method to work.  So, on to Plan B of downloading, stripping out the audio, and uploading, as I explain below.  4)  I converted my 100 sound files from wav format from Camtasia to MP3 using Format Factory.  I have used Format Factory for many years and it works well for conversion of audio and video files into different formats.  5) I uploaded the 100 mp3 sound files to a library on www.archive.org.  Archive.org is the Internet Archive, a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more.  For each file, I provided metadata and made them Creative Commons in licensing so that anyone can now use them. In a spreadsheet (separate from my spreadsheet that I used for my geocoding, above) I recorded the URL for each mp3 file so I could point to the sound file in my story map.   6)  I created 100 quizzes and answer keys using Google Forms.  I then viewed each quiz, recording the URL in my working spreadsheet.   7)  I used the Map Journal story map app to build my sound story map, pointing to the map that I created in step 2.  For each sound, I set the appropriate map scale and extent.  For each sound, I edited the HTML, pointing to my sound file and to the quiz.  When done, I tested each sound to make sure it was working, and that the correct quiz and answer key was associated with each sound.  One of my blocks of code looks like this, below, with the first string representing the sound file and the second string representing the quiz, below.  So, it shows that if you and your students can get comfortable with a little bit of coding, it can reap great rewards.  <p> <audio controls=""><source src="https://archive.org/download/niagara_falls_201707/niagara_falls.mp3 " type="audio/mpeg" /> does not support?</audio> </p> <p>What is this sound? Submit your answer <a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdBrJ1I6MF2CFu004hiPgcMGq8NPT3I4ZWln491YBNzcXeyoQ/viewform " target="_blank">here.</a></p>   I hope the story map is useful and sparks ideas for what you could do with these tools.  I encourage you to continue your exploration by studying physical and cultural geography, getting out onto the landscape, and observing with all 5 of your senses. Then, try creating a story map like the one I made with your own sounds, photographs, text, and/or videos! You can use my technique or try another method of creating a sound-based story map.   If this topic interests, you, a few of my other favorite sound story maps include Alan Lomax's documentation of the music of the South, a concert tour by the Grateful Dead, and that doesn't make you grate-ful, more Dead here from 1977, some of the traditional Christmas holiday music from around the world, the Sound of Music filming locations, and a map on the Lakota language that I created with James Rattling Leaf. Thank you for reading about my Sounds of Planet Earth map:  Hear the sounds, examine the map, test your knowledge, get out onto the landscape, observe with all of your senses, and make story maps of your OWN sounds! ... View more

Several new content pieces invite you to do hands-on work with Esri web GIS technology: [1] 10 Things you can do with ArcGIS Online in education.  These include: (1) Use web mapping applications.   (2) Make your own map.  (3) Get a school, club, or university organizational account in ArcGIS Online.  (4) Use and modify existing curricular resources.  (5) Explore the Living Atlas of the World.  (6) Modify and ask questions of maps.  (7) Conduct spatial analysis on mapped data. (8)  Add multimedia to maps.  (9)  Explore your world in 3D, and (10) Map and analyze field-collected data. [2]  Introduction and Advanced Work with Story Maps:  Slides with core content with activities.  These activities and exercises include how to build a story map from a web map, and how to build map tours, map journals, swipe, series, and other types of story maps.  This activity has been updated Fall 2019 with the new ArcGIS story maps! [3]  Teaching with Web Apps.  Set of resources and activities.  These include examining Pacific typhoons in 3D, demographics of Zip Codes, creating viewsheds and buffers, and much more.  These apps are easy to use and yet very powerful.  [4]  Spatial Analysis in Human Geography.   These include the 1854 cholera epidemic in London (activity), a Boulder County hazards analysis (map), and an examination of the Human Development Index around the world (map).   Focus is to highlight the powerful analytical capabilities available in ArcGIS Online.  I created this content and keep it updated for workshops and courses that I teach, and I hope and trust that it can also be used to support your own professional development or for your own instruction.   ... View more

I have been receiving questions from schools that have become "Google Schools" as well as universities and individual researchers who want to use Google Sheets in ArcGIS Online.  What are the advantages of using Google Sheets (spreadsheets, really, is what they are) over using an Excel spreadsheet on your own computer? Google Sheets live in the cloud, just like ArcGIS Online, so they can be edited from any device, anywhere, and the author of the Sheet can invite others to add data to it, so they can accept input from multiple collaborators, students, and faculty. Some educators want to map data that they have input into Google Sheets.  Others want to go to the next level, where multiple students or researchers edit Google Sheets in a participatory mapping or citizen science environment, and the resulting data is mapped and automatically refreshes as the data continues to be added. Both of these scenarios are possible with ArcGIS Online.  To illustrate, I created a form where students are asked, "What country have you visited?", shown below. After students fill out the form, I go to the "responses" zone in Google Forms, and access the spreadsheet that is created from the data.  Now that my data is in my Google Sheet, I access > File > Publish to the Web > and change "Web Page" to "Comma Separated Values (.csv)" file > Publish.   Then, I copy the resulting URL: Then, I access my ArcGIS Online account, open a new or existing map > Add > Add Layer from Web - CSV file > paste your URL for my Google Sheet here.   Next, I > Add Layer > I indicate which fields contain my location information (address, latitude-longitude, city/state/country combination).   That's really all there is to it!  My results are in this map linked here, and shown below: Note that I used one of the fun new basemaps in ArcGIS Online that I wrote about here. In another example, this time using cities instead of countries, see this map of the 10 most polluted and 10 least polluted large cities of the world.  Students examine spatial patterns and reasons for the pollution (or lack of it) in each city using the map and the metadata here.  I created this map by populating this Google Sheet, below.  My students could add 10 or 20 more to this sheet and their changes would be reflected in my ArcGIS Online map. Here is the map from the data, below.  For those explanatory labels, I used this custom label expression:   $feature.City + " is the #" + " " + $feature.Rank + " " + $feature.Variable and set the text color to match the point symbol color for clarity.  For more about expressions, see my blog post here. In another example, my colleague created this google sheet of some schools in India by latitude-longitude. Then she added the published content from Google to her map.  Let's explore a bit deeper.  Let's say that I wanted to visualize the most commonly visited countries among my students.  I can certainly examine the statistics from my Google form, as seen below: However, my goal is really to see this data on a map.  With the analysis tools in ArcGIS Online, this too is quickly done. The Aggregate Points tool will summarize points in polygons.  For my polygons, I added a generalized world countries map layer, and then used Aggregate Points to summarize my point data within those countries.  The result is shown below and is visible as a layer in the map I referenced above.  Another point worth noting is that you can adjust the settings of how your map interacts with your Google Sheet.  Go to the layer's metadata page, and under “Published content & settings”, select "Automatically republish when changes are made." You can set the refresh interval to, for example, 1 minute, but the actual refresh on your map may take somewhat longer because Google’s “Auto re-publish” isn’t quite "real-time".  Then do the following for the layer: Note that if you are geocoding by address (such as city/country, as I did above, or street address), the automatic refresh option is not available: To get around this challenge, I manually added the latitude-longitude values to my cities spreadsheet.  Thanks to the Measure tool in ArcGIS Online, this took less than 1 minute per city.  I simply typed in the city name in ArcGIS Online, and used the Location button under the Measure tools, clicked on the map where the city was located, and entered the resulting coordinates into my spreadsheet. For more information, see this blog essay.   ... View more