Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

A continued state of change From their inception, educational institutions have always been in a state of change.   From the founding of what are widely considered to be the oldest universities in the world, the University of Al Quaraouiyine in Fez, Morocco, founded in 859, and the University of Bologna, founded in 1088 in Bologna, Italy, and the University of Oxford (1249 to 1264), to the thousands of institutions in existence today, universities have always been responsively reinventing themselves to best serve the needs of their students and the needs of the greater society.  Today, community colleges, technical colleges, tribal colleges, and universities must grapple with societal, educational, financial, and technological forces that are changing more rapidly with each passing year, particularly in the geo/enviro/geotechnology sphere.  How can faculty, administrators, researchers, and facilities managers understand and respond to these changes so that their institutions will be relevant and vibrant for decades to come? My colleagues and I on the education team greatly value the work we are privileged to be involved in with the education community.  This work occurs at all levels, from primary to university level, all around the world, and across multiple disciplines from anthropology to zoology and just about everything in between.   We do this through making sure that GIS software is inexpensive or free, that tools are widely available, that spatial data is accessible, so that faculty and students can be successful.  We do this through a variety of means, including the provision of curricular resources, through technical and pedagogical assistance, through highlighting success stories in Esri and other publications, through face-to-face and online webinars, presentations, and workshops, through networking opportunities for the community, and in other ways.  We also do a lot of listening to the community's challenges and concerns. One Challenge One challenge facing higher education that we hear from faculty and read about in articles that is perhaps more acute now than a generation ago, or even a few years ago, is the stagnation or decline of some longstanding GIS programs.  This situation includes the geography programs where some GIS programs are housed.  Certainly, many others are growing and thriving.  However, I wish to respond here to what some of our educational colleagues have been asking me to write about, which is why this is happening, and if I have any advice moving forward.   Selected reasons for the challenge Over the past 3 years alone, I have visited 110 campuses face to face and have, along with my colleagues here at Esri, conducted hundreds more online short courses, presentations, and workshops.  Therefore, I am no educational expert, but I have amassed, thanks to conversations with you, the education community, a deep and broad understanding of the reality of the culture and institutions of teaching and learning.  I think the stagnation and decline of some programs is due to a variety of factors:  1.  In the past, institutions of higher education represented the only major way, other than on-the-job training, that people could learn GIS.  While one can argue that many people in the past learned GIS "on their own" apart from in higher education or apart from on the job, the point is that many ways exist today to learn GIS tools and methods.  These include thousands of videos, dozens of Esri and university MOOCs, thousands of self paced lessons, certificates in a wide variety of forms and styles, hundreds if not thousands of face-to-face and online college and university programs that one can choose from, and other ways.  Certainly the rise of online programs is another factor competing with your specific institution:  A student can enroll in and take courses from many rigorous, well-respected programs, offered from a university that could be halfway around the world from their own location and not requiring them to enroll in your college or university.  Thus, there are more options available to everyone.    2.  GIS software is easier to use nowadays than ever before.  Certainly the world is a complex, dynamic planet, with 8 billion humans impacting it, and therefore, GIS tools, which were created to model and understand that world, are by their nature going to be numerous and complex.  That said, though, learning GIS is vastly more accessible than it was a few years ago.  Its evolution into a cloud-based environment and ecosystem nature mean that people can learn specific components of it, rather than the entire platform. They can do so with contextual menus and wizard-driven, AI-enabled tools that are more intuitive now than ever before.  In addition, they can access imagery and vector data sets as data services, and even collect their own data via field surveys, UAVs, and heads-up digitizing.   3.  "Traditional college demographics" in many parts of the world have changed:   In certain regions, there are fewer people in their late teens and early 20s; ages which traditionally have been key for college and university enrollment.  That said, many institutes of higher education attract those who are mid-career or even late-career, and my view is that it is never too late to get into GIS.  4.  There is some GIS saturation in the market, where many government agencies, nonprofits, and industries have a stable GIS-savvy workforce.  5.  Sixty years after its creation, GIS is not seen by some as new or cutting edge any longer.  In my opinion, however, today is the most exciting time to get into GIS--with the advent of web mapping applications, a wide variety of problems to solve from the global to local scale, and AI-driven workflows, just to name a few.   6.  In some parts of the world and in some regions, changes in the economy and in the unemployment rate affect some college enrollment.  Traditionally, when economies are doing well, technical college enrollment declines as those segments in the population are already gainfully employed. 7.  There is a continued lack of awareness of geospatial technology as a viable career path.  It's still rather "hidden", isn't it?   Similar to an elevator where you get in, punch buttons, expect something to happen, and you don't think much about the technology behind it.   GIS is behind the scenes, like an elevator:  GIS powers the electricity you use, your ride share and fitness app, your package delivery, how and what you ate yesterday, supply chains that resulted in the phone you are holding and the clothes you are wearing, managing the bus you will take tomorrow morning, and much more.  8.  A related concern voiced to me by faculty is when students don't find out about GIS until halfway through their undergraduate career, posing challenges to the student in terms of time to invest and their own finances.  What if we worked on raising awareness about GIS earlier, before students even arrive on campus? My colleagues and I through our active K-12 program, in collaboration with many of you reading this, and other geomentors, are doing all we can to support and promote spatial thinking throughout all of education and society.  It is our hope that one result of these efforts will be that more students entering higher education will already know about GIS and want to pursue it on your campus.  Others I know on campuses promote GIS through "GIS Day" events, campus sustainability events, through their library, or other means. 9.  Perhaps the lack of awareness stems in part from the relatively few jobs naming GIS in the job title.  In my career, for example, I have been cartographer, geographer, adjunct faculty, and education manager: I have not had "GIS" in my job title, and the same is true for many in the profession.   That is actually a good thing, for it shows that GIS is increasingly a tool and a perspective that someone with a job title of wildlife biologist, city planner, supply chain manager, or health analyst has.  Indeed, I am seeing that GIS skills are more in demand than ever before.  10.  On a related note about the lack of awareness, many GIS programs are housed in geography departments:  Geography as a discipline as always been rather misunderstood, which doesn't help the misunderstood nature of GIS any!   Some have told me repeatedly in the past that "geography missed the boat on spatial analysis years ago by not fully embracing it".  I don't want to get into a "how to save geography" discussion here, but : (1) As a geographer, I certainly want my home discipline to thrive and be healthy.  And no, I don't want GIS to be renamed to remove the "geographic" name (though I also like spatial data science as a name) because to me the geographic is fundamental to its approach to problem solving:  It is much more than "using maps in analysis".  (2)  I feel it will benefit geography as a discipline by demonstrating to other disciplines across campus that geographic thinking is more important now than ever before, and that the "whys of where", which many disciplines want to teach, is a set of perspectives, tools, and ways of thinking that geographers can take a leadership role in on their campuses.  (3) More people will be getting into the field of geotechnologies from outside geography, as part of the widening recognition that "why where matters", the spread of GIS into other IT tools and organizational workflows, and the advent of GIS to the web and requiring people with IT and coding backgrounds.  I regularly teach GIS workshops where I ask for a show of hands indicating how many participants came from a geography undergraduate or graduate school background, and the percent of attendees at these workshops indicating this background has been declining for many years.  However, I believe that this widening diversity of backgrounds will I believe strengthen the use of GIS across education and society, and again provide those with deep knowledge about GIScience to help others--those who don't have time to take GIS courses, but want to use the tools.  Those GIS folks with a deep background can help these other folks to thoughtfully consider the choices they must make about database design, projections, symbology, classification, analysis tools, and how to most effectively communicate with GIS tools such as web mapping applications just to name a few ways they can assist. GIS is a disruptor! In education, GIS has always been a disruptive, barrier-breaking way of thinking and toolset.  This makes it extremely valuable for encouraging critical and holistic thinking, but also sometimes presents a challenge to GIS. Why?  Because GIS does not have one standard "home" in the curriculum, in departments, or in institutions.  It can be effectively housed in many different programs and schools and can even be called different things (location analytics, geomatics, geotechnologies, geomedia, GI systems, GI science, and by other names). Saluting the faculty In short, none of the stagnation and decline that is occurring in some institutions has to do with faculty not being innovative or forward-thinking.  To the contrary, the faculty I have been working with in the geotechnology space over my career have been some of the most creative people I have ever met.  I salute you all!  You are making a positive difference; you are leaders; you are helping students to become positive change agents in their future workplace and in society.  With the challenges come great opportunities for us and you to show leadership of why this all matters, now more than ever before, given the challenges we face in the world. Selected advice and food for thought I have been asked to provide some advice on these important matters.  For starters, I offer this below, but largely rely on you, the community to share your wisdom in the comments section.  You are the real experts here:   While I have served as adjunct faculty in community and tribal colleges and in universities for almost 30 years, I have never been a full-time academic and thus defer to the advice of the community.  However, I will share the following. 1.  Competition and reinvention.  While deep down I want all programs to thrive and grow, I'm a realist:  Like much else in society, education is a competitive environment affected by larger forces.   I am also, though, a firm believer in the fact that some chaos and turmoil can spark innovation and positive change.  Some departments have effectively re-branded, some have merged with others on campus, and some initiatives on campus are not even a traditional department of program (such as 10 Across at Arizona State University).   Some course titles have changed, such as the Digital Earth course I have co-created at the University of Denver, and the Beautiful Maps course at Jacksonville University.  The University of Wyoming is more effectively able to infuse enterprise, coding, and development instruction after their GIS program became part of computer science.  I advise some regional universities to focus their GIS programs on water, energy, business, or some other area in such a way as to not directly compete as just a smaller version of their big state university, but rather, to fill a unique set of needs.  In some universities, such as the University of North Carolina Charlotte, GIS is increasingly seen as key to an emerging Data Science program.  GIS can serve as a key component in what some universities are pursuing in the social implications of technology, such as the ATLAS institute at the University of Colorado.   You can read more about innovations in GIS education in this education blog space and in other Esri blogs and publications.   I think the days of a university or college saying "we've existed for 150 years and we will be around for another 150 years" and coasting on past laurels are over:  Innovation must happen for those institutions to continue into the future.  2.  Promoting geospatial technology and spatial thinking in multiple disciplines.  I believe that the best way to increase the use of GIS is not necessarily to spend all of our energy to "save" programs that are struggling, but rather to embed GIS and spatial thinking into mathematics, economics, business, earth and biological science, geography, data science, communication and media, sociology, humanities, civil engineering, planning, design, and other departments on campus.  This is increasingly happening across many campuses, large and small, throughout the world, as I detailed here in a Fine Arts department on a campus and was our goal in writing a Teaching Mathematics with Interactive Mapping book.   Part of the challenge, though, is that most campuses are still funded and staffed on a model that is contrary to the interdisciplinary nature of GIS.    3.  Articulate the value.  Be always ready to articulate the value that spatial, holistic, and critical thinking through the application of GIS to solve problems can bring to energy, water, hazards, population, land use, health, transportation, and many other areas in society, including all the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including the value it brings to your own institution.  GIS is valuable in teaching, in research, and also in campus administration, helping the campus to attract and recruit new students, be a safer place to work and to learn, saving campus energy cost, and in many other ways.   Regularly share these messages with deans, provosts, university presidents, campus safety officers, students, and colleagues of yours in other disciplines.   Sharing the above items is not meant to mitigate some of the real pain that is happening in higher education, where layoffs, closures, and funding cuts are the reality that many colleagues are facing, but my intention is to provide some hope and encouragement.  Again I certainly don't have all the answers, therefore I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this subject.   ... View more

I recently conducted a full day K-12 workshop for educators.  This essay provides the content, data, and tools that I included in this workshop.  I am posting this so that the educators who participated can dig deeper into the tools after the workshop ended, but also for other educators to use.  Tenets:    Maps are analytical tools, not just reference documents.  Interactive maps through GIS foster critical, spatial, and holistic thinking.  GIS allows "what if ..." inquiry to take place.  Teaching with GIS is active problem based learning, involving community connectedness and rich field experiences.   Scale matters! Change over space and time can be grappled with using these data sets, tools, and perspectives.  Themes:  Natural hazards, energy, water, history, mathematics, invasive species, biomes, regions, transportation, weather and climate, population change, land use, change over space and time.   Morning:  Primary School Educators:   The NatGeo Esri MapMaker:  https://esriurl.com/mapmaker Esri Geoinquiries:   https://esri.com/geoinquiries The ArcGIS Living Atlas Apps https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/52ae78c57b3a4924bff9fd490d76ee10  Wayback, Sentinel-2, Water Bal, USGS Topo 10 lessons:   litter mapping, bivariate – lesson 3 and 4: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/an-introduction-to-gis-as-an-open-course-with-10/ba-p/1204626 Collect data in field > Map > Analyze > communicate:   Walkability example: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/how-walkable-is-your-community/ba-p/883382 Scatter Plots, bivariate mapping: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/examining-relationships-between-variables-charts/ba-p/1245143   ArcGIS Platform slide from Connecting GIS Workshop: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/new-workshop-and-lesson-on-connecting-surveys-maps/ba-p/1419582 Why Where Matters to students, faculty, and society: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/edd676b67f5f4c749ab3e6922bd9237a Including Living Atlas Apps. 10 strategies for teaching with GIS: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/what-are-10-key-strategies-for-teaching-gis/ba-p/1104782 10 skills important to teaching with GIS: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/what-are-the-10-most-important-gis-skills-to/ba-p/1079912 10 benefits of teaching with GIS: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/what-are-the-10-most-important-educational/ba-p/1094091 Ethics, Data, and Societal Implications:  https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com Resources to dig deeper:   Esri Press, T3G, Esri Community blog, Intermountain GIS conference, Esri Education Summit, and others.   Afternoon:  Secondary School Educators:   Esri NatGeo MapMaker:  https://esriurl.com/mapmaker The ArcGIS Living Atlas Apps: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/52ae78c57b3a4924bff9fd490d76ee10  Wayback, Sentinel-2, Water Bal, USGS Topo Selected activities from our new mathematics-mapping book: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.1201/9781003305613/teaching-mathematics-using-interactive-mapping-sandra-arlinghaus-joseph-kerski-william-arlinghaus   10 lessons:   Litter mapping, bivariate – lesson 3 and 4: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/an-introduction-to-gis-as-an-open-course-with-10/ba-p/1204626 Scatter Plots, bivariate mapping: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/examining-relationships-between-variables-charts/ba-p/1245143 Connect these tools and methods: Collect data in field > Map > Analyze > communicate:   Walkability:  https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/how-walkable-is-your-community/ba-p/883382 Resources to dig deeper:   Esri Press, T3G, Esri Community blog, Intermountain GIS conference, Esri Education Summit, and others.       ... View more

Connecting components of modern GIS, including field surveys, dashboards, interactive maps, spatial analysis, and multimedia web mapping applications such as dashboards and story maps help schools, colleges, universities, and other organizations to understand important local issues and situations and inspire them to take action. In education, using these tools foster spatial thinking, critical thinking, and rigorous use of GIS tools and data.  This workshop and lesson guides you through analyzing real-world issues through surveys, maps, and web mapping applications so that your students will be empowered to use them and you will be confident as an educator that you can teach these tools and methods. Lessons:  This set of 8 lessons (linked here as a 22 MB zip file containing lesson and all images and graphics needed) (a PDF lesson without the image files is attached to this post; a PDF of a short set of introductory slides is also attached) guides you through the entire process from the creation of a field survey in ArcGIS Survey123, mapping the resulting data in ArcGIS Online, analyzing the data, creating and using an ArcGIS Dashboard, to the process of creating an ArcGIS StoryMap.  It does so through 8 lesson components:  4 introductory lessons, followed by 4 "deeper dive" lessons that are on an intermediate skill level.  Step-by-step instructions are included, but even more importantly, deeper thinking is encouraged about the insights gained through these tools. Themes:  Three key themes run through these lessons and provide the major teaching and learning objectives:  (1)  Modern web GIS is a platform.  When the components are linked together, these provide for powerful tools for data gathering, mapping, analysis, and communication.  (2)  Modern GIS platform components are approachable, able to be learned in a short amount of time, and configurable.  In this case, the components used are:  ArcGIS Story Maps, ArcGIS Online maps including visualization and analysis capabilities, ArcGIS Dashboards, and ArcGIS Story Maps.  (3)  Once key skills are learned, they can be built on for extended learning (hence the 4 'deeper dives' lessons included here).   Users:  These sets of lessons can be used by the GIS professional community in nonprofit organizations, government agencies, and private industry, and also by instructors at the upper secondary but especially in community, tribal, and technical college and university courses to foster spatial thinking, critical thinking, and rigorous development of GIS skills, using up-to-date GIS tools and spatial data.  In education, these lessons could be used in GIS courses and programs, but also in environmental or earth science, hydrology, cultural or physical geography, architecture, history, sociology, economics, or any course in which the "where" question matters and in which fieldwork is important.  Example and Extensions:  This lesson focuses on walkability, and walkable neighborhoods:  How walkable is a neighborhood?  Collect walkability information in a neighborhood:  Is it walkable?  How walkable (rating) is it?  What characteristics of the site impact its walkability?  Where is the site located, and do you have a photograph of it?  How does walkability vary in my community and how does it compare to other communities?  How can I visualize and spatially analyze the patterns of walkability with maps and dashboards?  How can I communicate the economic, social, health, and aesthetic reasons why communities care about walkability,  the results of my walkability survey, and a call to action in a StoryMap?  Despite the focus on walkability here, the same concepts in these lessons can be used for any theme or subject, from local to global—pedestrian and vehicle counts, water quality, weather observations, housing or business type, zoning, light poles, recycling bins, invasive species, litter, and other features or issues in the natural or built landscape.  After these lessons are used, the learner can dig even deeper with the links I provide in the lesson, and with more powerful expressions using Arcade, the ArcGIS Experience Builder, and with the ArcGIS Developer Tools, SDKs, and APIs. Evaluation:  I have successfully tested this set of lessons in a wide variety of settings from the GIS professional community to students in university GIS courses over a series of years, and in multiple countries of the world. Prerequisites and Scaffolding:  The introductory lessons require no prior experience beyond the basics of understanding what a web map is, what a GIS layer is, how attributes and geography work together, and about the basic navigation of ArcGIS Online maps and user content.  The intermediate lessons build on the introductory lessons or equivalent experience, and immerse the learner into such tasks as map actions, building Arcade expressions, doing spatial analysis including clustering and hot spots analysis, using generative AI to build field surveys, and creating Map Tour and Express Map components in StoryMaps. Functions included:   Survey123:  Likert scale, single and multiple choice questions, maps, images, generative AI surveys.  ArcGIS Online Map Viewer:  symbolization (styling), classification, basemaps, transparency, create charts, clustering, hot spot, filtering, custom symbols, popups, and other analysis tools.  Dashboards:   Indicators, maps, bar graphs, pie charts, Arcade expressions, legends, images.  StoryMaps:   Map tours, popups, text, images, separators, themes, settings, videos, and more.       Requirements:     Time:   I have run the first 4 lessons of this workshop in demonstration mode in as little as one hour.  If you read these first 4 lessons (pages 1-20 of the 43 pages of content available) in an hour, you will gain some key skills.  But as is the case with so much in the world of GIS, working through the activities yourself is the best way to learn.  Plan on 2 to 4 hours to work through the first 4 lessons, and 4 hours to work through Lessons 5-8.   Add more time if you are not familiar with using GIS or Web GIS, and subtract time if you are a regular ArcGIS Online user.  Hardware:   You can run these lessons on a large tablet or a laptop computer.  A small laptop or phone will not give you enough 'real estate' screen space to operate all the buttons in the various tools.    Software:   (1) An ArcGIS Online account in which you have the User Type of Creator and the Role of Publisher.  (2)  The 21.5 MB zip file associated with this lesson, located here, which contains all necessary components:  Selected field photographs, custom point graphics, and this lesson in PDF and in DOCX formats (DOCX is included so that you will be able to easily modify the lesson if you wish).  No software is required beyond a web browser as you will be running ArcGIS Online which is a SaaS Software as a Service, in the cloud.  An internet connection is critical. Organization:  This lesson set is organized in 8 parts:   Introduction: Part 1:  Creating a field survey using ArcGIS Survey123.   Part 2:  Creating and analyzing a map from your survey data. Part 3:  Creating an ArcGIS Dashboard from your survey data. Part 4:  Creating an ArcGIS StoryMap from your field data. Deeper Dive: Part 5:  Creating a field survey using the Survey123 AI Artificial Intelligence Assistant, plus branching. Part 6:  Perform spatial analysis on your mapped data. Part 7:  Adding intermediate elements to your ArcGIS Dashboard. Part 8:  Adding intermediate elements to your ArcGIS StoryMap. Selected graphics from the set of lessons are below so that you will get a feel for the contents. I look forward to hearing your reactions!  Creating a map action for the dashboard. Creating a modified list using Arcade scripting on the dashboard. Creating a story map with the survey data. Creating a mobile version of the dashboard. Performing clustering and spatial analysis on the surveyed data. Using generative AI to create a field survey. Creating a hot spot analysis on the surveyed data. Creating a field survey. Symbolizing the mapped data. Creating a dashboard from the field survey. Adding a video to the story map. Testing survey results on the web map.   ... View more

This article explains why you, the YPN professional, should care about education, beyond your own educational journey.  Why should things happening in schools and universities regarding GIS matter to you, and how can you get involved?  GIS has existed for nearly 60 years.  Since its inception, people have wanted to learn more about GIS.  Because of this desire, the development of educational resources—lessons, tutorials, books, and other ways to learn about GIS, has been occurring for nearly 60 years as well.   Educational institutions (schools, community, technical, and tribal colleges, and universities) have long partnered with GIS software companies, nonprofit organizations, professional associations, and government agencies to advance the teaching and learning surrounding GIS.  Beginning in the late 1980s, GIS has steadily advanced at all levels in education from primary and secondary schools, to colleges and universities.  Today, GIS is taught in nearly every university and college in the world.  It is taught in individual courses, certificate programs, degree programs, and in hybrid, face-to-face, and fully online environments.  It is also used as a key research tool and in campus facility administration. GIS Across Disciplines The expansion of GIS in education that I describe above is not limited to GIS or GIScience courses and programs.  In fact, the fastest educational growth today in GIS is across an increasing diversity of disciplines, including business, earth and environmental science, geography, economics, mathematics, civil engineering, computer science, health, planning, and more.  It is becoming infused in university and college programs on sustainability, climate, resiliency, and data science.  Why?  Instructors increasingly recognize GIS as a tool that employers require and hence will increase the marketability and employability of their students.  Instructors recognize the systems thinking and holistic perspectives that GIS gives students in increasingly interdisciplinary campus initiatives such as the ATLAS institute at the University of Colorado and the data science program at the University of North Carolina Charlotte.  Nearly every university highlights data literacy and data visualization on their web pages and in their mission statements:  Using GIS engages students in working with a large volume and wide variety of data:  Accessing it, managing it, analyzing it, communicating with it, and being critical of it, as I explain here in this article about data fluency and as I write about often, including ethical issues surrounding the use of data, here. Moreover, instructors increasingly value GIS as a teaching tool and methodology to foster the spatial perspective and critical thinking.  This is true across the natural sciences as well as in social sciences, and it is spreading to fine arts and humanities, as I describe in this example.  These increasingly diverse sets of instructors see GIS as fostering a ‘care-for-the-Earth’ ethic, which can powerfully engage students in meaningful and relevant issues from local to global scale.  These include invasive species, historical events, water quality, noise and air pollution, natural hazards, climate impacts, urban greenways, business and economic health, energy, and many more.  GIS is used as an analytical tool in problem-based learning environments to study change over space and time.   GIS is used daily by researchers in educational institutions, studying everything from retail trade to water quality, or more comprehensively, from A to Z – agriculture, astronomy, architecture, and anthropology, to zoology—and everything in between.   The spatial data in GIS is used as a rich body of instructional content, such as the data in the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, and in ArcGIS Hub sites and other data libraries, for teaching and studying history, biology, economics, and many other disciplines.  Even primary school instructors are using the interactive maps in ArcGIS Online in such accessible and engaging tools as the National Geographic MapMaker to teach about biomes, population change, landforms, and weather.   Also important in educational institutions is the use of GIS in administration—campus facility management, campus safety, managing alumni networks, and more:  From getting people into and out of the basketball or football stadium safely, to taking care of all of the trees on campus, managing the campus electrical and fiber optic grid, and in other ways.  GIS helps a campus save energy and costs and become a sustainable and safe place for all. The Challenge Despite decades of advancement, there is still a lack of awareness of the educational benefits of teaching, learning, and administration with GIS.  Unless you are speaking to environmental scientists, geographers, or GIS faculty or students on a typical campus, chances are, you will still get blank stares about GIS.  You may even get questions such as “Why do maps still matter in  21st Century schools and universities?” and “Haven’t all the maps been made?”, or “Why do we need mapping and data courses when  I have Google Maps on my phone?”  Perhaps because maps are so well embedded in our easily accessible weather apps, in the ways we navigate across campus or to the public library, in our fitness apps, in our package tracking, and in our ride-share apps that people do not associate the mapping technologies they use day-to-day with a discipline.  Perhaps it is because of the inherently interdisciplinary nature and the applicability of GIS that makes it hard to “find a single home” in educational institutions.  Perhaps it is because we have not purposefully and rigorously taught spatial thinking in our primary and secondary schools.  Perhaps because some geography is still taught as “memorizing place names, imports, and exports”.  Or perhaps it is because of all of those reasons.  Thus I encourage you to be ready to articulate "why where matters" and the value of GIS to anyone you meet at a moment's notice.  Chances are that in your workplace, you will be required to articulate this, so be prepared! Teaching With a Professional Toolset Most tools used in schools, colleges, and universities are part of “educational software”; that is, software created to be used for instruction.  There is value in using educational software, to be sure.  Consider however that when an instructor teaches with GIS, they are teaching with a professional tool intended to be used to make decisions, rather than something created specifically for education.  It is more challenging to teach with a professional tool:  The instructor has to learn enough of a professional tool to feel confident in teaching with it, and also must keep up with it as it rapidly evolves, which is especially the case with GIS.  But every instructor I have met over the past 30 years has confirmed that using GIS in instruction is definitely worth the extra effort.  Their students, such as Roxana Ayala, inspired and empowered to be positive change agents, are living examples of the fruits of these efforts.  Like many instructors, I have been using GIS in education for many decades and am just as excited about using it now as when I started.  In my opinion, today is the most exciting time of all to be using GIS, with the new story maps tools, apps such as Landsat Explorer, field tools, analytics in the cloud, and the widening array of interest. Advancing GIS in Education Way back in 2011, I wrote an article for ArcUser on Why Geography Education Matters:  https://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0611/why-geography-education-matters.html.    The reasons I give in the article for why this matters include citing student analysis about the whys of where, and questions such as, "how is the Earth changing?", and “Should the Earth be changing in these ways?" and "What can I do about it?”   In fact, I submit that spatially-infused education is needed more now than ever before—far beyond 2011, to 2024, and beyond! Who is responsible for the advancing GIS in education?   One group dedicated to this goal is the Esri education program team, which was founded in 1992:  For over 30 years, we have been supporting schools and higher education in promoting spatial thinking through geotechnologies in teaching, learning, research, and in campus facilities.   Yet we cannot do it alone!   We partner with institutions, their deans, provosts, faculty, and campus facility administrators.  We work closely with professional associations such as the GeoTech Center, URISA, AAG, the Decision Sciences Institute, the Society for Conservation GIS, and UCGIS in higher education, and NCSS, NCGE, NSTA, ISTE, (social studies, geography, science, and technology, respectively) and other discipline-specific associations in primary and secondary education, to advance GIS.  We host exhibits and workshops at events and conferences, actively serve on advisory boards, make dozens of campus visits and conduct hundreds of online workshops and presentations in any given year, create curricular materials, author research and instructional articles and articles highlighting their programs, make the ArcGIS software free or low cost, write guidelines and best practices documents, and connect educators with each other across networks.   Faculty are enthusiastic about GIS. However, they have limited time to evangelize about its benefits, and all are extremely busy with their own teaching and research.  Furthermore, educational institutions are in a continual state of change and reinvention, even before COVID.  Our team at Esri seeks to support GIS across all schools, colleges, and universities, in all disciplines, worldwide.  But because tens of thousands of schools, colleges, and universities exist worldwide, we are challenged with selecting those campuses and programs that actively seek our help and/or those with whom GIS education can gain a multiplier effect from.  Therefore, my answer to “Who is responsible for the advancing GIS in education?” is – all of us.  And why does this matter?  We need to keep advancing GIS in education to ensure that future positive change agents will graduate with spatial thinking and geotechnology skills to build a more resilient and sustainable future for all of us. How You Can Be Involved There is one group who could lend an enormous boost to the GIS education effort—YOU!  The Young Professionals Network.  Why should you, the busy young professional that you are, care about what is happening in GIS education and why you should support it?  A few key reasons are: You have kids, or you know people with kids, and you care about them. You were a kid once and you remember what frustrations and triumphs you had in your own school journey. You have an alma mater university and school that you care about. You have a neighborhood school that you are interested in partnering with. You care about getting passionate and wonderful employees hired at your organization. You care about the future of the geospatial industry and the people in it. You care about the future of our planet! You in YPN who are reading this essay could greatly increase the adoption of GIS in teaching and research by: Being a “geomentor” to your local school or alma mater university, where you offer to give a series of workshops or presentations, put together a web map of data layers for an educator, to help them when they get “stuck” in a GIS workflow or lesson, and in other ways.  Host a face-to-face or virtual GIS Day event (www.gisday.com). Following the advice of YPN author Gina Girgente to join college clubs and academic organizations, finding your own calling, and building your confidence in speaking to others about the value of GIS. Following the advice of my colleague Rosemary Boone to become a YPN Ambassador to enhance your leadership skills so that you can better articulate the value of GIS across disciplines in education. Have your 30-second to 2-minute elevator speech ready to go, while on the bus, airplane, in a conference, or in an actual elevator, articulating what GIS is, why it matters, and why we need to be teaching with it and about it.  Use my set of elevator speeches here for some inspiration but make it your own voice, making it authentic by charting your own journey to your story. In many ways, with your expertise in and passion for GIS, your voice in GIS in education could be even more effective than the voice of me and my teammates.  You have unique things to share that my others in the geospatial profession do not.  Please consider being that voice.  How to get started How could you start connecting to the world of education?   The best place to begin is my colleague Charlie Fitzpatrick’s updated geomentoring advice. The first piece of advice is that a relationship needs to be established between you and any potential educator.  These take time and effort to establish and maintain, and follow the same model as other relationships:  See what you have in common with someone, and how you can help them.  It could be a former professor of yours or their colleague, or your kids’ teacher, or someone else.  Some potential mentees might contact you, but it is more likely that you as the mentor will need to seek them out. Because of that, focus on seeking adults, not minors; educators might let you work with primary and secondary students once they are comfortable with who you are and what you know, but even if not, you can help the educator.    You could assemble a data set or a web map, explain how to classify or project a data set, or assist in other ways.  Exploring potential engagement is easier when a connection already exists. Look for educators in your circle, or your circle's circle: family, friends, neighbors, work, religious institution, clubs, and so on.  Look for someone who teaches earth science, environmental science, geography, or history. Ask what they do, and if they use maps or imagery.  Interested educators can be found at all student grade levels and in all disciplines.  Find out what the educator knows and seeks:  The key I believe is to practice a great deal of  active listening, rather than starting with your own agenda.  Does the school have access to software? Do they have ArcGIS logins in place? Do they know the basics and want to go farther?  Next, skim these resources and join the GeoMentor group on the Esri Community.  I look forward to hearing about your successes, challenges, and questions in this area! --Joseph Kerski   ... View more

I have been asked to share all of my workshops and presentations from the 2024 AAG American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, covering a variety of topics and themes, which I am happy to do, here.  I hope these resources are very helpful to you during and also, long after the conference! (1) My colleagues and I hosted an Esri exhibit during the conference, and our ArcGIS Story Map briefing filled with key resources is here:  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/briefings/d2c9ed6793854762a4801b1cdd1566f2  Esri Education at AAG in PDF format. (2)  A session hosted by Dr Amy Rock, UCGIS:  Teaching Ethics in GIS and Geography Courses:  My presentation: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/034813a3e60640428d7ffed5261facd7    Teaching & Learning Ethics with Spatial Thinking & Geotech in PDF format. (3)  Session with Aileen Buckley:  Actionable Ethics in Cartography.    My comments:  Regarding a call to action: I think given the rapid advancement and impact of AI on not only cartography and GIS but on education and society, a 1 page statement about the benefits of AI in cartography education but also its challenges and cautions it raises would be valued by the community, would build on the MapMaker's Mantra, and would be a doable actionable thing that this community could tackle in 2024.  Such a 1 page statement could include:  Benefits of Gen AI in creating mappable data (from AI powered feature extraction from imagery, and in creating field surveys as shown by Andrew Turner at the Fed GIS conf last month) but also cautions including (do people understand what is in the AI models in the same way as they understood what was in their own model builders in ArcGIS Pro? (and location privacy issues as the resolution of the imagery increases and location is increasingly shared across apps and mapping services). I would also like to share the ongoing discussion on data-and-society issues we write about weekly on https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com. Teaching & Learning Ethics with Spatial Thinking & Geotech story map. (4)  Keynote address followed by discussion and student papers:  Geospatial Software Usability:  From industry’s perspective to User’s Practice.  To support Dr Zhe Zhang’s Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure Initiative: Building High-Performance, Ethical, and Secured Geospatial Software:   OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, NSF.  My Presentation:   https://storymaps.arcgis.com/briefings/35c53cfa93e84b58899d2601a5995000 Geospatial Software Evolution, Usability, Implications in PDF format. My keynote outline: Why GIS and why spatial analysis in the first place? Why is this a key time to discuss these issues?   GIS, society, education, are all simultaneously and rapidly evolving. Stability and trust of GIS software and platform.  Despite repeated blogs and videos from 2000 to present predicting the “demise of GIS”. Pro and Online and usability and teachability. Implications of rapid evolution and arrival of modern GIS on curriculum, textbooks, programs. Apps & their sharing implications including how we assess student work. Platform & Web implications:  1.  From field tools > mapping > analysis > communications and 2.  Engaging non-geographers to geo-tools and methods.  Examples: social science, math, language arts.  3. Sharing methods, apps, maps, data, research results – via Web GIS. Ethical implications of mapping, use of spatial data, and spatial analysis (with nod to the next day’s panel). Cartographic evolution of GIS. GIS solutions and templates for specific audiences, and implications. GIS becoming embedded in other software (MS 365, Stats packages, Salesforce, PowerBI, etc). Library science/archivist/research concerns about rapid evolution and readability of apps– able to be consumed in the future? AI implications for GIS usability, tools, and interface. Implications of all this for teaching, research, and for the disciplines of GISc and Geography. (5)  Career Mentoring II: Private Sector Career Paths:  Panel with Sarah Battersby of Esri and others.  Career Pathways for multiple disciplines using Geotech and Geothinking: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7eedd711cc254ae8b228e32cb87354e3 Career Pathways Across Disciplines_ GeoTech + GeoThinking in PDF format. (6)  GeoEthics Panel.   To support Dr Zhang’s Geospatial Cyberinfrastructure Initiative: Building High-Performance, Ethical, and Secured Geospatial Software:   OAC Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure, NSF.  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/034813a3e60640428d7ffed5261facd7   Teaching Ethics:  Why, How, and Implications.  Teaching & Learning Ethics with Spatial Thinking & Geotech in PDF format. (7)  Teaching Introductory GIS using ArcGIS Online.  Workshop with my colleague Brian Baldwin, Esri. Teaching GIS – Using ArcGIS Online Format:  PDF of slides; see above link. (8)    Mapping Your Career Pathway in Geography and Geotechnologies Career Pathways for multiple disciplines using Geotech and Geothinking: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7eedd711cc254ae8b228e32cb87354e3 Career Pathways Across Disciplines_ GeoTech + GeoThinking in PDF format. (9)  Teaching Modern GIS:  Approaches and Perspectives:  Panel session.  Hosts:  Brian Baldwin and Joseph Kerski. Briefing to lead the discussion:   https://storymaps.arcgis.com/briefings/533932af7ccb4c4e8efa86c738437172 Teaching Modern GIS_ Approaches & Perspectives in PDF format. Panelists:  Dr Kirk Oda – Tarrant County College  |  Dr Drew Trgovac  – ASU    |  Professor Tara Vansell – Lindenwood University   | Dr Amy Rock – Cal Poly Humboldt.  (10)   Geography Bowl Opening Remarks.  Provided 1 tough geography quiz question for the group to ponder!  (11)  Collecting Field Data with 3 ArcGIS Field Apps:  ArcGIS Field Maps, Survey123, and QuickCapture.  Workshop with Brian Baldwin, Esri. Field Data Collection Format:  PDF of slides; see above link. (12)    Enhancing Qualitative Social Science Research with GIS.   Workshop with Angela Lee, Esri. Our presentation:   https://storymaps.arcgis.com/briefings/d191bc0f99d44dfb9b84631f60619220 Enhancing Qualitative Social Science Research with GIS in PDF format. (13)  Presentation:    Future-Focused Education Strategies:  5 ways to teach about scale with interactive maps through GIS. My presentation:  https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/88a6ed6da7044f1b98ff1455f9130f95  5 Ways to Teach about Scale using ArcGIS Online in PDF format. I look forward to hearing how you might make use of these resources! --Joseph Kerski   ... View more

I have written a fundamentals of mapping and GIS in the Fourth Edition of Key Methods of Geography textbook, published by Sage Publications.  If you are seeking a single chapter about what GIS is and why it matters, this might very well fit that need.  Beyond my chapter, the book contains a great deal of pertinent content about, as the title indicates, key core methods essential for the geographic sciences, including field data collection equipment and methods, statistical analysis, spatial analysis, remote sensing, and much more.   The book was edited by the following experienced geographers who I have a great deal of respect for.  These people really know what they are doing; they have crafted a book that provides foundations but also is very practical and up-to-date, and it was a great honor to be asked to contribute a chapter to their book: Nicholas Clifford - Loughborough University, UK Meghan Cope - University of Vermont, USA Thomas Gillespie - University of California, Los Angeles, USA Joseph Kerski pictured with the new book "Key Methods in Geography" by Sage Publications. The book's chapters include identifying key literature for your assignment, interviews and focus groups, researching affect and emotion, historical and archival research, exploring the physical environment, UAS/UAV/drone research methods, case studies, scholarly writing, coding, organizing and analyzing, and much more.   The book concludes with the chapter "Doing Engaged Scholarship:  Why Methods Matter" again reflecting the practical nature of the book.    I begin my chapter with a story about crowdsourcing as a result of a potential tragedy--an oil spill off of a beach in Southern California, and build from there about what GIS is, how it is different from the GIS of the past, and why it all matters.  In the chapter I even start with challenging the definition of "map" that many people might have in their minds, nudging them to consider maps as analytical tools and not just reference documents.  I then discuss spatial data, geotechnologies, the goal of GIS, topology, spatial data, data models, spatial statistics, geoliteracy, how GIS has evolved, and encouraging the reader to consider GIS in the reader's own career pathway.  I include data quality, ethics, forces acting on GIS, and skills important to the reader seeking to use GIS for the first time or to deepen their use of it.  I did everything I could to ensure that GIS is considered a "key method" of geography and geographers, and not relegated to "just the GIS people."  I included plenty of lively and intriguing maps and illustrations throughout the chapter.   A section of my chapter on GIS. I am happy to share my chapter with you upon request but I really encourage you to investigate and use the entire book.  I highly recommend the book for faculty teaching research methods, and/or physical/cultural geography and geotechnologies, and for any student in geography, GIS, or environmental sciences.  --Joseph Kerski      ... View more

I have created a new course linked here, with a focus on geospatial data, GIS, and society.  This course invites learners to work with real data to solve problems and foster skills through a set of readings, hands-on activities, discussions, quizzes, and a final project.  I also invite instructors who seek to incorporate meaningful data and discussion about data in their courses to use all or part of this course in their own courses and programs. Course Description:   Geospatial data are the foundation upon which GIS and spatial analysis rests. As GIS has matured, the challenge has evolved from generating data to managing the enormous volume of data from government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and industry, and increasingly, from ordinary citizens through citizen science and volunteered geographic information efforts. Key to working with this volume of data are essential issues such as privacy, copyright, public domain, cost recovery, metadata standards, and data quality that GIS professionals must grapple with to be effective in the 21st Century. This class discusses and applies these issues and works with a rich array of data sources to enable effective decision-making in a Geographic Information System.  The prerequisite for this course is an introductory GIS course or similar GIS course and/or work experience. Course Questions: The course is focused on three questions: 1.  How can I find geospatial data for my projects? ✔️ 2.  How do I know if I can trust the geospatial data that I find?   In other words, how can I assess geospatial data quality? ✔️ 3.  How can I consider societal issues surrounding geospatial data and tools, including copyright, location privacy, ethics, symbology, classification methods, map projections, and others? ✔️ Course Philosophy:  Four philosophies run through the course: ✏️1.  Data is the foundation for all mapping, analysis, and decision-making that stems from that mapping and analysis.  Thus, data and data quality are vitally important to continually ask questions about, to seek, and to assess. ✏️2.  Scale matters.  Patterns and relationships may exist at one scale and not another, and vice versa.  The scale at which you are conducting your analysis and the scale at which your data has been collected and published have great influences on the patterns that you will see, and the patterns that will remain hidden. ✏️3.  You will encounter data that is understandable, and data that is confusing.    You will encounter data portals that are easy-to-use, and others that are difficult.  This is intentional:  The course instructor is not cleaning up any of the data or the data sites.  You will encounter the exact same thing in the workplace, and learning how to deal with geo-data challenges is central to the objectives of this course. ✏️4.  Today's GIS tools and open data portals are easier to use than ever before.  However, learning GIS is not just learning software interfaces and where data are located.  Central to successful use of GIS and to this course is cultivating a healthy critical view of data and of GIS tools--recognizing their benefits, and also their limitations.   Course Themes: Weekly themes of this course include: Week 1:  Spatial data and the public domain.    GIS in our everyday lives.  📖 Week 2:  Vector data model and data, portals, data quality. 📖 Week 3:  Raster data model and data, portals, location privacy. 📖 Week 4:  Data costs, local data access. 📖 Week 5:  Metadata and standards.  National and state data portals.  📖 Week 6:   National and international data infrastructures and initiatives.  📖 Week 7:  Data policies.  📖 Week 8:  Crowdsourced data.  Data disclaimers. 📖 Week 9:  Cloud computing and GIS.  Software as a service. 📖 Week 10:  The future of public domain spatial data.  📖   Course Prerequisites and History: This 10 week online course was created for a graduate program inside a university GIS program.  This course is meant to follow an introductory course covering basic GIS skills.  I have taught, assessed, and improved this course each year over the span of over 20 years and am happy to share it with the community.  The course was originally taught face-to-face, then taught online via a Learning Management System (LMS), and then moved into a space so that you can access it, above.   Course Issues, Skills, Data Sets, and Portals: Major issues addressed include:   Data sources, data representation and models, data quality, metadata, spatial data input and output, spatial analysis, location privacy, copyright, streaming vs. downloading data, on premises servers vs. open access, spatial data serving policy.  🌍 Major skills addressed include:  spatial data management, analyzing tabular information, data input and querying, locating spatial data, assessing spatial data, formatting spatial data, projecting, georeferencing, geocoding, overlay and proximity, merging, raster data analysis, preparing 3D visualizations, making decisions with GIS and data. 🌍 Major data sets used in this course:   World Resources Institute (WRI), USGS vector and raster data, US Census Bureau demographic data, historical images and maps, UAV imagery, soils and hydrography data, WWF ecoregions data, land cover data, real-time data feeds, xy coordinate data, satellite imagery, and more.  🌍 Data portals included:   ArcGIS Hub sites, ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World, USGS National Earthquake Information Center, USGS National Map, local government sources, UNEP, data.gov, state GIS portals, and others.  🌍 Course Delivery Formats: The course contents are served as an Experience Builder app.  Each tile in the graphic above links to a story map.  The introduction "row" in the Experience Builder app contains 4 elements, or tiles.  Week 1, reading across, contains 3 elements; Week 2 contains 2 elements, and so on.  Toggle to the other two pages in app to see the rest of the course. To see the course contents as a story map collection, click here.   Both Experience Builder and Story Map collections have advantages.  Consider content that you would like to host, or you want your students to host, and think about serving that content through Experience Builder, Story Map Collections, ArcGIS Hub sites, or via the ArcGIS APIs and SDKs.  By exposing your students to these many options, you foster their skills across the web GIS platform as they gain even more capability and empowerment. Course Text and Relevance: The course uses The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data as its text, that I co-authored with Jill Clark, and readings and activities from the book's associated data blog, Spatial Reserves.   The course was originally conceived by the University of Denver, and I salute Steve Hick there for his foresight in establishing and keeping this course on the DU University College GIS roster.  I changed the course over the years from a focus on a survey of spatial data types and portals to a solving problems with spatial data course with a heavy infusion of societal implications.  I would argue that this course is more relevant now than ever before, now that everyone can easily access, use, create, and share geospatial data, and societal issues surrounding location and mapping, including AI, become ever more simultaneously personal and global.  I encourage other universities and college to consider offering a "data and society" focused course.  If you do not have one at your institution, perhaps this course can provide some ideas and inspiration. The textbook, exercises, and everything a student needs to take the course are included in the Experience Builder app.  Everything a faculty member needs to incorporate the course into your own program and courses is there as well.  The only things that did not completely port from the LMS are the interactive discussion boards and the self-assessment capabilities of the quizzes.   Course Structure and Sequence: Each week of the course, a set of readings provides background, and a short activity fosters skills.  During selected weeks, a longer hands-on lab activity is included, and a short quiz for the learner to assess their progress is included.  Leading up to the last weeks of the course, a final project proposal involving GIS and public domain data is also included, to be turned in during the last week of the course. The short hands-on activities each week using ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro cover the following themes: Week 1:  Filling out a crowdsourced survey and visualizing the results in a map and dashboard. ✔️ Week 2:  Analyzing real-time x-y formatted data (earthquakes). ✔️ Week 3:  Using NREL renewable energy data to choose the optimal site for a wind farm. ✔️ Week 4:  Analyzing floodplains in Boulder County Colorado. ✔️ Week 5:  Analyzing risk to reservoirs from hurricanes in Texas. ✔️ Week 6:  Comparing national data portals in the USA and New Zealand. ✔️ Week 7:  Examining metadata and standards. ✔️ Week 8:  Examining data disclaimers, add data to crowdsourced project. ✔️ Week 9:  Using a map package to examine ecoregions in Brazil, save to the cloud. ✔️ Week 10:  Final project presentation.  ✔️ The longer lab hands-on activities using ArcGIS Pro cover the following themes: 1.  Examining the temporal and spatial pattern of zebra mussels invasive species in the USA and Canada. 2.  Assessing the optimal locations for expanding tea cultivation in Kenya. 3.  Siting a fire tower in the Loess Hills, Nebraska. 4.  Creating an ecotourism map of New Zealand. Because of the course's short (10-week) duration, time did not permit me to include all of the lab exercises that we created for the public domain data and book.  However, the additional 6 lab exercises are here.   These additional labs cover the following themes: Climate Change (Coastal issues) Locating A High Speed Internet Cafe Flood Risk Analysis Land Use Suitability 3 hazards:  Natural and Human-Caused Hurricane hazards assessment The syllabus, objectives, software, discussion, quizzes, and final projects are all included, and the course is meant to be taught and learned in the following sequence: Week "O":  (before the course begins and during Week 1): Goals, instructor information, syllabus, software, announcements.  ➡️ Week 1:  Discussion 1, Lab 1. ➡️ Week 2:  Discussion 2, Quiz 1. ➡️ Week 3:  Discussion 3, Lab 2. ➡️Week 4:  Discussion 4, Quiz 2. ➡️Week 5:  Discussion 5, Lab 3, Quiz 3. ➡️ Week 6:  Discussion 6 ➡️Week 7:  Discussion 7, Lab 4, Quiz 4. ➡️Week 8:  Discussion 8  ➡️Week 9:  Discussion 9, Quiz 5.  ➡️Week 10:  Discussion 10, Final Project. I look forward to hearing your reactions to this course and how you are making use of it.   ... View more

How can Earth changes be effectively, quickly, and engagingly taught?  How can remote sensing principles be taught in an interactive way?  The new Landsat Explorer app can serve as a tool, method, and a data set to do just that, as this essay and lesson explains. The ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World is a collection of authoritative, metadata-rich geographic information from around the globe. Its 8,500 layers includes maps, data layers, and apps.  The Atlas is "living" in 2 ways:  (1) The content updates continuously with new resources; and (2) Some of the layers are from live feeds, including earthquakes, wildfire perimeters, traffic, streamflow, weather, and many more.  The ArcGIS Living Atlas apps (https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/en/apps/) are web mapping applications that use selected content from ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World on specific themes, topics, and tools.  They offer several advantages in teaching:  They require no sign in; only a web browser and an internet connection is needed. They point to data that are rich in content and illustrate that we are living in a measured and complex world.  They feature maps as analytical tools (why things are where they are) and not just reference documents (where something is).  They cover topics and themes that are widely taught, including ocean chemistry, population change, precipitation, natural hazards, and many more.   Thus they can be used in GIS courses and in courses outside of GIS, such as physical and cultural geography, economics, history, city planning, agriculture, and others.   They focus on change over space and time, central to many disciplines.  They highlight the connection between Earth spheres (the lithosphere, atmosphere, anthroposphere, hydrosphere, biosphere, and others).  They give students the tools and data to think spatially and realize the power of GIS.  They are tied to real locations, real data, and real issues, and thus can be used to teach current events (illustrated with a lesson on current wildfires, here).  They offer multiple levels of instruction—using the app as is without signing in (Level I), bringing in the data into ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Pro for further analysis and adding additional layers (Level II), and using the ideas presented in the apps for students to develop their own apps (Level III).  They touch on the forces and trends of community science, storytelling with maps, and Web-enabled GIS and data as services.   Let’s illustrate the above advantages in instruction with one new, amazing app:  The Landsat Explorer App.  The Landsat Explorer App Landsat is the longest running spaceborne earth imaging and observation program in history, managed by the USGS and NASA. The Landsat program began in 1972, with the launch of Landsat 1, providing a long-running continuous scientific record for critical and reliable observation and analysis of Earth processes and changes over time.  The Landsat Level-2 multispectral imagery is available in ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World as a dynamic time enabled image service, accessible across the ArcGIS system and used to power this app.  Use the app to understand land use and land change associated with urbanization, drought, wildfire, volcanism, and other natural processes, processes associated with human activity such as urbanization, deforestation, reforestation, construction of reservoirs, and processes that represent a combination of natural and human-influenced change, such as coastal erosion, glacial retreat and other climate change indicators, and more.   The app’s item page provides more detail.  For more information, see these essays about the launch (https://www.esri.com/arcgis-blog/products/arcgis-living-atlas/imagery/landsat-explorer-earth-science-and-observation-for-all/), and its new data  https://community.esri.com/t5/arcgis-living-atlas-blog/unlock-the-wealth-of-information-in-landsat-level/ba-p/1388354.    The app offers an easy-to-use interface that makes it intuitive to teach with.  Some of the key capabilities include:  Visual exploration of a dynamic global mosaic of the best available Landsat scenes for any area of the planet and across a 50 year time period.  On-the-fly multispectral band combinations and indices for visualization and analysis.  Interactive Find a Scene by location, sensor, time, and cloud cover.  Analyze change over space and time; compare the same area with different renderings, using the Swipe and Animation tools.  Create threshold masks and temporal profiles for vegetation, water, land surface temperature, and more.  The Landsat Explorer Interface  The interface of the Landsat Explorer is straightforward and intuitive, but it offers a great deal of power!  See some of its main features in the graphic below.  Try them all!      5 Selected Investigations using the Landsat Explorer App   Access the Landsat Explorer app and try the following 5 activities, but we also encourage you and your students to do your own further investigations.   Go to > Interesting places and explore a few listed here.  One of our favorites listed is Richat, in Mauritania (shown here).  Conduct your own investigation as to the origin of Richat and encourage students to do so of a place they are interested in.  Use the search tool to go beyond the Interesting Places collection to your own location, or another area you are interested in.  Some of our favorites are coastal England at Eastbourne, central Saudi Arabia’s center pivot irrigation circles, and the active volcanoes on Kamchatka.   Also use the Find a Scene to find a scene of a particular year and cloud cover for a particular area.  The Find a Scene mode lets you specify a year and see all available images for that entire year in a single calendar view. Images meeting the selected cloud cover tolerance are displayed as solid blocks, while available scenes that do not meet the cloud tolerance are shown as outlines.      Use the Swipe and Animate tools on the left and select scenes at specific dates to see change over time.   Compare, say, a rapidly changing place such as Kuala Lumpur, central Saudi Arabia (shown below) or Dallas to a slowly changing place such as southeastern Libya or western Kansas USA.  What changes are occurring, and why are they occurring at different rates?  How does the rate of change in your area compare to those in other locations?        See one of the most rapidly changing places on the Earth, in Rondonia, Brazil, here and below. Why is it changing so rapidly?    Compare the spatial resolution, the coverage, and the band combinations of the different Landsat missions (4, 5, 7, 8, 9) that you have access to in this app.  Use the information on each scene that you examine to reinforce concepts in remote sensing such as the electromagnetic spectrum.   Use the temporal profile to analyze moisture, water, surface temperature, and other variables across a scene, and compare these variables to an area in a completely different biome (example below).   Use the Analysis > Mask tool to quickly delineate surface conditions, such as surface water, temperature, and vegetation, with spectral and index thresholding.  Render the results as a solid color mask on top of the imagery or as a clipping mask to reveal only the pixels within the specified threshold.   Using these tools, you could show areas with the healthiest vegetation and in the same area, show the hottest surface temperature in an area, to determine if there is a correlation between the lack of vegetation and the hottest surface areas (hottest areas around Denver on a specific data shown below).    Teaching Recommendations   (1)  Use the above guidance but use the tools and data behind them to meet your own curricular goals.   While using the tools, ask “What would happen if we changed the way the imagery is rendered?  What if we looked at this region of the world instead of that region?  What if we changed the scale?  How does where we live compare to areas nearby and far from us?   (2)  While using the tools, ask students, “what’s where, why is it there, and why should we care?”  Why should we care about [water quality / deforestation / coastal erosion / and other pressing issues of our planet”?    (3)  The tools are engaging and useful, but teaching and learning with GIS is never about just gaining GIS skills. While teaching about the tools, simultaneously teach about content—whether that content is focused on healthy vs diseased vegetation, irrigated vs non irrigated agriculture, land use change, biomes and ecoregions, the influence of topography and oceans on climate and subsequently on human settlement, and other themes.    (4)  Compare the resolution and band combinations available in the Landsat Explorer to the imagery in the Wayback Imagery App https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/wayback/#active=60013&mapCenter=-115.29850%2C36.06400%2C14)  and the Sentinel-2 Land Cover Explorer app (https://livingatlas.arcgis.com/landcoverexplorer/#mapCenter=55.246%2C25.065%2C11&mode=step&timeExtent=2017%2C2022&year=2022).   What is similar about the imagery between these 3 apps?  What is different?  How is each of the apps useful in investigating Earth processes and changes?  (4)  Get into the data behind the app—use this opportunity to investigate Landsat and other types of remotely sensed imagery.  What are its advantages?  What are its limitations?  Investigate some of the data and society discussions via this book and blog.  For Further Exploration  Bern Szukalski and I taught about the Landsat Explorer tool in our recent Esri GIS Higher Education chat, along with other ArcGIS Living Atlas apps that you can explore in this story map.  The recording of that chat is in the archives for March 2024, here.     I look forward to hearing how you are using the app!    ... View more