Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

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

Which answer below identifies the correct theme of this map? Choro-quiz question 1: Farms, small towns, or soybeans? The answer:  Soybean acreage.  Too easy?  Well, then, see if you can identify the correct theme of his map: Choropleth Map Quiz #2: Mobile homes, divorced people, or never married people?e  The answer?  Percent of housing units that are mobile homes. For many of us, the word "quizzes" or "tests", conjures up memories of stress or drudgery. For the educators reading these words, who deal with quizzes and tests on a daily basis, you know very well that creating quizzes that allow you to truly assess your students' progress, that engage your students, and that provide a way for them to reflect upon their learning and at the same time, move forward with content and skills is no easy task. But how would you feel if some of the quizzes were of the type that you just took above?   The above choropleth map quiz, or "choro-quiz", which I provide in its entirety as an attachment to this essay with 6 questions, invites students to think spatially about patterns, relationships, and trends.  Ask them to defend their answer with data.  Investigate each incorrect answer as well the correct answers and the reasons for the patterns that are shown. In the first example above, you could investigate satellite imagery or land use, determining why "land in farms" and "small rural communities" extends to a greater area than does the "soybean belt" above.  In the second example above, students may have read about the higher divorce rate in Nevada, making that answer seem plausible, except when you investigate the area south of Hoover Dam and realize that you are looking at the mobile population along the Colorado River. This type of quiz is easy to create in ArcGIS Desktop, which I used above, or ArcGIS Online. You could use static screen shots or in the case of ArcGIS Online, create a presentation, embed the quiz in a web page, or create a storymap for your quiz. Depending on the background or educational level of the students, you can change the scale from countries to states or provinces, and smaller units down to the neighborhood level, if you have the data.  You can also make the correct answer fairly obvious, or create one or more choices that seem plausible.  You can use different techniques as well, such as my Weird Earth and Name that Place quizzes.  Stuck?  Would you like to see an answer key?  The answer key is included in the attachment.  How might you be able to use this technique in your own instruction? ... View more

Teaching Geography for the 21st Century eNetLearning Certified Facilitators Provided for Each Course Video:  Teaching Geography in the 21st Century: Course Overview - YouTube DATES, TIMES, NUMBER OF SESSIONS: Check the course catalog for dates athttp://www.enetlearning.org/course-catalog-and-descriptions/. COURSE CONTENT: Fundamental to geography is the study of issues surrounding land use, natural hazards, population, economics, land use, and political issues, which will be emphasized in this course. However, as geography encompasses all that is in the world, at multiple places, scales, and time periods, it is impossible to cover its breadth in the short time that our course will run. Therefore, this course will touch on these issues but will focus on how to use 21st Century perspectives, themes, and tools to teach these issues. Rural, Urban, Economic, Land Use, and Population Issues: Over the 5 weeks of this course, participants will deepen their understanding of and ability to effectively teach population dynamics (including such concepts as settlement, land use, age, birth rate, growth rate, and human-environment interaction), land use issues (such as zoning, sense of place), urban issues (such as historical and current development of cities, site vs. situation, and challenges facing cities), and economic geography (including industrialization, employment, measures of development). Core Geography Themes: Embedded in studying these issues are core geography themes such as considerations of scale in patterns and processes, interpreting maps and analyzing geospatial data, understanding and explaining the implications of associations, networks, and interconnections among phenomena in places, defining regions and the regionalization process, and understanding the nature of and limitations of geographic data. Spatial Perspectives and Tools: The spatial perspective is critical to understanding geographical content and processes. Being competent and confident in the application of the spatial perspective to geographical understanding enhances and strengthens our ability to communicate and teach about human geography. A number of powerful web mapping and related tools are now available for the geography instructor, and this course builds familiarity and confidence in using these tools through a series of hands-on activities. ... View more

Folks: I have over 2,500 videos on STEM, place, GIS, education, geography on: http://www.youtube.com/geographyuberalles --Joseph Kerski ... View more

I recently mentioned that maps, tools, and applications in ArcGIS Online continue to expand, highlighting the new map showing the distribution of Starbucks as an example. Another example touches on a subject that many students know very little about--agriculture.  We have written about this topic in the past, offering curricular resources such as this one that asks students to analyze the distribution of four crops in the USA  and this one asking students to investigate the distribution of five crops around the world using ArcGIS.  A starting point for such investigations is simple but powerful maps of agricultural data, such as this one showing the acres of total cropland by county in the USA as a percentage of total land in acres.  The data comes from the 2007 Census of Agriculture. Does the pattern of agricultural land as a percentage of total land surprise you?  Do the statistics that are visible when you select a county, indicating how much of the cropland is harvested, surprise you?  What are some of the reasons for the spatial patterns that you see?  If you live in the USA, how does your own county compare to the others in your region and across the country?  What are some factors that explain how much land in a county is dedicated to agriculture?  How would you rank the following factors:  Soil health and type, climate, growing seasons, frequency of hailstorms and floods, landforms, relief, urban areas, and the height of the water table?  Zoom in on some of these counties, change the basemap to satellite image, and examine the type of farms and ranches.  Do the croplands rely on precipitation alone or are the croplands irrigated?  If they are irrigated, are they irrigated from a canal or from wells? Change the style--the colors and classification method.  How do these changes affect the way you understand the cropland patterns?  Based on your answers above to the importance of factors explaining cropland patterns, use "Modify Map" and then the "Add" button to find, add, and investigate these other factors.  For example, add the Crops 2009 map by "hillrc" to examine the type of crops grown in Indiana.  Which crop type(s) exhibit the most intensive agricultural land use?  If you are logged in using an ArcGIS Organizational subscription, search the "Landscape" group under Esri Map Layers for USA Land Cover GAP and soil layers.  Also, change the basemap to topographic or add USGS topographic maps to determine the effect of landforms and steepness of terrain on crops. Sort the table and find the counties with the highest percentage of their land in crops. Then, change the style and choose a different attribute to map, such as average size of farms, cotton or soybeans, orchards, or milk cows.  This single table of data contains many variables that can be mapped, compared, and contrasted. How might you use these maps and resources in your own instruction? Cropland in Use Map of the USA in ArcGIS Online. ... View more

Maps, tools, and applications in ArcGIS Online continue to expand, affording exciting new opportunities for teaching and learning.  One of the new maps highlights the new capability of generating “heat maps” by showing the distribution of Starbucks coffee locations.  The map is quick to load but contains 18,680 Starbucks around the world.  The points are grouped at a small scale, for analyzing regional and continental patterns, and at a large scale, for analyzing patterns within a metropolitan area.  Examine this map via the above link, shown below, guiding students through inquiry using some of the following questions followed by investigations. Does the pattern of Starbucks in Manhattan surprise you?  What are some of the reasons for the spatial pattern?  How do the number and pattern compare to other boroughs of New York City, to your own city, and to other cities around the world?   What are some factors that explain how Starbucks determines where to locate?  How do these factors and the spatial pattern compare to other coffee-oriented businesses, and to other food-related businesses, and to non-food businesses? Make the two heat maps associated with the Starbucks locations at the two different scales visible.  A heat map is another way to visualize data, creating a “density surface” of the points, with brighter oranges and yellows indicating a higher density, and greens and blues indicating a lower density.  What are the differences between the heat maps at the two different scales?  How does the heat map help you understand the clustering of the Starbucks locations?  Starting in March 2015, you can now easily create heatmaps of any point data using ArcGIS online. This map isn’t a fabrication created for educational use:  Indeed, Starbucks uses Esri GIS solutions at many levels and for many reasons, from managing its suppliers to packaging operations to selecting optimal retail outlet sites.  During the unit where you and your students are exploring the map, you could show this video from the Esri User Conference where Starbucks GIS analysts explain why and how they use Esri GIS technology to make their business more efficient and sustainable.   For more detail,  your students could read and reflect upon this article in Forbes written about how big data helps retailers like Starbucks pick store locations. A related mapping application in the “coolmaps” gallery allows you to filter stores by the average income in neighborhoods in San Francisco, California, and to buffer the most effective distance for a mobile “coupon” message to potential customers.  If you are interested in analyzing patterns of other businesses, the locations of thousands of businesses are included in the Esri online products Business Analyst, Business Analyst Online, and Community Analyst. How might you use these maps and resources in your own teaching? Starbucks in New York City - locations and heatmap. ... View more

Those of us in GIS education continually strive to ensure that our teaching methods adhere to respected and innovative learning styles.  Adult learning theorist David Kolb's Experiential Learning Theory (1984) works on two levels:  A four stage cycle of learning and four separate learning styles.  I believe Kolb's cycle and styles can help inform how we can more effectively teach with GIS and about GIS. Kolb's experiential learning style theory includes these "stops" along a cycle:  1.  Concrete Experience, where a new experience of situation is encountered, such as what happens while performing a task, followed by 2. Reflective Observation of the new experience, followed by 3. Abstract Conceptualization, where reflection gives rise to a new idea, or a modification of an existing abstract concept, and, finally 4. Active Experimentation, where the learner applies the experience to the world around them to see what results.  At first glance, pausing at each of these stops seems like something we already do in our GIS-based assignments. However, at times we hear from students who feel that they are "going through the motions" in technical tasks and aren't assimilating and conceptualizing what they are doing.  Therefore, a critical examination from time to time of how we are enabling students to reflect upon their learning and apply it may be challenging, but helpful as we strive to improve the effectiveness of our instruction. Kolb's learning styles attempt to identify an individual's predominant way of learning, and include (1) Diverging--those who watch from different perspectives; they are good brainstormers. (2) Assimilating--those who prefer a concise, logical explanation and approach.  They are good organizers.  (3) Converging--those who can solve problems and will use their learning to find solutions to practical issues. (4) Accommodating--those who prefer "hands-on" learning, often rely on intuition rather than logic, are able to meet challenges, and who like new experiences. Kolb's learning stages and cycle could be used by GIS educators to critically evaluate how they are teaching, and ensure that they design GIS activities to be carried out in ways that offer each learner the chance to engage in the manner that suits them best. Also, the activities should be taught in ways that usually take students through the whole cycle. Kolb believes that the learner must be involved in the planning of the learning experience if experiential learning is to be fully effective.  How can we ensure that the learner has a say in our GIS courses, over and above the standard "GIS project" assignment? Kolb, D. A. (1984). Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development (Vol. 1). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. How might you use Kolb's Learning Cycles when you teach GIS? ... View more

A fascinating and practical book entitled Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning by James R. Davis and Bridget D. Arend is a resource for more purposeful, effective, and enjoyable university teaching.  In addition, I believe that the seven ways presented by the authors provide a useful framework for instruction focused on spatial thinking and geotechnologies.  The seven ways include behavioral learning, cognitive learning, learning through inquiry, learning with mental models, learning through groups and teams, learning through virtual realities, and experiential learning.   Each way of learning is associated with intended learning outcomes, or what students learn, and is accomplished through specific methods.  For example, the intended learning outcomes in learning through inquiry are developing critical, creative, and dialogical thinking, and is accomplished through question-driven inquiries and discussions. As we have discussed numerous times in this blog, teaching and learning with GIS invites students to ask questions, solve real-world problems with real data, and think critically about why and how they are solving that problem.  Every single one of the seven ways of learning identified in this book have been used by educators and students who analyze spatial relationships, patterns, and trends through GIS, as is evident in these and other case studies.  Furthermore,  all of the methods identified in the Seven Ways book, including tasks and procedures, practice exercises, presentations, explanations, inquiries, discussions, problems, case studies, labs, projects, group activities, team projects, role playing, simulations, games, internships, and service learning, are the "bread and butter" of teaching with GIS.  No one single method is used, which illustrates the versatility of GIS in instruction to meet different learning objectives.  We use all of them when we model effective teaching with GIS at our annual T3G instructor institutes. I recently met with one of the authors, Dr. Arend, who is the Director of University Teaching at the Office of Teaching and Learning at the University of Denver, and I believe that the Seven Ways can be used effectively by instructors (1) to make a strong case to their administrators on campus that teaching and learning with GIS meets numerous instructional objectives and learning styles, and (2) as a guideline in their own instruction, to ensure that they take full advantage of the 7 ways, and the result will truly be more purposeful, effective, and enjoyable teaching! How might you be able to use this book and framework in your own instruction? Facilitating 7 Ways of Learning: Book. ... View more

In my last post, I described some simple but powerful activities that you can use with students to engage them in mathematics using ArcGIS Online.   What else can you do with mathematics with ArcGIS Online?  Using another activity I have written, I invite students to investigate global temperature extremes.   The activity begins by asking two questions:  (1)  Can you work effectively with numbers so that they can understand extreme temperatures around the world?  (2) Can you compare and interpret information so that you can understand patterns over space and time? Students conduct seven mathematics investigations in this activity: 1. Analyze temperature extremes data around the world including the temperature reading and the date. 2. Examine the relationship between the location (primarily: Altitude and latitude) of the extreme temperatures and the value of the temperature, and whether that temperature was a high or a low extreme. 3. Order and compare numbers in temperature data tables and on maps. 4. Round numbers in temperature data tables and maps. 5. Visually represent numbers in temperature data tables and maps. 6. Add and subtract whole numbers and decimals. 7. Compare temperature extremes over time by constructing graphs. The activity begins by asking the students to describe the hottest and then the coldest day they have experienced, and what they did to cool down or warm up.  Next, using a map of temperatures plotted as points on a world map in ArcGIS Online, they describe the spatial pattern of global maximum and minimum temperature extremes.  Then, exploring the attribute table in tandem with the map, they answer the following questions:  "What is the range of maximum temperatures shown on this map (between the lowest maximum and the highest maximum)? How many times hotter is the highest maximum temperature than the lowest maximum temperature? Round your final answer to the nearest degree. Show your work." Students then sort the table on latitude and graph the temperatures by latitude, and then create a histogram of temperature extremes by month of the year, using these graphs to make connections between the data, the map, climate, and seasons.   They zoom in to selected extreme temperature locations and examine the effect of local topography and proximity to oceans on extreme temperatures.   They also examine the temporal components of the data to determine the existence and length of heat waves and cold snaps. What else could you do with this data or with other weather related data to connect science, geography, and mathematics using ArcGIS Online? Examining global temperature extremes with ArcGIS Online. ... View more