Latest Contributions by CharlieFitzpatrick

Doing powerful things with basic tools is far more impressive than doing basic things with powerful tools. Dramatic results can come from even a wee bit of well-crafted field work. And good projects can become great by engaging the power of GIS. These were just three lessons demonstrated by the school group on stage during the Monday plenary of the 2019 Esri User Conference. Before a registered attendance of 19,000, students from the small town of Lurgan in Northern Ireland, as part of the Shared Education Project, demonstrated these and other lessons for teachers everywhere, all while showing nations across the world that historic differences can be overcome. (If you did not see the session live and have not seen the video, please watch it now before continuing.) For a few hours on a cold winter day, geography teachers from three schools took 45 students on a bus around town to visit 15 sites, where students were to record two pieces of sentiment data, their school name, a photo of the site, and maybe some thoughts for improving things. The students -- from a Catholic school for ages 11-18, a mostly Protestant school for ages 11-14, and a mostly Protestant school for ages 14-18 -- collected 475 entries, using their phones and a simple survey. They returned to one school and looked at the data together. The facts above could be replicated by most schools: What do students think about their community? Giving students the permission to share their thoughts and feelings is an important practice by itself. But for greatest benefit, educators must craft the experience carefully, asking clear questions and making it easy for participants to generate good data. Then, explore the patterns and relationships, going beyond the simplistic to tease out the full richness that geographic analysis illuminates. The skills detectable in this story are legion: project architecture including thoughtful geographic consideration; database design; technological preparation (here, instruction on how to access and use the survey); careful data gathering; exploration of the raw data; in-depth interrogation, geographic analysis, and interpretation of data; and planning of next steps. All these students participated in a life-altering experience, in a single day. They learned powerful lessons, going far beyond what might have come from "just another typical day in class," which will influence their lives and ripple far beyond, for decades. Good teachers, designing activities to engage students in powerful ways, and employing the tools and practices of geographic analysis, can work what seem miracles. Every school has the chance to engage these GIS tools for free, and every GIS professional can help nearby educators learn to do such projects. Imagine a world where the differences we share are understood. Let's build it, together. As the video notes, "these students are not our tomorrow … they are our today." ... View more

The ArcGIS School Bundle is a powerful set of GIS software available to all K12 schools and youth clubs at no cost for instruction. The core component is an ArcGIS Online Organization (“Org”), with logins sufficient for all students and educators. With it, GIS is being used in all grades and subjects, on all manner of technology, across USA and around the world. The US map of Bundle sites is a little deceiving when zoomed to a local level, as every site uses a common icon. Some locations implement the Org in a centralized fashion, from school district outward, serving a few to many schools under a single license; this is efficient and makes it seamless when students shift from one school to another, but it requires special attention to keep the organization tidy and powerful. The most common model across USA operates at the individual school level, generally with one or two teachers coordinating activities and optimizing the look and feel for their special needs; the challenge here is expanding awareness and use of the resources. Future blogs will dive deeply into administering Orgs for schools. Effective administration is the difference between an Org that enhances instruction versus one that is simply a bank of digital lockers. These resources will help administrators understand the Org and how to take best advantage of it in instruction: http://esriurl.com/agoorgsforschools http://esriurl.com/agousestrategies https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-online/resources The current ArcGIS School Bundle has a fixed calendar, running through 31 July 2020. At that time, active licenses will be extended for another three years, perhaps shifting slightly in configuration to serve instruction even better. The ArcGIS platform continues to evolve, with new opportunities coming into view every few months. Esri is committed to providing the most compelling resources to K-12 schools (primary and secondary) at no cost for instruction through at least the most distant milestone currently visible for the Bundle — 31 July 2023. At the accelerating pace of evolution, it’s hard even to guess what will be possible then! ... View more

Results are in for the 2019 ArcGIS Online Competition for US High School and Middle School Students! Congratulations to the national winners and honorable mentions at both levels, and to the 40 other state winners competing for the grand prize -- a trip to the 2019 Esri Education Summit and Esri User Conference. And cheers to the 124 other awardees who, just like the state and national winners, each earned $100 and important skills for the future.   A Story Map about the competition includes all the 2019 results and links to the creations of all 168 awardees. All four national awardees demonstrated strength in the competition's three essential elements: good geographic analysis, good cartography, and good documentation. These students (three soloists and one duo) show how clear geographic thinking using GIS can clarify the patterns and relationships that build understanding, answer questions, and solve problems.   A number of other entries were also strong in their own way -- powerful, enlightening, entertaining, even endearing -- so see the creations by all the state leaders and other awardees. Exposing students to many examples is important, as there are innumerable topics, data sets, tools, techniques, and strategies for presentation. Teachers, club leaders, and mentors who want to help students build skills should explore these and talk about the overall challenge: identifying a topic, researching it, drawing conclusions, and presenting the results in a format that is focused, clarifying, engaging, and consumable.   Teachers need not allocate significant in-class time or instruction about the competition, although some did. With the array of instructional resources available, students can learn a lot on their own, but they do need that first exposure, and an account with which to explore, build, save, and share. Esri offers all schools and clubs free instructional accounts, plus lots of classroom-ready content and project starters, links to local mentors (see Map#4) and instructional opportunities (see Maps #6 and #7), so all students can participate. This year's high school winners have strong GIS experience, but the middle school winners are new to GIS, so there are opportunities for all to engage and succeed.   The 2020 competition will operate much like 2019, with states applying to participate in the fall. Start planning now, with a visit to see the terrific work by high school and middle school students. ... View more

It's #TeacherAppreciationWeek, and Tuesday is #NationalTeacherDay. As if all the thanks teachers deserve could be distilled into one week, much less a single day. They don't do it for thanks, and certainly not for money. It is for most a calling, a drive to help others develop. They change the world, one learner at a time, 15 or 50 or 150 per year, with impact rippling out for generations. The best interweave knowledge, skill, art, backwards design, mind reading, Sherlock Holmes, and alchemy. Esri has witnessed and documented this "magic," for all to see. It comes from social studies and English teachers at the Math, Science, and Technology Magnet Academy of Roosevelt High School, part of Los Angeles Unified School District. Roosevelt lies in the heart of Boyle Heights, a storied community of predominantly Hispanic heritage. MSTMA accepts students from beyond walking distance, and some ride multiple buses over an hour each way to attend. MSTMA eleventh graders engage in a special project, begun by two teachers (now a quartet) who wanted students in teams to investigate deeply something of personal interest and local significance. Investigation and analysis, interdependence and independence, initiative and trust, persistence and creativity, empathy and intensity … it's all there, braided in daily social studies and English classes that start gently in fall, build like a river, and surge in spring toward each team's data, maps, paper, and diverse presentations to school, community, and professional audiences. Teachers orchestrate the big schedule, adapting on the fly, working with one to fifty at a time. They propose, point, question, listen, watch, coax, restrain, coach, highlight, critique, boost, and somehow manage the turmoil. The students, struggling against substantial challenges, somehow, come together in their teams, learning fundamental lessons, with outcomes they truly own and will never forget. So, #ThankATeacher. See, celebrate, and share this video playlist on YouTube. ... View more

Administrators of an ArcGIS Online Organization account have important responsibilities. They control all permissions and settings in the Org, including invitations, entry, and privileges. So I am astonished when teachers seek assistance because the ONLY admin in the Org has left the school. I'm gobsmacked when I learn it happened months ago. Good Org management means there should always be someone who can get into the guts of the Org and do key administrative tasks within 24 hours. This is so easy to set up in advance, and so much harder after someone is gone. Let's say Alex launches the Org. She invites 10 teachers into the Org, gives them Publisher status, helps them log in, and sets up single sign-on so all 7th graders can be Users in the Org. This is a good start, but not enough. Alex needs to find at least one helper, someone who can do tasks when she is out of contact. So Alex promotes Billie and Carly to admin. Done, right? Again, it's a good next step, but not enough, because Alex is still the only "primary admin." Primary admins receive all important communications from Esri about ArcGIS Online in general or about this one specific Org. They receive emails when a user runs out of credits or requests a password reset. There is ALWAYS AT LEAST ONE admin set as primary. Any admin, and any number of admins, can be given primary status, or have it revoked, unless that admin is the only primary, and every Org should have at least two. To configure primary admins, follow the 1-2-3-4-5 click sequence in the image here.   Esri is happy to provide an ArcGIS School Bundle free to schools and clubs for instructional use. It's a powerful instructional resource. But as fans of a certain "superhero web guy" know, "With great power comes ... great responsibility." Good ArcGIS Online Org administration is a process, not an event. See more essential considerations for good Org administration for schools at http://esriurl.com/agoorgsforschools. ... View more

Last week, Minnesota lost a key player in the rise of GIS in K12 education. Scott Freburg retired from the MN Dept of Education. But the state hasn't lost as much as it might seem. Freburg has been a difference-maker, and such folks often stick around, making more waves. He had his first experiences with remote sensing and GIS in college in the mid-1980s, and started going to conferences and getting to know people. After doing GIS for several organizations, he joined MDE in 2006. In addition to building a strong enterprise GIS, over the years he has helped a number on staff get into using GIS regularly. A quiet and behind-the-scenes guy, he played a key role in getting a state license started for MN just as ArcGIS Online Organizations were becoming available to states. His "cannonball into the swimming pool" event was in fall of 2013, talking to the MN GIS/LIS group, asking who might be willing to help local teachers by running a simple workshop. The next summer, 25 volunteers ran 40 events across the state, for almost 300 teachers. That wave still ripples today. At Esri's 2014 T3G educator institute, Freburg temporarily closes the laptop to focus on tablet and smartphone. In fall of 2015, Freburg's dream took a next big step, launching the Minnesota GIS Educators' Day, a one-day training for educators, during the school week, at the front end of the state GIS/LIS event. Teachers' substitute costs and travel costs are paid by the GIS community, and GIS professionals join the teachers for lunch, hear educators and students and mentors speak, and hear the call again to join forces. The 2015 event was a success, which grew in 2016, and again in 2017, and bigger still in 2018. Through quiet conversations, helping people over the years, sharing good ideas, and showing up, Freburg has fostered in Minnesota's professional GIS community a commitment to the K12 teachers who bring thousands of students into GIS. Freburg (front right) and teachers at 2015 MN GIS Educator Day "The GIS/LIS group had a scholarship fund for higher ed folks for years, so it wasn't hard to get agreement on allocating funds for K12 as well," he said. "Four of those scholarship winners in eight years have become teachers. And, y'know, one is the teacher whose kids won Esri's national high school competition both years. So it all comes around. It's gonna keep building." (See also AAG's GeoMentor profile.) What's in store for Freburg? Maybe a little more baseball and golf, a little less database management. There's a first grandchild soon. But there are also teachers to visit, all over the state. "We'd like to visit all the state parks in Minnesota … and … maybe schedule some trainings around them." Could be even bigger waves ahead. ... View more

For over 25 years, students in school have learned "standard classroom content" using GIS. Some have honed their skills further through research projects as club activities, or submitted independent work to competitions. And students in elementary, middle, and high school have engaged in service projects, making a real difference in their communities. Occasionally, students have parlayed those skills into advanced personal opportunities. For 15 years, 12th graders in Virginia’s "Geospatial Semester" have earned college credit through a GIS elective class. Similarly, Hopeworks in Camden NJ has included GIS as an option in their training program. But it has been hard to find a situation in which multiple students stepped in, studied the technology on their own initiative, learned enough to seek an internship, and used that as a springboard into a job ... until now. Michigan’s GRACE project is a statewide, multi-tiered effort consciously leveraging the software and training resources made available by Esri for free to any school. GRACE builds capacity among both teachers and students, with a special emphasis on getting students to climb a ladder toward internships. This has succeeded in locations across the state, with dozens of students getting multi-week paid internships. But in one location, it has gone farther, with students now in the local workforce, working steady part-time jobs as paid GIS technicians. Head south from Detroit toward Toledo, Ohio, and before crossing the border you are in Monroe County. At Monroe High School, science teacher Russell Columbus had used GIS with students for over a decade, interacting with a county GIS manager early on to get some data. As a GRACE leader, Columbus posted flyers in school about internship possibilities, and handled inquiries. Students would be responsible for completing a set of Esri Training courses online, totaling over 30 hours, on their own, but following a pathway with suggested milestones. After students had earned the required course certificates, they prepared for interviews, which went well enough for several to earn paid internships, as had been happening across the state. But in Monroe, several student experiences were positive enough for both host and intern that all agreed to extend them into steady jobs for the county. (Main: Monroe County maps using data from interns. Inset: Vitale and stack of >4000 edited parcels.) With a growing supply of local GIS talent, Jeff Boudrie, the GIS manager for the Planning Commission of Monroe County, says "We can now handle things that benefit the entire county ... work we couldn’t do before because we didn’t have the data." The students have been building the parcel map for the county, handling thousands of records, which in turn has supported numerous projects of economic value to individual citizens, communities, and the county. Now, other groups are adding interns, and Monroe County is able to help communities lacking their own trained local GIS workforce. Student/intern/employee Donovan Vitale will graduate from high school this year with almost three years of steady professional work experience, with the components of a digital portfolio that will turn heads, and a deep understanding of the complex relationships between land, laws, policy, data, transparency, publicity, and community development. (See this profile of the Monroe County story in Directions Magazine, and this webinar about the GRACE Project including interviews with GRACE leaders plus [starting at 20:00] Boudrie and Vitale.) Students building skills sufficient to mold for themselves a future and even a career with GIS is a vision many people share. It can indeed happen, where students are responsible for their own learning, adults support introductory workplace experiences, and there are at least a few in the right places who grasp how GIS can galvanize problem-solving. There is a vast bank of work that schools and districts, plus business, government, and the non-profit sector, would like to have done. High school students are largely tech-savvy, willing to engage, and have "disposable time." Communities everywhere seeking opportunity to improve would benefit by spending an hour investigating the links, and deciding if they too can follow a treasure map. ... View more

Across USA, educators are changing the landscape. In 2009, Esri launched Teachers Teaching Teachers GIS (or "T3G"), an institute for educators wanting to help other educators use GIS for instruction. In T3G, exploring the latest GIS capacities goes hand-in-hand with attention to classroom content, demos of instructional strategies, discussions of professional development, and strategies for problem-solving. Participants commit to spreading to others the power of GIS and Esri's free tools and materials, through workshops, presentations, mentoring, and more. T3G 2019 is a synchronous online event, with four hours on each of two consecutive Saturdays (July 20 and July 27). Participants need to arrive already comfortable with the fundamentals of using ArcGIS Online, teaching with technology, and providing professional development. T3G 2019 will help participants merge the three. The information page links to key resources for building those critical foundations in advance. Registration for T3G 2019 is now open, with 60 slots available. Participation is free, and expects commitment to share with others during the coming years. T3G grads have taught educators across USA (and beyond), growing the use of "ArcGIS School Bundles," building a collection of teacher videos, and encouraging students engaged in local projects and competitions. If you can help other teachers use GIS to transform education and improve the world, join us, at esriurl.com/t3g! ... View more