Latest Contributions by CharlieFitzpatrick

Friends, would you please share some news here about GIS in your situation? The notes that some of you have sent personally to me, or items that you are inspired to add upon reading others' entries. Tell us anything ... little tidbit, powerful "deal with it," or epic summary. Please REPLY to this note to keep it all in one thread. Also, please make sure you have posted in our tally any GIS teacher trainings you did this year. THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH for what you do for LEARNERS OF ALL AGES!! ... View more

At the 2018 Esri User Conference, two teachers received the "Making a Difference" award. They teach social studies and English at the Math, Science, and Technology Magnet Academy of Roosevelt High School, in Los Angeles. Watching the 11-minute award video, which included the premier of a brief video about the research project, provides a quick glimpse of the power of GIS in instruction and the impact of a meaningful project. But for those of us who watched class after class engage in this fashion, this video is the proverbial tip of the iceberg.   Students engage deeply, powerfully, in a justice-based topic they choose. They conduct authentic research, seeking patterns in the data, and relationships between the topic and the lives of those around them. These "maptivists" invest many hours learning GIS technology, struggling with data, establishing time management habits, designing effective presentations for public display, growing team sense while gaining a sense of self, becoming empowered.     A new YouTube playlist presents a quartet of videos (shortcut: esriurl.com/maptivists), (1) the quick synopsis from the 2018 Esri Conference, (2) a profile of a single student a year after the experience, (3) an interview with entertainer and entrepreneur will.i.am who introduced Esri to the school, and (4) a deep dive into the design and conduct of the research project. Watching the full award ceremony video and then playlist segments 2, 3, and 4 will show the immense power of good tools and methods in the hands of good teachers.   Any school can have these GIS tools for free. Any teacher can learn these approaches. Every student deserves the chance to immerse in such rich learning, often. Please watch, learn, and share. ... View more

The 2018-19 Teacher Video Challenge is underway, with the first awardee being our first from an elementary school! Check out this and all the other videos on the bottom half of the  "Overview" page, or see the map! ... View more

Students love projects. They dive into challenges of their own design, following their own route, building capacity, solving puzzles, constructing answers … learning to learn. That's the magic of the ArcGIS Competition for High School and Middle School Students. Students might be able to do some work on it in class, but most students work on it outside of class, according to their interest. Needing to examine a topic inside their state's borders, most pick an issue they already know something about … a local industry, town feature, watershed, or problem from nuisance to nightmare. They investigate, gather data, and build a Story Map. The best from the school go to the state, and from there to the national level. The ultimate winners attend the Esri User Conference and Education GIS Summit in San Diego, CA. In 2018, 11th grader Keeli Gustafson from Duluth MN saw a local problem born a century back, and traced its path to today, including the intersection of cultures. 8th grader Andrew Wilson from Lincoln NH, like a modern Sherlock Holmes, spent hours tracing a historic railroad and lumber company. Together, they presented their stories in the User Conference Map Gallery, to GIS users from across the planet. They followed up by regaling mentors anxious for inspiration and ideas to help educators and students in their own communities. (See the full results from 2018 and 2017, and states already in the hunt for 2019, by clicking below.) Students will face daunting challenges tomorrow. Every opportunity they get to dive deep, study the interplay of forces, analyze the patterns and relationships, and present the story, builds hope that situations can be understood, and problems can be solved. Thousands of young scholars in every state would relish the chance to follow their own course. Help the students and teachers in your community dive in as part of the 2019 competition, underway now. ... View more

Here's an excellent blogpost about Story Maps on content in the humanities. Then, take time to look at the actual collection of Story Maps, including the map at the very end showing the places addressed. Share these with colleagues who have been reluctant to accept GIS as a relevant technology for their field. ... View more

Several T3Gers have contacted me recently about how to contact the named persons in the sites with the ArcGIS School Bundle, as seen in Map#1 of http://arcg.is/usk12gis. Here's the situation: For trusted educators (includes most T3G people) who want to provide a service to holders of ArcGIS School Bundles in a specific region, we can provide access to an app that allows selecting Bundle sites, examining their data, and if desired exporting that data including institution name, contact name, and contact email address. Contact Charlie Fitzpatrick [email protected] for access. Applicant requests membership in a specific ArcGIS Online group within "Org A." The applicant must provide an ArcGIS Online Org login; that login does not have to be a member of Org A, but must be a member of an Org (i.e. cannot be a "public" login). The applicant's login profile must be public in order to be invited, but can be withdrawn from public once admitted into the group. Once the applicant has received and accepted the group invitation (= is a group member), the user logs into ArcGIS Online using that login, and looks within his/her Groups for "ConnectED State Reps," and opens the group. Inside, the user engages the "DataApp2" web app. The app has a "terms of use" splash screen that the user must accept to move forward. The app allows a user to select bundles within a specific state or within a region drawn on the map. The resulting data can be viewed and exported, for one-time use. ... View more

Community Analyst is an extremely powerful tool available in the School Bundle and higher ed licenses. Recently, members of Esri's public policy & business teams hosted an excellent 45-minute webinar on Community Analyst, containing a 30-minute demo showing a number of powerful capacities in three different scenarios. See either the Esri industry page displaying the video or the core video on YouTube page. There is good info about the product before and after the demo, which runs from 7:30-38:00. ... View more

Esri has two field data collection tools that educators can use easily: Survey123 and Collector. Collector offers a couple of key advantages over Survey123: ability to gather lines and areas as well as points, plus easy creation of on-board basemap for offline data gathering. Survey123 has a couple of key advantages over Collector: drag&drop form design in a browser, and ability to use the browser as the form holder, even without login. I wrote a blogpost about combining the two, which sacrifices some advantages of each in favor of some others. But the latest update of ArcGIS Online opens up huge new powers for Collector in instruction if teachers can grasp the importance of data fields, domains (essentially restrictions to what can be entered), situations in which lines or areas are appropriate, and use of a Group as a means for distributing capacity and controlling access. See this detailed set of instructions for using ArcGIS Online to build data for use with Collector. Educators with e.g. just Chromebooks and students with just wifi tablets can do even more powerful data gathering! ... View more