Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

A new landing page now exists for apps that allow for the exploration of Landsat remotely sensed data that your students could use to examine geology, urban growth, water and water quality, and more, called "Unlock Earth's Secrets:" http://www.esri.com/landing-pages/software/landsat/unlock-earths-secrets   This page includes a description of the Landsat on AWS app that that was improved last year: http://landsatappv1p3.s3-website-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/   This web application highlights some of the capabilities for accessing Landsat imagery layers, powered by ArcGIS for Server, accessing Landsat Public Datasets running on the Amazon Web Services Cloud. The layers are updated with new Landsat images on a daily basis. Quick access to the following band combinations and indices is provided: Agriculture: Highlights agriculture in bright green. Bands 6,5,2 Natural Color: Sharpened with 15m panchromatic band. Bands 4,3,2+8 Color Infrared: Healthy vegetation is bright red. Bands 5,4,3 SWIR (Short Wave Infrared): Highlights rock formations. Bands 7,6,4 Geology: Highlights geologic features. Bands 7,4,2 Bathymetric: Highlights underwater features. Bands 4,3,1 Panchromatic: Panchromatic image at 15m. Band 8 Vegetation Index: Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). (Band5-Band4)/(Band5+Band4) Moisture Index: Normalized Difference Moisture Index (NDMI). (Band5-Band6)/(Band5+Band6) The Time tool enables access to a temporal time slider and a temporal profile of different indices for a selected point. The Time tool is only accessible at larger zoom scales. It provides temporal profiles for NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index), NDMI (Normalized Difference Moisture Index) and an Urban Index. The Identify tool enables access to information on the images, and can also provide a spectral profile for a selected point. The Bookmark tool will direct you to pre-selected interesting locations.  This is an extremely helpful and easy-to-use tool for education and research, and runs in a web browser!   Landsat AWS Amazon Web Services app showing moisture index near the Salton Sea in California. I reviewed the above app on the Spatial Reserves data blog: https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com/2016/11/06/landsat-thematic-bands-web-mapping-application-enhancement/   The new landing page also includes a new app called Landsat Explorer : http://landsatexplorer.esri.com/ This app allows you to change the colors by which the images are rendered.  It also allows you to pick dates and compare imagery across time, swipe to compare two dates, set up masks to cover or highlight, compute the change between two dates, identify a scene or point, and see sample stories from around the world using the same imagery.  One of the most powerful features, though, is its connections to ArcGIS Online.  It has the ability to save the top layer to ArcGIS Online, and also add data from ArcGIS Online.  Landsat Explorer App showing images from two different dates near Bakersfield, California. ... View more

I have written over 400 essays on GIS in education over the past few years, and in an effort to make these searchable, I have created an index of these, accessible here. The topics range from strategies to teach GIS in different disciplines and educational levels, to giving presentations on GIS for the general public, to new GIS tools to investigate specific topics, to curricula and courses, educational GIS research, and much more, but have a common theme of fostering and supporting GIS in education, worldwide.  I hope this index is helpful to you in your work. Example of one of over 400 blog essays on GIS in education, newly indexed. --Joseph Kerski ... View more

A selection of the Esri Insider posts authored by my colleagues (including David DiBiase, Tom Baker, Mike Gould, and Frank Holsmuller) and I have been archived and are accessible via this index. The topics range from geoliteracy, credentialing, the use of web maps in e-textbooks, and more, but they share a common theme of GIS in education and society.  I hope you find this index and these articles to be useful in your own work in the field of GIS. --Joseph Kerski ... View more

As I wrote about a year ago, Mapillary is a tool that allows anyone to create their own street level photographs, map them, and share them via web GIS technology.  The idea behind Mapillary is a simple but powerful one:  Take photos of a place of interest as you walk along using the Mapillary mobile app and upload photos along the way.  They will be combined into a street level photo view.  Then, explore your places and those from thousands of other users around the world. Mapillary is part of the rapidly growing crowdsourcing citizen science movement, which seeks to generate “volunteered geographic information” content from ordinary citizens.  Mapillary is therefore more than a set of tools–it is a community, with its own MeetUps and ambassadors, and it is an Esri partner. I encourage educators to use Mapillary to generate field trip data with your students. Recently, I wanted to extend what I have been doing with Mapillary.  I went for a hike in the chaparral biome in California and recorded my hike that resulted in over 700 images and a track that anyone now can use to take this hike "virtually", with the ability to see to the right, left, straight ahead, and sometimes, behind me as I saw it on that beautiful winter's day. I wanted to bring my Mapillary track into ArcGIS Online, so I could easily work with it in a variety of ways and in combination with other maps and tools in ArcGIS Online.  To do this, first, I zoomed in to the area on the Mapillary website's map that contained my own Mapillary track.  Then, I filtered on just my username in Mapillary so I would not download other people's tracks.  Then, I clicked "Download Data" under the Advanced Options in Photo Settings to download the GPS track as a GeoJSON file.  I then used the Add button in a new map in ArcGIS Online and my Mapillary track is now in that platform, visible here and shown below.  Now I can use it just like any other layer in ArcGIS Online! Other people are doing innovative things in ArcGIS Online with Mapillary tracks and photographs.  For example, this story map shows 7 remote places explored by the Mapillary community, including Tonga, Antarctica, and Svalbard, Norway, and this story map shows crowdsourced photos taken at a selected number of US National Parks.  The intriguing thing about each of these is that just as you can navigate in Google Street View or on Mapillary across the landscape using the photographs, you can do the same thing with these story maps.  In other words, the photos are not "static."  Give Mapillary with ArcGIS a try! ... View more

I wanted to experiment with some new capabilities in the Cascade story map app, and I thought, "Why not select one of my all-time favorite places in which to do this?".  Hence, Hanging Lake and Spouting Rock, Colorado.  These two physical features are unique in many ways but are also easily reached after a beautiful one-hour hike in Glenwood Canyon.  Because Hanging Lake and Spouting Rock are just off Interstate Highway 70, this is one of the most popular hikes in the state, and I have been making the trek since I was 7 years old.  Hanging Lake is so named because it seems to "hang" at the edge of a cliff, with waterfalls that feed it, and waterfalls that drain it.  Spouting Rock is so named because the water literally gushes out of a cavity inside the cliff face, instead of flowing over the cliff as most waterfalls do.  Winter brings wonderful ice formations at the cliff and at the base of Spouting Rock.  My recent hike was on a beautiful Autumn day, and you can see the tree and cliff colors in the Colorado River canyon and along Dead Horse Canyon where the trail meanders.  I encourage you to take this hike the next time you visit central Colorado, and I also encourage you to try these Cascade story map techniques for your own favorite place! The results of my work are in this story map.  With its "flowing" user experience, the Cascade app was the perfect tool to convey my idea of a "hiking discovery" - as you hike up the canyon, new sights are discovered around each bend.  A few of the things I tried and successfully implemented were a looping video at the beginning. Cascade story maps allow for deep narratives.  In this map, I described the geology of the area, beginning with, "The geology here is largely shale, sandstone, limestone, quartzite, and dolomite, with alluvium along the river and along the sandstone bluffs. The Colorado Geologic Map is available here from the USGS, and the Geologic Map of the Shoshone Quadrangle is available for viewing here.  This area is part of the Chaffee Group - Upper Devonian - Dc on the geologic map - white to buff orthoquartzite, green shale, and gray dolomite.  On top of that is the Belden Formation, Lower Pennsylvanian, medium gray calcareous shale and fossiliferous limestone with interbeds of fine grained micaceous sandstone, gritstone, coaly shale, and gypsum.  Also present in this area is the Sawatch Quartzite, white to buff, massive, medium grained orthoquartzite and arkosic quartz-pebble conglomerate.   There is also the Leadville Limestone, gray to bluish gray, coarse to finely crystalline limestone and dolomite.  The Leadville Limestone, just to the north of here, in Deep Creek Gorge, contains some of the deepest and finest caves in Colorado, all at about 10,000 feet elevation."  In the map, I also gave a "shout out" to the good work that the Garfield County GIS staff does with GIS in this area to encourage what I view as some of the "unsung heroes" - those people who create the GIS data that you and I love to use. I recorded a track with a fitness app (in my case, RunKeeper), saved it as a GPX file, and uploaded the file into ArcGIS Online, saved that map, and then pointed to that map in my Cascade story map.  I was quite pleased with the spatial accuracy of the track, despite me being in a canyon with 100 meter walls and a lack of cell phone reception the majority of the time.  Discussing accuracy and precision with students is something I view as fundamental GIS instruction. I created a web map with the geo-tagged photographs that I had taken on the hike, and hence demonstrated the concept of a "map within a map", a technique that can be used quite effectively. I embedded videos inside the story map and tested them.  There was no slowing of performance after embedding these videos and so I was quite pleased with the results. At the end, I made use of the "credits" section, indicating that all of the photographs are my own.  Throughout the story map, I also indicated the source of the geologic and topographic maps I was using. I encourage you to try the Cascade story map to tell your own story - and encourage your students to create these for their own projects, projects you assign, or from field trips in your course! ... View more

OpenStreetMap is a free, editable map of the entire world that is being built by volunteers and released with an open-content license. OpenStreetMap is one of the most widely known and high quality citizen-science generated geospatial data sets in existence.  There are many ways to use OpenStreetMap (OSM) data in education.  You can analyze street layouts and urban and rural land use patterns at multiple scales using the OpenStreetMap online interface.  You can also examine the data inside ArcGIS Online using this OSM map.  You can also easily add OSM data to any ArcGIS desktop or online project because OpenStreetMap is one of the standard basemaps that are available from ArcGIS Online.  Once the data is in ArcGIS, you can then use the advanced symbology, classification, and analytical capabilities that are a part of the ArcGIS platform. Another way to work with OpenStreetMap data is through the ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap.  I selected the OSM basemap, zoomed to the area in in Tamale, Ghana, that students had collected, and brought it into ArcMap, as shown below.  From this point, you could apply symbology, create network datasets from OSM data, and even contribute data back to the OSM project.  You can also create geodatabase features that you can share on ArcGIS Online.    Another way to use the OSM data is to export OSM data directly to ArcGIS Online without going through ArcMap.   Using these procedures on GitHub, I accessed the same area of Ghana, exported OSM data via KML format into ArcGIS Online.  You can interact with the data via my map here.   Your students can even contribute to the content of OpenStreetMap.  One way is through YouthMappers, led by Dr. Patricia Solis of Texas Tech University.   The mission of YouthMappers goes beyond collecting map data--they seek to  "cultivate a generation of young leaders to create resilient communities and to define their world by mapping it." Therefore, they are just as interested in nurturing youth who understand mapping, community, and geography as the data that they are collecting.  In 2016 alone, 1,404 YouthMappers operating out of 57 university chapters in 19 countries made over 6 million map edits to OpenStreetMap in support of development and humanitarian projects and programs.  The data above came from the work of a collaboration between the YouthMappers chapter at the University of Cape Coast Ghana, where James Eshun is faculty advisor in the Department of Geography, and Dr. Patricia Solis' class at Texas Tech University.  Dr Solis' class is a service learning course designed to engage small teams of students to learn more about development and humanitarian issues through mapping and collaborating internationally with peers in the YouthMappers chapters where USAID works.  The mapping team on this project included Kwaku Antwi, Cole Edwards, Cheyenne Betancourt, Nick Wisinewski, and Kyler Allen.  To find out more, see their story map. You can start a new university chapter or affiliate your existing campus student group, organize mapping activities, add needed data to OpenStreetMap, collaborate with other chapters, and share results.  Members of active chapters will be eligible to apply for leadership, recognition, and fellowships opportunities.  Give these procedures a try! For more about Citizen Science and Esri, see the curated and updated Citizen Science resource here.  For more about Citizen Science and Esri from an education standpoint, see my article in the Esri Insider.     ... View more

Most users of Esri technology are familiar with the 10 or so base maps that are available through the Basemaps tool on www.arcgis.com - ArcGIS Online.  But did you know that there are many other wonderful basemaps available for your use and that these choices not only continue to expand, but are becoming more responsive to draw and are increasingly rich with content?  And probably the hottest topic in base mapping right now is the advent of vector basemap.  Vector basemaps have several benefits over their raster counterparts. One is their ability to customize the vector map style by changing colors, line attributes, and even fonts. Another benefit of vector maps is their ability to support updated data, such as the content contributed by communities through the Community Maps Program.  The vector basemap group currently contains several dozen web maps and layers.  One of my favorites is the imagery hybrid, which shows satellite imagery and a vector layer with streets and other features; in other words, a best of both worlds, which is very useful when you are wanting a basemap underneath your field-collected data.  This layer even provides the date of the satellite image, the source, the resolution, and the accuracy.  The sample vector tile layers group in ArcGIS Online contains some interesting and different basemaps for you to try.  One of my favorites is the colored pencil basemap shown in the banner of this blog essay, which reminds me of the maps I made as a teenager using my own colored pencils.  I also like the Modern Antique map (shown below), the newspaper map, and the clever snow-filled Merry Christmas basemap shown below and described here.  Each can be added to your existing or new maps in ArcGIS Online simply by using the Add button and referencing the layer name. The best way to keep up with these developments is to read the GeoNet blogs related to basemaps.  For example, a new basemap supporting the mapping of human geography themes was recently published, described here. Consider examining these with your students in your cartography units, show them to your art teacher colleagues, and make use of them - they are all at your fingertips! Modern Antique Basemap Merry Christmas basemap ... View more

Today, many options exist for using images in ArcGIS Online, including web mapping applications such as story maps.  Choose a method that works best for your situation and needs. I have summarized some key methods in this document, which is a subset of the many methods that are valid.  I have included the use of images in ArcGIS Online, Flickr, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, Google Plus, Google Photos, and Google Drive.   2 Rules of thumb: ArcGIS Online and apps (including story maps) are continually evolving. The photo sharing tools are likewise continually evolving.  These procedures are thus subject to change. To be successful with using photos in ArcGIS Online: (1) Make sure they are your content, or are in Creative Commons or are not copyrighted, or you have permission to use them. (2) That the photos are shared with the public.  (3) That the photos are of modest size; i.e. not too large that they will slow down the browser; and not too small that they will be grainy. (4) That you obtain a URL that can be opened in a separate tab in a web browser. If they can be opened in a separate web browser tab, then they will work in ArcGIS Online. I have updated this set of guidelines in October 2019.   ... View more

I am asked by instructors sometimes about the questions I typically ask when I am teaching students while using Esri Story Maps.  One of the maps I most often use is the Story Map on the voyage of the Titanic, because of the richness of the data, the well-known nature of the story, and because it highlights so many interesting things you can do with story maps.  These include linking to a database, creating pie charts, using the oceans basemap, and incorporating tabs, for example.  After opening the Titanic story map, here are 20 questions I ask.  These questions are meant to encourage spatial and temporal thinking, and to integrate geography, history, mathematics, and GIS.  They could be given in a workshop orally, or the students could read them independently.  If desired, a rubric could be set up around these questions to assess student work.   It is my hope that these questions will encourage you and your students to ask these types of questions as you and they engage in the fascinating world of story maps.   In the comments section below, I encourage you to submit your own questions, and also consider sharing the questions you pose when you are teaching with other story maps.   1.       Make 3 observations about the route that the Titanic took.  2.       If you knew then what you know now about the icebergs in the way of the Titanic, describe the route that you would have taken, if you had been the ship’s captain. 3.       Identify the 3 countries visited by the Titanic along its route from Southampton. 4.       Before the Titanic sailed on its maiden voyage, it sailed from the shipyard where it was created in Belfast to Southampton.  Through which sea did it travel? 5.       What % of the way across the Atlantic do you estimate that the Titanic was when it sank? 6.       Which city was the Titanic bound for on its voyage? 7.       How many days did it take Titanic to sail from Southampton to the point where it sunk? 8.       If the ship traveled about 2,750 miles over those days, how many miles per day did it travel, on average?  How many miles per hour did it travel, on average?  Show your work. 9.       Icebergs typically flowed down from Greenland and Baffin Island through a specific sea before reaching the Atlantic Ocean.  Identify the name of this sea. 10.   What type of base map is used for this map?  Why was it chosen? 11.   Observe the pie charts for the First, Second, and Third Class in terms of the mortality rate on the Titanic.  Where were your chances of survival the best?  Where were your chances the worst?  Why?   Do some outside research if you need to. 12.   Make 3 observations about the spatial pattern of the passengers on the Titanic. 13.   Make 1 observation about the differences between the spatial pattern of the First Class, Second Class, and Third Class passengers. Why do you think these differences existed? 14.   You can see that not all of the passengers were from Europe and North America.  How many continents were represented as the “home continent” of the passengers on the Titanic? 15.   Which three countries would you say were the most represented by passengers in terms of their homes on the Titanic? 16.   From which country in Scandinavia would you say was the most represented by passengers on the Titanic? 17.   What was the home town of the passengers who were from the farthest west in the USA on the Titanic? 18.   Identify the 3 people on the ship from Madrid, Spain.  How many lived, and how many died of these 3 passengers? 19.   How many passengers on the ship were from India? 20.   How has this story map and the geographic perspective helped you understand the history and geography of the Titanic?  If time permits, give a short presentation to your classmates about the geography and history of the Titanic using this story map. ... View more

Helping students think spatially is a key goal for many of us involved in GIS education work, and the growing set of resources, data, and tools in the Green Infrastructure initiative can help students reach that goal.  These resources (http://www.esri.com/about-esri/greeninfrastructure) are aimed at helping communities to preserve and connect open spaces, watersheds, wildlife habitats, parks, and other critical landscapes.  One way to open the discussion with students is to use the "How Green Is Your Community" tool on the page. Entering their zip code into the Current tab results in a map and a set of graphs describing rivers, land cover, agriculture, and other themes, where students can compare their own community to local, state, and national averages for those same themes. Entering the same zip code or address in the Future tab shows how land cover is predicted to change between 2011 and 2050 via a swipe map that can be examined at multiple scales. Another activity you can engage students in helps them think about the themes that planners use as they seek to build a sustainable future.  By accessing the "landscape cores" interactive map, students can examine a variety of themes that they may not have thought about before, but are critical to everyday planning, such as land ownership, soils suitable for agriculture, and my favorite, the Theobald Human Modified Surface, which indicates the degree to which humans have modified the landscape. Each layer's opacity can be changed and the scale and region can be altered to examine local areas of ones across the country.  And in keeping with our focus on fostering critical thinking about the data, each data layer can be investigated so that students know what each one means, who created it, and how it was created. Another resource that students can use is the set of Advanced Apps for Green Infrastructure Analysis.  Let's focus on just one of them, the "Conduct Landscape Analysis" app.    With it, students can experiment with weighting different components of land cover scoring.  This can help students with working with GIS tools, to see that not only do the themes included in spatial analysis make a difference in the final result, but the weights assigned to each theme also make a big difference.  In the example below, I set up a scenario where I want to study areas that are high in elevation, are flat or nearly so, and have a high number of endemic species.  On my map I see the areas meeting those criteria in western Colorado along with popups that provide further information, and I can easily adjust the weights and themes to see the difference those adjustments make spatially.   Want more?  Students can use all of the apps on the page with their ArcGIS Online accounts, to run through a real world problem scenario, choose themes and weights, and save their results to ArcGIS Online.  They could even download these results to ArcGIS Pro or GeoPlanner for further analysis.  This week, the GeoDesign Summit was held at Esri in Redlands where people gathered to discuss how these tools can be further developed to build and design a sustainable world.  Have your students examine the papers given at the Summit and think about the career pathways that are opening up in this field. ... View more

My colleague wrote a free 5 course sequence entitled Getting To Know GIS for Secondary Students.  The goals of these courses are to view and identify map features and patterns, use GIS tools to analyze a problem, create a GIS web app that tells a story, and describe how GIS helps people do their work.  The courses include compelling videos and hands-on work with dynamic web maps and tools. The courses are accompanied by a helpful guide for educators that includes help in setting up accounts in ArcGIS Online for students to use to work through the courses.  Students not only gain practical GIS skills in these courses, but also develop skills in critical and spatial thinking, and have the opportunity to examine careers that use these skills.  This sequence will be most useful for secondary students, and their teachers, but it will also be useful for other educators who are interested in teaching and learning with GIS.  I had the opportunity to take the entire 5 course sequence this week, and found it interesting and informative.  One of my favorite parts was examining real job postings and creating a story map, and I also enjoyed digging into the problem of determining where a city should contract artists to paint murals.   You can complete each of the courses in one hour; so plan on five hours for the sequence.  The courses are listed on the Esri Training site, and you can track your progress there while going through the course.  While you are on the Training site, spend some time there checking out the other training resources! ... View more

The International Geographical Union (IGU) recently drafted a new International Charter on Geographical Education.  This important document was originally written and endorsed in 1992; the new draft has been updated and includes an action plan.   I believe five aspects to this document have implications for all those who are using GIS to teach students of all ages to think critically, deeply, and spatially about their world: 1.  The document reaffirms that geography is the discipline that deals with spatial variability.  Many who are teaching with GIS today are from the disciplines of biology, history, hydrology, business, and even language arts and mathematics.  Our community of GIS educators has been greatly enriched by these disciplines, but the IGU document makes it clear that it is the geographical perspective operating in those disciplines that is core to the study of spatial variability. 2.  The document reaffirms the ongoing belief by those inside (and some outside) the discipline of geography that geographical education is neglected in some parts of the world, and lacks structure and support in others. Geography should be "regarded as an essential part of the education of all citizens in all societies."  Part of the urgency of teaching with and about GIS is a belief that the themes of geography itself, including climate, food security, overexploitation of natural resources, and urbanization, all mentioned in the Charter, are the most important issues facing 21st Century societies.  The Charter mentions the "consequences [that come] from our everyday decisions."  I believe thatstudents who use GIS are enabled to see connections between eocregions and precipitation, between agriculture and population growth, between land use and economic policy, and so much more. 3.  The 2016 charter addresses policy makers, education leaders, curriculum planners, and geography educators to help to ensure that all people receive an "effective and worthwhile geographical education" and to help geography educators "counteract geographical illiteracy."  Those of us on the Esri education outreach team and thousands more in the GIS and geography education community have been working across many levels to help these groups of people understand why and how geography can be effectively taught and learned by applying the systems thinking, tools, and methodologies that come with Geographic Information Systems (GIS). 4.  The Charter also mentions that geographical education "satisfies and nourishes curiosity." My colleague Charlie Fitzpatrick long ago began calling GIS a "thinker's tool".  Teaching and learning with GIS cannot happen unless students are thinking, asking questions, and testing their hypotheses.  Teaching with GIS allows the educator and student to explore the "what if" questions  by changing the number, types, and weights of variables, by changing the classification method, by changing the scale, and by changing the methods used. 5.  The Charter also makes it clear that geography education can be advanced if important research questions in geographical education are asked and answered through a rigorous research program.  The Charter states that such a program needs to be addressed by an international group of colleagues, which my colleagues and I addressed in one way by encouraging an international agenda and center for GIS education. I believe that the Charter lends strength and vision not only to the case of why geographical education is important, but also why we need to be using inquiry-driven methods of instruction and solving real geographical problems.  I believe this can be effectively done using GIS in education and in society. ... View more