Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

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!    ... 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You and your students can powerfully and easily examine current events using Web GIS data and tools.  This essay models the study of one such current event, the Smokehouse Creek wildfire, which is sadly consuming much terrain in Texas and impacting many lives.  Teaching about current events can be readily incorporated into the classroom using open data portals and web GIS tools such as ArcGIS Online Map Viewer and ArcGIS Online apps.  This is a technique that my colleagues and I have named "Geonews", described in my essay, here:  Teaching the GeoNews Using GIS Technologies and th... - Esri Community.   In a nutshell, "Geonews" simply means teaching about current events, whether a natural hazards, political incident, scientific discovery, from local to global scale, on a regular basis in the classroom--it could be once a week such as every Monday morning, or even for 5 minutes at the beginning of each class period.  And I submit that teaching, learning, and understanding events is not complete without considering that event's spatial aspects.  And using Web GIS tools such as ArcGIS Online, apps, maps, and imagery can serve as powerful and easy-to-use tools to teach these topics.  I (and many of my education colleagues) have successfully tested these methods in classrooms in the USA and in many countries, from primary to university level, and in after-school and lifelong learning sessions in public libraries. I have also incorporated these methods into courses I share online, such as this one on Environmental GIS.  This approach can be effectively used by instructors as they teach, but even more powerful is when students are assigned the task to select and teach their peers in class about one current event.  A student, or group of students, can be assigned the task for, say, the beginning of Week 2 in a geography, GIS, environmental science, or even in a current events or political science course, and others, as well.  Another Group can take Week 3, and so on.  I have found that when students get involved, creativity happens!  Moreover, I have found that the students using this approach really make use of their maps and the spatial perspective to learn about and teach others about the event or issue.  This is a very effective way of teaching spatial thinking and the use of geotechnologies.   The grim details of the Smokehouse Creek wildfire can be studied using GIS in many ways.  I advise starting with the ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World Wildfire Aware app.  No sign in is required, the real-time wildfire perimeters and points are available and additional information for you to ask these questions of your students:   How far is the wildfire from where you live?  What is the pattern and shape of the wildfire?   How large is the wildfire at its furthest extent?  How large is it compared to the areal size of your own city, county, or region?   What towns are impacted both in the wildfire perimeter and also downwind from it?  What landforms and ecoregions are in this area?  What animal, bird, and plant habitats are impacted?   What wildfires are nearby, and near to where you live?  My colleague Bern Szukalski and I recently focused on how to teach with these amazing and versatile ArcGIS Living Atlas of the World apps in one of our GIS Higher Education monthly chats.    Use other tools in conjunction with this Wildfire Aware App:  Examine Google street views if available in this area to understand the cultural and physical landscape there (vegetation, landforms, businesses, homes) to drive home the point that these are real events impacting real people's lives.  Read selected news reports, many of which increasingly include before-and-after swipe maps and satellite imagery.  What other resources can you find to help make your research more well-rounded? Examining wildfires with GIS. Next, dig deeper by opening up ArcGIS Online and accessing the Map Viewer.  Add population density from the "human imprint" layer and also from US Census Bureau's American Community Survey to understand the total population, age, income, and other characteristics of those impacted.  Add transportation to understand which arteries could be impacted and evacuation routes.  Add rivers and watersheds to understand how sedimentation could impact water quality.   Use world biomes and the North American ecoregions to more fully understand habitat, plants, and animals in the area.  Use the real-time weather feed to assess the possible future spread of the wildfire.   Add NOAA weather satellite imagery to see how the region is impacted by wildfire smoke. None of these ArcGIS Online activities require signing in, but next, dig deeper:  Sign in to your ArcGIS Online organization, and once signed in, additional options will be available:  You as the instructor can create maps and apps as teaching resources.  Your students will be able to save their maps, perform spatial analysis, share their maps to you as their instructor and to their peers, create instant apps, dashboards, or story maps from these maps, and use the maps as part of their continually-updating professional portfolio.  And for an even deeper investigation, they can bring the layers from those maps into ArcGIS Pro to perform further statistical and spatial analysis.  These same approaches can be used to study other wildfires, other hazards such as city fires, explosions, floods, eruptions, earthquakes, typhoons, political strife, but balance it with teaching about a few happier events too--using these approaches students can present about a city marathon, new library or school opening, new open space, parade, celebration, sporting event, or something else happening locally or somewhere else in the world.  I have created two videos that walk students and faculty through several investigations using the above techniques, of this wildfire.  The short version (1:45), which highlights the ArcGIS Living Atlas Wildfire Aware app, is here:  https://youtu.be/JI9Wjn7boFA?si=WbhFj1WhBvbSnapr The longer version (6:52) includes the ArcGIS Living Atlas Wildfire Aware app and a deeper dive using the ArcGIS Online Map Viewer, is here:  https://youtu.be/qGLY8zjD4dU?si=3g_jvmqbmz-w61qe.   I look forward to hearing your reactions, and meanwhile, all best wishes to those impacted by this and other natural hazards.   ... 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Do your kids love drawing maps? Their creativity could win them a national or even international award! The @cartographyGIS Barbara Petchenik Children's Map Competition is open to US students 15 years old and under. The deadline to submit is coming soon!  8 March 2024: https://cartogis.org/awards/children. As a long time admirer of this competition, and of the value of mapping as a tool to encourage students to think critically, holistically, and spatially, and as someone who treasures the books from past competitions, visible below, I highly encourage you to encourage students that you know to apply, and to tell teachers that work with these students to get involved.  Books of maps from the Petchenik Children’s Map Competition: The World Drawn by Children (2021, Spanish and English, PDF). Children Map the World (2017) Children Map the World (2015)   Children Map the World (2005) --Joseph Kerski ... View more