Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

I have recently updated a document entitled "Why GIS in Education Matters" and have placed it online.  It represents my attempt to provide the most compelling and important reasons to teach and learn with Geographic Information Systems in a concise document that takes up no more than both sides of a single page.  While we have discussed other documents, messages, lessons, and videos in this blog over the years that are tailored to specific educational levels, needs, and content areas, this document contains the "essentials" that I have found resonate with the widest group of educators.  These essentials include critical thinking, career pathways, spatial thinking, the whys of where, asking good questions, sustainability and green technology, and mapping changes over space and time. I am interested in your reactions to this document:  What is missing from this document? What is useful about this document?  In what settings could you use this in your own work with fellow faculty, with faculty from other disciplines, with administrators, with parents, and with students?  What do you include in your own documents with similar goals? Why GIS in Education Matters, brief document outlining the value that teaching and learning with GIS brings to education. ... View more

I think many of you can relate to this: When you embed a video in a story map or Map Note, when it is done playing, by default it shows you the “related” videos – and “related” is definitely in quotes!  Sometimes these are really embarrassing and sit there in your story map as a set of “tiled” choices, OR worse yet, are on the “big screen” when you are presenting to a group.  Here is a little tip to avoid that: So, for example, compare this embed video of mine (you can skip to just a few seconds to the end to test it): https://www.youtube.com/embed/4IoImv0SyLM?rel=0 versus this one:  https://www.youtube.com/embed/4IoImv0SyLM The one with the rel=0 does not show the “related” ones at the end! If you forget the ?rel=0 code, then in YouTube just go to Share, Embed, and Show More, and you’ll see the choice there that you can Uncheck to avoid the related video display. Thanks to Owen Evans for his help with this. ... View more

One of the resources that I frequently use in instruction, and make publicly available in the hopes that it will be useful to other teachers and learners of GIS, remote sensing, geography, STEM, field methods, environmental studies, and related fields is my video channel, Geographyuberalles, or "geography is all".  I started the channel in 2008, and due to its current size, the best way to find something on it is to use the channel's search tool to search on terms such as Esri Maps for Office, ArcGIS Online, rivers, transportation, deserts, smartphones, geocaching, weather, population, professional development, or something else.  I also have provided an index of some of the most popular titles under categories such as "why geography matters", "oceans", and many more. Another way to find categories of videos there is to browse the channel's playlists.  The channel's playlists include a series on GPS-to-GIS, several courses I teach such as GIS and Public Domain Data, Creating Story Maps for education, Scale Matters, A Day in the Life of a Spatial Thinker, and A Deeper Dive into ArcGIS Online. There is even a series of geo-related song parodies that are truly awful, just for fun.  Some of these videos are mirrored on the Esri Education Team's video channel.  Keep in mind that a much more comprehensive and professional set of videos exists on the Esri Video Channel.  The Esri video channel includes new developments in Esri's technologies, the complete plenary presentations at each year's Esri User Conference, and much more. Give some of these videos a try and let me know what has worked for your instructional goals.  Also, if there are videos that you are particularly in need of that I might be able to create, I am happy to consider doing so. Over 2,600 GIS, GPS, STEM, Geography, Place, videos now online. This series of GPS to GIS is one of the many series' of videos available on the channel Geographyuberalles. ... View more

I am teaching a course this coming semester at the University of Denver entitled "Why Maps Still Matter--Geotechnologies for a Smarter Planet".  I would like to describe the course here with a larger purpose:  To start a discussion on the best approaches for teaching spatial analysis, mapping, and GIS for the "non-GIS community." Because my course is a part of the university's enrichment program, which is designed for the "love of learning" for the general public, I deliberately focused the title on something that everyone is familiar with--maps.  I also wanted to make a point about the relevancy of mapping, and that spatial analysis can help people make smarter decisions.  A partial version of the course description follows; the full description is here.Have you ever used your smartphone to locate the nearest coffee shop? Do you wear a fitness tracker? Have you played with Google Earth? What’s the common element among these helpful (and fun!) tools? Geotechnologies, such as GIS, GPS, Remote Sensing—all examples of the growing field of mapmaking. The impact of these technologies goes way beyond locating your favorite retailer; today’s maps can actually help to make the world safer, healthier and smarter. Join geographer and educator Joseph Kerski for a journey through some of the major issues of our 21st-century world to discover how maps are changing the ways we understand our planet. From natural disasters to global warming, from immigration patterns to transportation, from agriculture to epidemics, today’s maps not only provide location information, but also trends, projections and analyses. How exactly do today’s maps work? Each class features animations, videos and live web-based maps to illustrate advanced capabilities. Why are scale, resolution, data quality, projections, datums and other fundamentals of mapping still important? What impact are crowdsourcing, cloud-based computing and privacy having on mapping? How are maps being used to create a smarter planet? Map everything from real-time airplane locations to your last hike, explore some of the major challenges facing our 21st-century world, and discover why maps still matter. Recommended but not required: Internet access outside of the classroom; laptop or tablet for use in class. To get psyched about the course, watch the video:  Why get excited about web maps? What is the benefit of teaching mapping, spatial analysis, and/or GIS for the general public?  I know that many of us are quite passionate about sharing what we do and why it all matters to others, but, what are your goals in doing so?  Is it worth the effort? How have you taught these concepts and skills for the general public, or faculty or students outside your own discipline?  What are the approaches that you and your students have found to be the most helpful?  What activities have you included?  I will include a wide variety of topics and themes, including population change, water, lifestyles and demographics, business locations, energy, current events, natural hazards, and health, to name a few.   I will include a variety of tools, including ArcGIS Online, the Change Matters viewer, WorldMapper's cartograms, Esri Maps for Office, and the Urban Observatory.  What is the most suitable length for a course like this?  In the above case, I am teaching for a total of 7.5 hours, over three Thursday evenings.   This one is face-to-face, but since ArcGIS Online is the main tool I will be using, it could easily be taught online. Teaching "Why Maps Matter" for the General Public. I look forward to hearing about your experiences in this area of teaching to an audience outside of your own community. ... View more

What's it like on Planet Earth at the spot where you are located right now?  Use the new Field Notes - Earth to find out.  The app, available on iOS and Android, uses the power of three new global maps to help answer important questions about the current and future conditions on Planet Earth. The three maps in the app include people (world population), life (ecological land units), and oceans (world seafloor geomorphology).  The app is an example of some of the rich content available from the Esri Living Atlas of the World and was built using Esri's AppStudio for ArcGIS. To use the app, either choose your current location, or any place on the planet that you are interested in, and start learning.  I used the app last week in Washington DC while I was there for the National Conference on Geography Education, which I thought was the perfect venue for using it.  In that location, the climate is predicted to be much warmer by 2050; it is 1,038 miles to the nearest volcano, but it is only 74 miles to a location that experienced a recent earthquake.  I can find out about the terrain, the nearest available farmland and fresh water, and much more.  The best part:  I can also add a second location to compare and contrast the two locations side-by-side. Using the Field Notes Earth app--some screens and information that you will discover. For another reflection on this app, see the article from Time magazine. In instruction, you could use this app to spark meaningful conversations about physical geography, cultural geography, environmental science, and much more, with themes including change over time and space, human-environment interactions, and others.   Use it but also get outside and observe using your five senses.  I daresay that this is the type of tool that you could also use in your "elevator pitch" when you are asked in your everyday experience, "What is GIS?" or "Why does geography matter"? I look forward to your reactions and comments. ... View more

I just finished teaching a course this summer for educators, 5 weeks long, via www.enetlearning.org, a professional development organization for educators, entitled Teaching Geography in the 21 st Century.   I describe it here with video link and text:  http://blogs.esri.com/esri/gisedcom/2015/06/12/geography-summer-camp-online-5-week-geography-course/ and intro video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7e6IN5IWW4&list=PLiC1i3ejK5vv0m8MT9Dz87P4HhLcLtfyJ&index=1 Platform:  Moodle, an open source Learning Management System.  ArcGIS Online worked very well in this LMS. The course contained: 5 weeks of content. 7 videos:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiC1i3ejK5vv0m8MT9Dz87P4HhLcLtfyJ) 12 discussion boards 5 hands-on sessions containing 20 total hands-on activities that mostly were bases on ArcGIS Online, but also Urban Observatory, Gapminder, Show Mapping Worlds, and the Change Matters viewer. 5 short quizzes Subject matter:  population change, land use, climate and weather, natural hazards, business patterns, water, ecoregions, and demographics/lifestyles.  Themes:  systems thinking, scale, critical thinking, inquiry, and problem-solving.  3-part objective:  developing core content knowledge, geographic skilsl including the use of geotechnologies, and developing the geographic / spatial perspective.  Each week began with a few “local context” questions.  For example, in the unit on natural hazards, I asked the participants to think about a memorable natural hazard  that they had personally experienced, and to name the 3 most common natural hazards in their own community. There were also additional discussions in a “water cooler” area of the course, such as about the ConnectEd program, how to teach current events using ArcGIS Online, and so on.  At the end I included another discussion forum where the participants outlined their plan of how they would implement what they have learned (which I think is something key that needs to be included). Reactions:   The 45 MAGNIFICENT participants in this course (mostly K-12 geography with some STEM educators; a few university level instructors, from all over the USA plus a few other countries) loved the hands-on work, the 3 part focus on content/skills/perspectives, the networking that the course offered, and in particular, ArcGIS Online!   ... View more

Teaching remote sensing?  This web mapping application can be a very useful teaching tool.  The web mapping application covers the whole planet, with mapping services that are updated daily with new Landsat 8 scenes. Access many band combinations and indices by hovering over the tools to the left of the map image and selecting among the following: Agriculture: Highlights agriculture in bright green. Bands 6,5,2 Natural Color: Sharpened with 25m 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 for different indices at larger scales based on a user-selected location enables examination of changes over years or over seasons.  It also 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 date, cloud cover, and a spectral profile about each scene.  The Bookmark tool allows access to pre-selected interesting locations. The application is written using Web AppBuilder for ArcGIS accessing image services using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript, with access to the following Image Services: Landsat Multispectral on AWS – 8-band multispectral 30m resolution image services and functions that provide different band combinations and indices. Landsat Pan-sharpened on AWS – Panchromatic-sharpened imagery; 4-band (Reg, Green, Blue and NIR); 30m resolution. Landsat Panchromatic on AWS – Panchromatic imagery; 15m resolution. These services can also be accessed through the public Landsat on AWS group on ArcGIS Online.  You truly have "the world at your fingertips" because you can add these services as layers to your own maps or maps from others, or you can use the above web mapping application as a standalone map.  But there is a third option:  The web mapping application is also embedded on the Unlock Earth's Secrets page, which also is useful for instruction, with featured places around the planet scrolling through time. Think of the above as solid introductory segments to get your students interested in the topic of remote sensing.  These maps and applications require very little geospatial technology skills, allowing you to focus on concepts and principles while exploring some truly engaging content and places. To dig deeper, delve into the many powerful remote sensing functions available in ArcGIS Desktop.  One source for engaging, hands-on activities, is Kathryn Keranen and Bob Kolvoord's book Making Spatial Decisions Using GIS and Remote Sensing:  A Workbook. Give these resources a try! Landsat 8 Web Mapping Application. ... View more

Dr Werner Kuhn from the University of Muenster and the University of California Santa Barbara proposed 10 core concepts of spatial information in the hopes of moving the Geographic Information Science community forward in terms of transdisciplinary research.  The core concepts may enable the community to come to a consensus on what spatial information is and how it can be used, but also help those in other disciplines find connection points to the GIScience community.  The concepts include location, neighborhood, field, object, network, event, granularity, accuracy, meaning, and value.  I like the way Kuhn thinks of location, not as a property, but as a relation: "Nothing has an intrinsic location, even if it always remains where it is."  "How one locates things depends on the context in which the location information is produced and used."  This can be effectively taught in our discussions with students about relative versus absolute location; even our "absolute" locations are from human-derived constructs such as latitude/longitude or street addresses.  Neighborhoods get at the heart of regions and the relationship of places in time and space.  Fields describe phenomena that have a scalar or vector attribute everywhere in a space of interest, answering the question "What is here?" Objects describe individuals that have an identity as well as spatial, temporal, and thematic properties, answering questions such as "What are the parts of this feature?"  Networks are related to connectivity, shortest path distances, measures of centrality.  Events answer questions about change.  Granularity is all about the size of the units on which we are reporting information.  Accuracy is about correctness; meaning is about making sense of things, and value "answers questions about the roles played by spatial information in society." I believe that these concepts as a common language can build needed bridges with our colleagues in other disciplines.  I agree with Kuhn that we need to map these concepts across disciplines. Despite the advances made in research and curriculum development, I still worry that we at times are "preaching to the choir" and that our research and other efforts in promoting spatial thinking and learning would be greatly enriched by increased dialogue with other communities.  I also believe that the concepts also provide a good framework to help guide educators on teaching key spatial constructs.  Beyond education, a better awareness of spatial information can help decision makers to better understand environmental and social problems that are increasingly complex, intertwined, and that increasingly affect our everyday lives.  And that awareness can be fostered in part through building research bridges. How do Kuhn's concepts compare to the list of spatial concepts on TeachSpatial, or Dr Phil Gersmehl's list of spatial concepts, or with my own definition of spatial thinking?  Have you been involved with Geographic Information Systems and Technology research, such as iGuess, SPLINT, or other efforts?  I invite you to share below the efforts you are working on. Spatial Thinking: Kuhn's 10 Core Concepts. Photograph by Joseph Kerski. ... View more

Folks: This could connect well with geography, economics, and business discussions about the variability of the cost of living by location, and why the cost varies. http://blogs.esri.com/esri/gisedcom/2015/05/29/a-sale-of-two-cities/ “The grass is always greener on the other side.  But how much more ‘green’ does it take to live in San Francisco versus West Palm Beach?  Use this map to compare the cost of living in your dream city.” So reads the description to one of the maps currently in the Esri “coolmaps” gallery, specifically, the map linked to the above essay. As shown in this example, I used the map to compare San Francisco California to Las Vegas Nevada.  San Francisco is more expensive in housing, utilities, groceries, and health, while Las Vegas was more expensive only in transportation. The mean cost of living among the 5 measures was 67% higher for San Francisco.  This makes sense, given the high cost of housing that San Francisco has long experienced.  San Francisco’s rapid transit and bus system, combined perhaps with more people living in closer proximity to their workplaces, made the transportation costs lower than in Las Vegas. ... View more

My colleague James Rattling Leaf and I created a story map on the Lakota language.   Our reasons for doing so are several.  We have long been interested in and collaborated on projects involving education, maps, and GIS, and wanted to illustrate how the story maps platform can be used to learn and teach about Native Languages, beginning with Lakota. When you access the story map, and step through its contents, you will be able to hear audio of a dozen words that are in both Lakota and English, a photograph of each spoken feature, and what that feature looks like on a satellite image map.  By coupling visual cues with audio, we hope to inspire others living on the Lakota lands, those working with language projects such as Recovering Voices, at the WoLakota Project, at the Language Conservancy, and others, to take these ideas and do even more with the story maps platform.  For example, you could embed these story maps in web pages; you could add video to the maps (as we illustrated with the word "lake"), you could create different types of story maps, and much more.  For learning about language, place, biology, history, geography, and many other themes, integrating audio and video with maps is becoming a powerful and yet easy-to-understand medium. Second, we are interested in the issue for reasons deeper than our affinity for languages, geography, and GIS.  As noted on Lakhota.org, "Native languages in the United States are in the throes of a prolonged and deadly crisis. For the past 400 years, Native Peoples and their languages have been steadily and undeniably disappearing. Though the historical fate of Native Peoples has been reluctantly acknowledged, less is publicly known about the associated fate of their languages."  And furthermore, "Lakota is dangerously close to extinction. Recent linguistic surveys and anecdotal evidence reveal that Lakota speakers of all abilities, on and around the reservations of North Dakota and South Dakota, amounted to fewer than 6,000 persons, representing just 14% of the total Lakota population. Today, the average Lakota speaker is near 65 years old." Furthermore, geography, place, location, and culture are reflected in the Lakota and other Native languages, making story maps an excellent tool for teaching and learning.  For example, according to Lakhota.org, "Nature is used as the primary source for the metaphor models," and "Lakota is also very good at emphasizing the finer attributes of travel. A person can be considered to be coming or going to or from specific places in many levels detail. Lakota greetings themselves reflect this tendency, where in English "welcome" is literally Lakota - "Good that you came," And "goodbye," is "Travel well." The language also closely linked the land to the people through geographical names and stories.  [] A word like woímnayankel, expresses notions of awe, humility, and interconnectedness. A Lakota speaker might use this when describing the experience of the northern lights (aurora borealis). The word expresses the humility that a person feels when confronted by the awesomeness of nature while also feeling intimately connected with it." How might you use story maps, and the ideas presented through this Lakota language story map, in your own work? Lakota Wicowoyake Canku owapi: Lakota Language Story Map ... View more

Hi Everyone: This post from "Tomorrow's Professor" offers advice on an issue that I’m not sure we’ve discussed in this listserv, but I’ve talked with numerous folks over the years about:  You have a grant or a mandate or idea to conduct an educator PD or a student summer camp with geotechnologies.  Now, how can you effectively get the word out, given our fragmentation in the education system, so that you can actually have warm bodies in your workshop?   This highlights campus-based programs but most of the advice applies to those run by all kinds of organizations.  Five Ways to Double Enrollment for K-12 Summer College Programs Snippet: So you got the funding. Terrific. Now to find 30 middle school students who want to spend six weeks in the summer writing poetry on campus. No, you said in the proposal that you'd get 40 students. And that they'd be from backgrounds underrepresented in STEM with a B average in math. Doesn't matter how many students you said you'd get, what matters is that the funder--NSF, your city, Some Endowment for Something--loved your idea and now you need students to sign up. Not just sign up. Sign up. Stay all summer. Attend workshops throughout the year. Fill out surveys along the way. AND come back next year. It can be done. But it'll take planning and some getting off your campus. Here are 5 steps you can take to ensure you have your 30 or 40 or whatever number sounded nice and round in that meeting a year ago. http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/tomprof/posting.php?ID=1412 Joseph Kerski Joseph J. Kerski, Ph.D., GISP |  Education Manager Esri | 1 International Court | Broomfield CO  80021-3200 | USA Tel 303-449-7779, ext. 1-8237 | Cell-Mobile 303-625-3925 jkerski@esri.com | esri.com Twitter:  http://twitter.com/josephkerski ... View more