Latest Contributions by TomBaker

The long-awaited World Geography GeoInquiries collection has released 15  "Level 1" activities and ArcGIS Online maps, based on the content from the award-winning book, Mapping Our World.  The activities are designed for middle and lower-high school geography classrooms, are based on the C3 Framework for social studies, and tied to leading world geography textbooks.  All activities are licensed under Creative Commons for easy reuse by educators. Currently, the collection includes "no-login" activities studying: urbanization temperature factors seismic and volcanic activity population density plate boundaries political boundaries population growth standards of living the Arabian Peninsula - culture growth of global communications the Arabian Peninsula - physiographic monsoons of South Asia GDP and development Central America sea level rise North American trade Explore the activities and maps >> ... View more

The National Council for Social Studies (NCSS) and the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) are teaming up this fall in Austin, TX to bring what is surely to be one of the largest geography education events in the country! Planned for November 22-24, 2019, the event features a growing line-up of GIS sharing and learning.  We'll start tracking the Esri and partner-based presentations below to help give you a heads-up. Thursday, November 21 CUFA Book panel        Thursday, November 21, 11:15am - 12:30pm        Location: Room 16B, Austin Convention Center        Presenters: E-yung Shin, Sarah Bednarz, others including Thomas Baker Clinic #753: Using Interactive Maps to Explore Lessons in Apportionment and Redistricting Thursday November 21, 2:00pm - 5:00pm Location: Exhibit Hall 5 Classroom B, Austin Convention Center Presenters: Rebecca Theobald, Anita Palmer Friday, November 22 Session #8: Teaching Population Change, Demographics, and Lifestyles with Interactive Mapping Friday November 22, 8:45am - 9:40am Location: Exhibit Hall 5 Classroom A, Austin Convention Center Presenter: Joseph Kerski Presentation #918: Advance Your Geospatial Technology--Empowered by Your Curriculum Standards Friday November 22, 2:05pm - 3:00pm Location: Ballroom Prefunction Area Level 4, Austin Convention Center         Presenters: Thomas Baker, Barbaree Duke, Injeong Jo Saturday, November 23 Session #1051: Interactive Mapping Infuses Geography Across the Curriculum Saturday November 23, 9:35am - 10:30am Location: Exhibit Hall 5 Classroom A, Austin Convention Center Presenters: Anita Palmer, Thomas Baker Photo credit. ... View more

We have begun the process of creating digital student worksheets to accompany GeoInquiries.  We've chosen to put these worksheets in Google Docs, based on popular request.  In this format, the Doc can be saved to a teacher's or student's Google Drive. The Doc can also be downloaded in more traditional file formats such as Microsoft Word, OpenDocument, RTF, plain text, PDF, ePub, etc.   While much more flexible than our usual PDF type, these student documents (with directions and questions) is now fully accessible to all learners.   To track the conversion progress or to download from the currently available worksheets, see: https://esriurl.com/geoInquiryWorkSheets   ... View more

We invite you to explore the class of 2018-2019 K12 teacher video challenge winners!  There were 10 monthly winners this past school year from around the US, representing a wide range of curricular area and grade bands.  Each video is about 3-4 minutes in length and packed full of great ideas that you can implement next year in your instruction! Explore the winners at:    Congrats to the winners!  Stay tuned to see what's next! ... View more

For those attending the 2019 Education Summit at the Esri User Conference, please consider joining us the Esri schools program at the following special interest groups.   Teacher Education and Educational Research SIG Saturday, July 06 9:00 am - 9:45 am Marriott - Pacific Ballroom 16   Geography Education and Computational Thinking (AAG Program discussion) Sunday, July 07 12:00 pm - 12:45 pm Marriott - Pacific Ballroom 14   State GeoInquiries and Schools Curriculum SIG Sunday, July 07 4:00 pm - 5:00 pm Marriott - Pacific Ballroom 14   Informal Education and Service Learning SIG Tuesday, July 9 07:00 AM - 08:00 AM SDCC - Room 12   ... View more

GIS or a Geographic Information System is geographic mapping and analysis software used to collect, display, analyze, and communicate information and stories about a wide range of social and natural phenomena tied to specific locations.   GIS runs on mobile devices, laptops, servers, and in the cloud and is used globally in every industry, from law enforcement to marketing analytics.  GIS is the central technology in the geospatial family of technologies. Other technologies like GPS, drones, image processing, and remote sensing are also often included in this family of technologies. Today, geospatial technologies are playing critical roles in data science, self-driving vehicles, 5G communications, and much more.  Explore a subset of GIS-enabled careers >> GIS software is free for K-12 classroom instruction.  A classroom teacher or building administrator simply needs to complete the form. Several desktop, web, and mobile software products are included with the software. If you are new to GIS, we recommend starting with ArcGIS Online and then moving to ArcGIS Pro (Microsoft Windows-only).   Request free Schools Software Mapping Bundle >>   With an ArcGIS Online account, “Enable Esri Access”. This will allow both teachers and students to search for and enroll in a number of online Esri Training courses.  If you don’t know where to start, take a closer look at these courses first. Good courses to start with include: Exploring GIS Maps Teaching with GIS: Introduction to using GIS in the classroom Getting Started with ArcGIS Pro Another great way to learn about Esri technology is by searching through the “Learn ArcGIS” content.  These are activities that can typically be completed in one or two class periods.   Explore Learn ArcGIS >>   Finally, for teachers, we recommend earning an Esri Technical Certification.  These certifications are not designed for K12 students, but we do encourage CTE educators to build the skills necessary to earn the “Entry level ArcGIS Desktop” certification.   Learn about certification >>   For additional learning opportunities, search through the Esri Press catalogue. Take particular note of materials in the education and training section of the catalogue.   Explore Esri Press >>   Finally, engage fellow CTE teachers in the GeoNet Project reserved just for CTE teachers and be sure to add your dot the CTE map.    Enter the community >> ... View more

Our February Teacher Video Challenge awardee is Jack Buckley from Cohasset, MA!  Well done, Jack!  Check out Jack's video and submit your own entry to the challenge. ... View more

Technically, it's the wrong Pi but hey, it's close enough for Pi Day.....   For those schools and after school clubs that use Raspberry Pi micro-computers, I've posted a working set of  instructions to get the ArcGIS API for Python running on a Pi 3.  See the draft.   Happy Pi Day! ... View more

This is a one-hour virtual jumpstart workshop with limited seating for K12 teachers or K12 IT staff only. Each participant will set-up a Python “stack” on their personal computer. We will include the ArcGIS API for Python in your stack, run pre-built programs, and write two simple programs: one that creates a map and one that performs an administrative function in ArcGIS Online.   This is a beginner’s (non-programmer’s) workshop; however, it is best if you have programmed in any language prior to taking the workshop.  While the coding will be straightforward, our ability to troubleshoot installation problems will be limited.   Before you register: Make sure that you have a Windows or Macintosh computer with administrative privileges, so that you can install software. Make sure you have a publisher level account in an ArcGIS Online organization.   Before the workshop: Know how to launch your computer’s command prompt. On Mac, this is Terminal. On a Windows computer, this is Command Prompt (search for “cmd.exe” in Windows 10). Have your AGO Publisher username/password at the ready for the workshop.   Workshop date and time: TBD Web address: Received via email. To register:  If you would like to be put on a waiting list or receive news about any related "python for educators" workshops in the future, please email: [email protected].  ... View more

A new text which I believe many in this group should consider.   Spatial Citizenship Education: Citizenship through Geography (Shin and Bednarz, 2019) is the inaugural book exploring the contribution of geographic education (and geographic technologies and spatial thinking) to the development of the citizen.  It describes citizenship development through a rich understanding of spatial and geographic narratives. The book includes a history of geographic education as well as theoretical and conceptual elements of the work of geography education. Geography teachers, teacher educators, and GIS education researchers should consider this volume as a critical contribution to their well-rounded library.   Chapters include: Conceptualizing spatial citizenship Geography as a social study Geography, capabilities, and the educated person The spatial production and navigation of vulnerable citizens Citizenship education in a spatially enabled world Rediscovering the local Cultivating student citizens Geotechnologies and the spatial citizen Informed citizenry starts in the preschool and elementary grades – and with geography Spatial citizenship in the secondary geography curriculum Spatial citizenship in the geography/social studies teacher education   Amazon link to the book.       From the Routledge website:   Euikyung E. Shin is a professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Illinois where she teaches curriculum studies and social studies education. Her research interests include incorporation of spatial perspectives for global citizenship education and integration of geospatial technology to social studies curriculum.   Sarah Witham Bednarz is Professor Emerita of Geography at Texas A&M University. Bednarz co-authored the national geography standards, Geography for Life (1994 and 2012), served on the Committee on Spatial Thinking (2004–2006), and co-chaired the Geography Education Research Committee (GERC) of the 21st Century Road Map for 21st Century Geography Education Project. ... View more

A few weeks ago, I shared Python scripts with Peter Knoop at The University of Michigan.  He was kind enough to share a cool ArcGIS Online wordcloud generator, which as you might have already guessed, I tweaked and ran against ArcGIS Online this morning with a few Valentine's Day related terms: love and Valentine. The Python script uses the libraries: ArcGIS API for Python, BeautifulSoup (text cleanup), and wordcloud. The script searches the titles of up to 10,000 ArcGIS Online public maps for the keywords love or valentine and then grabs the description from the maps meeting our criteria.  Using the word cloud library, the most common terms are found in the descriptions and the word cloud created.  The word "love" was found in the title of 277 maps in ArcGIS Online today. The descriptions of those maps produced this wordcloud.   Running the script a second time with "valentine" produced 57 maps with descriptions producing the following wordcloud. I noticed "pest" showing up in our love wordcloud and the lack of "valentine" in our valentine wordcloud (at least the english version).  Let me know what you see in the wordclouds below. Happy Valentine's Day! ... View more

"By the end of day one with enterprise logins, I'd saved an entire teaching day! I'm never going back to the old, manual way of creating student accounts!"        —Matt Winbigler, Science Teacher, Cloquet Middle School (Cloquet, Minnesota) For teachers that have already requested a free ArcGIS Online organizational account for their school, know that managing student accounts in ArcGIS Online is an important part of successfully using ArcGIS Online in classrooms, but it doesn't have to be difficult. Why Have Student (and Teacher) Accounts? Many schools have an ArcGIS Online organization subscription, which can hold 500 or more accounts for students or teachers. Student accounts are great for letting students create, save, and share maps and apps. Student accounts can be used to complete Level 2 GeoInquiries or even make apps to compete in the ArcGIS Online School Competition. How Do I Make Student Account Management Easier? ArcGIS Online allows for enterprise logins, which provide a way for ArcGIS Online to talk to your school's or district's student login system. ArcGIS Online supports the two largest student login systems used in US schools today: Microsoft and Google. Teachers will need the help of your school or district IT staff to connect ArcGIS Online with a preexisting login process.  Share this post or send the link below to your school or district IT staff and tell them you'd like to share ArcGIS Online with all the students in the school or district. Ask them to enable enterprise logins, which is a quick process when following the guidelines detailed in the link below. Keep in mind, this will create new accounts for all students. Depending on your situation, you may wish to keep using any existing student or teacher accounts through the end of the school year. Read more about setting up enterprise logins for ArcGIS Online here. ... View more

If you publish a chapter, article, or conference proceeding that substantially involves GeoInquiries, would you  post a note here?   https://community.esri.com/groups/k12-instruction/projects/geoinquiries/content?filterID=contentstatus%5Bpublished%5D%7Ecategory%5Bpublications-and-best-practices%5D   You will need to tag your new discussion with the “Publications and best practices” tag in the GeoInquiries Project. ->> See the current list is available int he project, under the Content tag, Publications and best practices.   ... View more

GIS for Teachers – A Guide to Authentic K-12 Integration and Application Grounded in real experience, free resources (GeoInquiries), and the ArcGIS platform, GIS for Teachers: A Guide to Authentic K-12 Integration and Application gives a comprehensive view into all aspects of the classroom and how GIS meets many needs and challenges facing educators today. The book includes 10 chapters and access to a comprehensive resource center online, replete with ready-to-use handouts, rubrics, exercises, videos and more. Review the book at GISetc. >> Authors: Anita Palmer‌ Chris Bunin‌ Barbaree Duke‌ ... View more

Geospatial technologies in mainstream classrooms: A brief examination of pedagogical diffusion Society for Information Technology & Teacher Education International Conference, Mar 26, 2018 in Washington, D.C., United States ISBN 978-1-939797-32-2 Publisher: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE), Chesapeake, VA Abstract: This paper examines the development and advancing use of a mainstream curricular solution intended to support standards-based classroom teaching and learning with geospatial technologies With over one million downloads, Esri’s GeoInquiries are reaching the Early Majority of educators across the US The role of instructional design, professional development, and web-based technologies is explored in this manuscript Formative, partial results from a series of professional development workshops are also presented Location(s): Read more at LearnTechLib. >> ... View more