Latest Contributions by TomBaker

While GIS analyst and developer careers are readily available, the bulk of professional GIS users are in geo-enabled careers – like civil engineering.  Join the Esri Education Outreach team and Strivven Media’s Virtual Job Shadow as we explore the career field of civil engineering – focusing on storm water management. Be sure to share this and all of the career videos with your students!    Sara loved buildings as a girl and planned to become an architect. In college, she discovered art didn't interest her as much as science, math and GIS so she switched to civil engineering. Watch her video to see why she loves being a civil engineer!   Civil engineers design, build, supervise, operate, and maintain construction projects and systems in the public and private sector, including roads, buildings, airports, tunnels, dams, bridges, and systems for water supply and sewage treatment. Many civil engineers work in design, construction, research, and education.   Watch the civil engineer video >> ... View more

EUROGEO will publish its first book in collaboration with Springer International. The title is GEOSPATIAL CHALLENGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY. We invite those who research in this area to declare their interest to write a chapter for this publication.   Submission Procedure: Chapter proposal submissions are invited from researchers by September 25, 2017. Proposals should be limited to between 300-500 words, explaining the mission and concerns of the chapter and how it fits into the general theme of the book. Chapter proposals must be sent by email to Rafael de Miguel: [email protected] ... View more

[Reposted from the Esri EdCommunity blog, April 28, 2015] For the past few years, eight educational researchers have been working to produce the first pre-collegiate agenda for guiding research in geospatial technology education and learning.  The product of that labor has recently been published in the Journal of Geography from the National Council for Geographic Education. Abstract:  Knowledge around geospatial technologies and learning remains sparse, inconsistent, and overly anecdotal. Studies are needed that are better structured; more systematic and replicable; attentive to progress and findings in the cognate fields of science, technology, engineering, and math education; and coordinated for multidisciplinary approaches. A proposed agenda is designed to frame the next generation of research in this field, organized around four foci: (1) connections between GST and geospatial thinking; (2) learning GST; (3) curriculum and student learning through GST; and (4) educators’ professional development with GST. Recommendations for advancing this agenda are included. Author information, metadata, and sample information can be found online  at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265432663_A_Research_Agenda_for_Geospatial_Technologies_and_Learning ... View more

This month’s theme focuses on instructional content typically taught during Autumn, while reminding us that human advancement seldom occurs without struggle.   American Literature: Poe & the Red Death Beyond religion: Scarlet Letter   AP Human Geography: Understanding globalization USA demographics   AP Environmental Science Population dynamics Megacities   Earth Science Topography and our national heritage Remote sensing (the Oso landslide)   Elementary Settlement patterns Time zones   Mathematics Rates and proportions: Lost beach Linear rate of change: Steady (population) growth   US History The war before independence (American Revolution) The second American Revolution (1812)   World History Medieval Europe: Invasions The Crusades ... View more

Advancing STEM Education with GIS - Geographic information systems can engage several critical elements in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, & Math) curriculum and instruction. GIS tools and techniques lead to understanding cross-disciplinary phenomena and solving problems rooted in academic and realworld concepts. ... View more

While it's no longer in print, educators can still download and print the "GIS and STEM careers" poster from Esri.   The PDF is attached to this blog post. ... View more

Explore the Careers with GIS section of the K12 ArcGIS Online Organization.  What else should be there? ... View more

The human impact of the natural disasters occurring in North America in the last few weeks has been staggering – the result of a complex story of earth’s natural systems and human activities.  Independent of the subject you may teach, consider these pre-built activities, maps, and data to support your inquiry into earth’s systems with your students.   American Literature Hurricane warning!   Mathematics How much rain? Linear equations Rates of population change Perpendicular bisectors   Social studies Exploring elevation with Lewis and Clark (elementary) Climate (elementary) USA demographics M2L1 – The Earth moves M7L2 – In the eye of the storm   Science Where does the water go?  (elementary) Climate (elementary) Weather forecasting  (elementary) Seismic events: natural hazards (elementary) Cracked plates The Earth moves under our feet Fluid Earth: winds and currents Tropical storms Climate change ... View more

For over 25 years, the Esri Schools Program has created or collaborated on a variety of instructional materials.  Perhaps you recognize some of these. Maybe you've even used some of them.     Carl Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations is a theoretical model that describes how ideas (and technologies) can be spread over time in a social system. The innovation, communication channels, time, and a social system are all necessary to spread an idea according to the model. At some point, as an idea continues to diffuse it can reach “critical mass”. People in the social system are described based on their roles as either: innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, or laggards. Each group of people have typical actions within the system – from the rate at which they adopt a new technology to how they share that adoption. In this way, each group has strengths and weaknesses that must be planned for. For the interested reader, there are several additional elements (e.g. Moore's Chasm, Maloney's Rule)  to be considered in the model; it is worth an extended read.    Imagine this curve representing the population of all U.S. school teachers – and the major groups they might fall into with respect to technology adoption.  Historically, our materials have been great at supporting innovative teachers and early adopters of technology. Our materials were great at helping people learn our technology – especially useful for application in project focused learning.  Unfortunately, as many of us know, project based learning is not all that commonplace in U.S. schools.  It takes time, resources, an experienced educator – and sometimes even runs counter to a school’s standards-based priorities. This tends to relegate project based learning to the realm of innovative teachers.    For this reason, in 2014, we began developing GeoInquiries™ - materials targeting the receptive mainstream (Early Majority) to support the Esri ConnectED Initiative - a part of the Obama White House ConnectED Initiative.  Representing nearly a third of the teaching population, the segment's use of GIS quickly surpassed the use of GIS in project focused applications in the classroom.   Mainstream materials are subject-focused and use GIS to help teachers with day-to-day instructional objectives, supporting a range of classroom technologies, pedagogies, and levels of expertise. These materials are free, fast, and open access.  To understand how these materials support a segment of the community, rotate the diffusion curve 90 degrees counter-clockwise.  In addition to visualizing the mainstream Early Majority, we can also see how Early Adopters and Innovators have commonly used GIS instructionally.   (Click the graphic to enlarge.)   While our mainstream solutions, like GeoInquiries and Mapping Our World directly serve the Early Majority of the receptive mainstream in the teaching community, more advanced users, namely the Early Adopters, tend to blend pre-built content with custom classroom activities, while the Innovators tend to work with local and custom  projects.  Keep in mind, these are generalizations about instructional behavior. They don't describe the whole story of GIS use in classrooms. Today, we commonly see fifty-thousand web hits a month for these mainstream activities and maps. Moreover, with the release this past summer of three new collections (American Literature, Mathematics, and World History) we now offer mainstream materials for all core disciplinary areas taught in school - with added support in the science and social sciences. Does it work?  We surveyed teachers six months after a short, regional workshop event last year and found that approximately 50% of teachers are teaching completely from or blended with pre-built materials like GeoInquiries.  A smaller group of Innovators (~18%) continues to blaze forward with customized curricula and local projects and other adaptations.  Ideally, we'd love to see everyone teaching around local project work, but in the meantime, a significant body of educators is now teaching with GIS in the standards-based, mainstream classroom. ... View more

  The Esri Schools team offers GeoInquiries in ten subject areas, serving classrooms from elementary to senior high school.  Collections typically have 10-15 inquiry-based activities, are standards aligned, and link to commonly used textbooks.    Each activity can be delivered in a lecture-style, while students interact with the ArcGIS Online map on their tablet or laptop (including Chromebooks).   For more information about GeoInquiries see https://esriurl.com/geoinquiries.    ... View more

The three new 2017 Esri GeoInquiry collections are now available.  Although the field testing is ongoing, you’ll find the 45 new maps and activities and over 250 new data services supporting mainstream K12 educators posted.  Feel free to share: esri.com/geoinquiries .   *****   American Literature GeoInquiries: http://esriurl.com/litGeoInquiries Beyond religion: Scarlet Letter Virus of Fear: Witchcraft in Salem Poe and the Red Death The Red Badge of Courage Twain: Travel Blogger Hurricane Warning Our Town, Your Town Gatsby: Then and now The mockingbird sings for freedom Depression, dust and Steinbeck Hiroshima Dr. King's Road to a Birmingham Jail Finding Mango Street F451: Ban or burn the books Serving the Wild   Mathematics GeoInquiries: http://esriurl.com/mathGeoInquiries Rates and proportions: A lost beach D=R*T Linear models How much rain? Linear equations Rates of population change Distance and midpoint Coordinate plane Euclidean vs Non-Euclidean Area & perimeter at the mall Measuring crop circles Areas of complex figures Similar triangles Perpendicular bisectors Centers of Triangles Volume and pyramids   World History GeoInquiries: http://esriurl.com/worldHistoryGeoInquiries Medieval Europe: Invasions Cradles of civilization Post-WWI and The League of Nations The Reformation Africa's bounty and borders African independence Silk Road: Then and Now The Crusades Russian expansion to the sea The first Industrial Revolution Early European exploration Trade and the Black Death The Age of Napoleon Latin American independence International Cooperation                            ... View more