Latest Contributions by TomBaker

AncestryClassroom (Ancestry.com’s K12 program) offers family history data for thousands of US school districts – and millions of students.  The AncestryClassroom licensing however can make it challenging to preform select, highly personalized tasks, like build family trees or get hints about documents for a particular family member. ArcGIS StoryMaps (free for classroom and youth club instruction) can be a great way to capture and present family history.  Whether you want to use the timeline widget or create a map to show the movement of your family over the generations, StoryMaps offers some very flexible tools.   I have used Ancestry.com and worked to build my family history off-and-on for many years.  I’m always amazed at what people accomplished, despite frequent tough times. I created a few example StoryMaps in a collection based on my real family data.  I hope some of my examples will spur you to consider building something for yourself (consider a personal license to StoryMaps.com) or by your students (using the free ArcGIS School bundle).  Teachers: Consider getting a free-tier Storymaps.com account or a personal-use ArcGIS license (includes ArcGIS StoryMaps) at $100 annually.  Either account type will allow you to keep your family or personal StoryMap beyond your tenure at your current school.  My example StoryMap collection can be found at:  https://storymaps.com/collections/1987bac14aaf4d33af848400cc8f7576 At the time of this blog, I’ve created two demonstrations. The first StoryMap is an overview of the Baker family name-bearers over the past half dozen generations.  The second StoryMap is a focus on one particular ancestor.  I plan to add a few more examples in the future, largely to highlight features that I believe can be of benefit as you or your students tell your family histories.   AncestryClassroom Resources AncestryClassroom home     ... View more

Storytelling doesn't have to be didactic. Audience engagement could or maybe should be a pivotal aspect of communicating.  Thankfully, StoryMaps allow us to pursue interactive fiction or "choose your own adventure" forms of narrative.  While this dialogue-driven RPG were popularized in the 1980's, today they seem to be making headway on the small screen, as evidenced by Netflix's two dozen interactive story (series), including Blandersnatch, Captain Underpants, and Minecraft:Story Mode. Let's take a look at what (and how) we can do in Storymaps with interactive fiction. Workflow I loaded a Creative Commons, Choose Your Own Adventure (CYOA) story written by Djimon Jayasundera into a Storymap. There's clearly at least one big difference between a linear and CYOA story in a storymap - much like with a CYOA book - you don't just scroll down the page (or turn page after page), but rather after sections of text, the reader must make a decision for our protagonist.  In terms of storymap construction, we delineate sections by title-ing each section with text formatted as a sub-heading.  This provides a link when the storymap is published and we hover over the subheading (see image).  With this link, we can then add buttons in other parts of the story to send the reader to that section. I also added some space between sections to help visually separate sections for some screens.  In my case, I made a transparent JPG, 1 pixel wide and 1,000 pixels long. I then added a handful of royalty-free images from Unsplash.com to help enrich the pages.   Example You can read the story, A Shadowed Alley here.  This story is most appropriate for students in high school or older.  It contains some mentions of violence that may not be appropriate for younger students.   Benefits Language Arts and writing teachers who assign reading or writing fiction can use this approach.  More realistically, asking students to write in a CYOA manner can be fun and challenging - and when written within a storymap allow for great added extras - like photos, video, or sound.  This type of writing is also described as "game books" - offering added appeal to those students who are "gamers" (or the DnD kids of my generation). Computer science teachers should consider this approach for building your students' capacities to put  game design principals into practice  - without coding. Admittedly, the story I choose to put into an interactive storymap doesn't have a map, but for those writing their own fiction, consider the interactive map to be a critical part of the fiction.  Perhaps the map itself is used to make choices - rather than boring buttons.  Perhaps the map shows the protagonist's progress as they undertake a journey.  Student creativity seems to be the only limit!   ... View more

The article below describes how to extract or inject 360 photographs into ArcGIS 360 VR app files. Related background: How to create an ArcGIS Online map with 360 images Moving GIS Data into Virtual Tours The ArcGIS 360 VR app is a great app for viewing your 3D web scene content in virtual reality.  It turns out that you can break open the ArcGIS 360 VR (*.3VR) file, extract the images, and rebuild them for distribution on other platforms like Momento360, RoundMe, or Kuula.co. Why bother?  These traditional “virtual tour” websites have extra “bells-and-whistles” that can increase the instructional usefulness of your web scene content. Examples My colleague Jason built this ArcGIS 360 VR app as an export from the ArcGIS Online Scene Viewer – a new and very cool feature.  https://www.arcgis.com/apps/360vr/index.html?id=2d324a97b4374bafb38d7ffeebbf8792 I reconstituted the images in his ArcGIS 360 VR file and published a few pictures on Kuula.co. I intentionally added a few extra hotspots – just for demonstration purposes. https://kuula.co/share/NdJRW/collection/7v1Gw?logo=0&info=0&fs=1&vr=1&sd=1&initload=0&thumbs=1 The value Virtual tour sites generally support things like hotspots (in image) that teleport the user to a different image, hotspots for weblinks, and hotspots for subtle text popups.  When a student views a landscape, they can mouse over any number of hotspots to find out what a geographic feature is or any other place-specific content.  Most virtual tour sites also support either background audio or hotspot-based audio.  Want to provide a second learning modality for learners – add an audio track that describes the image or directs a learner to a special place in the image. If you’re concerned about bandwidth, virtual tours generally load one image at a time – making the initial load fast – especially useful with a classroom of students all content via Oculus to the wireless network. My Workflow 1. Download the 3VR file (example). https://k12.maps.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=2d324a97b4374bafb38d7ffeebbf8792 2. Change the .3VR file ending (extension) to .ZIP 3. Decompress/Unzip the file. The resource subfolder will contain six images plus a thumbnail per slide in the 360 VR Experience. I would display the resource folder’s content alphabetically.  It will nicely arrange the files for cherry-picking. 4. Use this web-based tool to create one spherical image (equirectangular 360 image).  You’ll add all six images (not the thumbnail) to the webpage at: https://danilw.github.io/GLSL-howto/cubemap_to_panorama_js/cubemap_to_panorama.html Update image dimensions to: 6080 x 3040 Rotate the sixth (bottom) image by 180 degrees.  Press Update button. 5. Press the button, “Download (save) result”. I new image file should be in your downloads folder. 6. Upload the new spherical (360) image to your virtual tour image host, such as Momento360 or Kuula.co. 7. Once in these image viewers, you may add hotspots, teleports, HTML popups, and more. An image slide tray is also available (at least in Kuula.co) depending on how you configure your virtual tour. 8. Add hotspots, text, or images and build your new virtual tour using GIS content!   Of course, you can reverse the above workflow..... Moving 360° Photographs into the ArcGIS 360 VR app It's quite possible that you'd like an actual photograph of an area included in your ArcGIS 360 VR app - to illustrate the actual landscape.  Assuming you've acquired a 360° photograph of an area, this is one workflow you can use to inject that photo into your app.  In this demo, I'm going to use a 360° photo and inject it into Jason's original  ArcGIS 360 VR file.     Example  My workflow Note: Uncompressing/Compressing with built-in tools on my Mac produce an error in the JSON file, when attempting to view the 3VR file in ArcGIS Online. I believe this is a file encoding issue caused by the Mac and am looking for workarounds. In the meantime, the process works fine on my Windows 10 computer. 1. Locate your 360° image. In this case, I have a landscape photo from the top of the National WWI Memorial. (See how I use the 360 image in StoryMap Expeditions.)   2. Go to a third-party online image converter, such as: https://panorama-to-skybox.herokuapp.com 3. Upload and process the image. Download the zip file containing six "skybox" or cube set images. My image sizes were about 150Kb uncompressed, per image. 4. Back on your computer, rename Jason's sample .3VR file - replacing the .3VR extension with .ZIP.  Uncompress the zip file. 5. In the new (uncompressed) folder, you will find a json file and a subfolder called Resources. 6. To keep things short and simple, we're going to rename and swap out the six images used in the first skybox/cube set. We will rename our converted equirectangular images to use filenames: 0_2048_0.jpg thru 0_2048_5.jpg . Note: be sure to also change the file extension from .jpeg to .jpg.  Since we're moving from a single file to six files, the sequence of the files (file names) becomes important. Image mappings: The first four images are the "walls" of the cube. The order of the files will be correct, however you may have to shift the files (file number) up or down to get correct alignment with the topmost and bottom-most images.  Expect a little trial and error here. replaced image ending with _4 = your up (full sky) facing image replaced image ending with _5 = your down (full earth) facing image 7. After you have renamed your images, copy them into the uncompressed 3VR resources folder containing the ArcGIS 360 VR files.  In this case, we're actually replacing the JPGs used in the first cube set to use our photo.  We're not going to bother changing the thumbnail or cube set title here - just to keep things simple. 8. Compress (ZIP) the entire 3VR folder - that includes the json and the resources subfolder. 9. A new file is created ending in .zip - change the extension (.zip) to .3VR 10.Upload your new .3VR file to ArcGIS Online. Set the share options.  View the file. My result file can be viewed or downloaded here. Notes - October 2022: 1. If I edit the JSON on a Mac or zip the JSON file and resource folder on a Mac, the resulting 3VR file consistently errors.  If I compress the JSON file and resource folder using 7zip on Windows, the uploaded 3VR file also consistently produces an error. Credits: Topmost "VR"  graphic: Photo by Sara Kurig on Unsplash ... View more

Since the mid-90’s, national educational standards in the US have been used to provide guidance about what students should be taught – and at what level. Standards provide a scope (how deeply or broadly) should a concept be taught – and a sequence (in what order should the building blocks of a concept be taught).  Standards are important for many reasons, but one of the most valuable is the consistency they should help ensure in classroom learning.  Teaching is not an isolated experience (even when the classroom door closes).  Next week a student will change to a different section of the course, next month a student will transfer out of the school, and in May, most will move on to the next grade with a new teacher.  Consistency in teaching and learning helps reduce the disruption of the inevitable changes experienced by students. Save for elective courses, especially those taught by a single teacher in a school or those that are only taught at one level, teachers are generally expected to help students learn a body of knowledge based on a state adoption (often "adaptation") of national standards.  They don’t usually just teach whatever “tickles their fancy” when they wake up that morning. Students also take state-mandated exams based on content outlined in standards and in some states, teacher compensation is based on their student performance on these tests. In GIS and technical fields, professionals often work against a list of performance standards or KPIs.  That’s effectively what national curriculum standards do for learning in the US. How can GIS users help here? Rather than trying to convince an educator that X is more important than a state-mandated topic, how about showing additional elements and perspectives of the topic, using GIS to present a more holistic picture? StoryMaps are quickly becoming the defacto container for a wide variety of map-based and non-map based content in the Esri community.  We see educators increasingly consuming StoryMaps (or having students consume them) as a part of an instructional activity.  To help decipher what aspects of educational standards a particular StoryMap's text may benefit, I’ve assembled a tool to help.  At this time, consider the returned list of standards, as a starting place for where a StoryMap might or might not fit into a standardized science curriculum. Other discipline areas to follow. Visit the storymap, Find the educational value of a StoryMap. ... View more

Goal: Display a word cloud from one Survey123 question - where the data in the word cloud updates when new data are submitted.   Warnings: 1. This is an HTML code "hack" and not a part of the supported product features for either Survey123 or Storymaps.   2. For this to work, ALL data in the Survey123 must be shared either with your organization or with everyone.  If you have private or sensitive data ANYWHERE in the survey, you should not use this method.   Sample: Take a look at this storymap to better understand what we'll try to set-up below.     Requirements: Access to Survey123 and Storymaps through an ArcGIS Online account with publisher role (or higher). Knowledge of how to use Survey123 and Storymaps (I gloss over most basic concepts in this post). An offsite location to host your HTML page.  I'm using GitHub, but you can use any host that allows you to post HTML code and enforces "https" (rather than just http). Some knowledge of HTML/CSS (although most of this blog is copy/paste).   Build out: Create a new Survey123 survey with at least two questions . The questions should NOT ask personal information (like email address or physical characteristics).  Try asking, "What is your favorite color?", for example.  Make sure the question type is reasonable to use with a "word cloud", like a simple single line text box. Enter some sample data. Ensure the results page is public.  (Survey123 website > Collaborate > Share Results  > Share to Everyone). A shared Results page may look like this. I really only want to share the word cloud (with data constantly updated) for questions 2 and 3 in my storymap.  The other data are benign in the survey. They just really aren't relevant to the story I want to tell in my storymap.  So, how can I show just question two's word cloud? We can use HTML iframes and some CSS to create a digital cookie cutter of the results page.  As I warned you, this is an HTML hack and Esri doesn't support or endorse the approach but it works (today). Create an HTML file on a web server (with https).  I would suggest just copying and pasting this code and tweaking the sample.  Back on your full Survey123 results page, scroll down to the chart you want to display. Set the chart type (e.g. world cloud). Turn off the side bar. Notice each of the changes slightly alters the URL.  Copy the URL now displayed and paste it into your HTML file (replacing my sample URL). Save your new HTML file and get the public URL to your new file. Create a new storymap and add an "Embed" widget.  Paste your new HTML file's URL into the embed widget.  Hopefully, you see your word cloud (only) display in the embed widget.  Mine is here. Each Storymap embed widget will need to point to a new HTML file that you create.  Each HTML file will need a customized URL from your adjusted Sturvey123 results page.   For more information: See the sample storymap which includes added explanation, sample code, and links for this build out.   Thanks This approach was inspired by content original found on StackOverflow.   ... View more

360° images are basically photo spheres – where you are standing in the middle.  To capture these images, normally you would use a 360° camera (like my Insta360 One X2) or you can use a free smartphone app (like Google Street View).  While the smartphone app is free, it requires a careful hand and some practice to get the final photo sphere to look halfway normal when properly rendered. To follow along with this post, you will need: An ArcGIS Online publisher account Free Street View app for iOS or Android (free) Your smartphone with Street View installed A Momento360 account (free tier). Other options: Kuula.co or open source three.js In order to view a 360° image, a service or special script must be first loaded in the web browser, which in turn loads the special 360 image correctly.  While a 360° image can be a regular JPEG file – when you preview the picture without special software, it might look like so:   Why 360° images? Especially for schools and colleges, 360° image captures can be a great addition to field data collection.  It allows the photographer to capture EVERYTHING and not just a 35mm framed window (for example).  This can be useful for studying large patterns – such as cloud types, vegetation growing (or not) in a field, damage from wind, or capturing an entire place - perhaps to facilitate virtual field trips.   Workflow:  Take 360° images with Street View (mobile app) Save to the cell phone's image library Upload to an independent hosting service, Momento360 Create a small table, linking Momento360 URLs and place title Use Experience Builder to create an app that will link the image to a specific map marker We’re rendering our 360° images in an ArcGIS Online map because we don’t want the advertisements and others’ map contributions to appear on our map of (student-acquired) images. For many schools and colleges, this is a serious privacy concern.   In this post, I'll build an example map app, Tom’s trip to the Kansas City zoo. A sneak peek of the final work is below and clickable. [Experience Builder map with images] A deeper dive into the workflow above follows.  Skip sections that you are familiar with. .1. Take 360 images with Google Street View (mobile app).  Download the free app (sign in may be required).  Go to the app’s settings and ensure that you’re keeping a local copy of the processed image.  See screenshot.   .2. Save to the cell phone's image library Get to your data collection site – or at least someplace where multiple photo spheres can be captured without too much overlap in the photography.  If you’re concerned about privacy, you don’t need to publish the photos to Google at all.  You should however find a copy of the image(s) in your camera’s photo album.   .3. Upload to an independent hosting service, Momento360 At the time of this writing, Momento360 has a useful free tier.  It is certainly substantial enough for the project we are undertaking here.  If you haven’t already, create your free Momento360 account. Upload each of your photos to Momento360 (web browser uploading only).  I have uploaded my six photos from around the zoo. Notice how nicely they render - and if you have a VR headset, the experience is even better.   .4. Create a small table, linking Momento360 URLs and place title On Momento360, click an image to find the sharing link.  Select “Share/Embed link”. Copy the URL and paste into your spreadsheet, like the image below. In this case, I’m going to create just one record. Save your spreadsheet as a .CSV file – ideally on your desktop. Log into your ArcGIS Online organization. Go to  “Content” and press the button, “New Item”. Select “Add CSV and create hosted feature service or table” Import all field names. Identify your lat/long fields. Set a title for the service. On the details page, press the “Share” button.  I will set mine to “Everyone”.  Set yours as you see appropriate. I edit my feature service using the classic map viewer in cases like this. Select “Add to new map with full editing controls”. You may need to press “Done” to tell the map how to symbolize data. Press the “Edit” button. Zoom into your existing point.  You can drag the point around to place it exactly where the image was taken – using the basemap as a reference. Click and drag a new marker for each 360° image.Add the image URL for each record. My feature service is here for an example. Finally, add your point-based feature service to a map viewer or scene viewer map.  Save the map and share it, like you previously shared the service (private, organization, or everyone). My sample map is here.   .5. Use Experience Builder to create an app that will link the image to a specific map marker Launch the Experience Builder using the “waffle” near your profile icon in ArcGIS Online or click: https://experience.arcgis.com Press the “Create New” button. Select “Blank Full Screen” and “Create”. Click and drag a map widget to the Experience Builder canvas. Click the widget box on the canvas, Set the map source in the right-most panel by pressing “Select Map”.  Click the “Add New Data” link near the bottom. Find your newly created map. Click the map name in the list to “activate” it. The map should now appear in your Experience Builder canvas. Click and drag an “Embed” widget to the Experience Builder canvas. Click the embed widget displayed on the canvas. In the Embed window on the right, click the slider for “Connect to Data”.  Click the button, “Select data”. Your map name should appear.  Press the plus button to open the layer list of the map. Click the layer with your points and image links. Back to the right, set the pull down beneath your layer name to “Selected features”. See image below.   Click the database icon (looks like a small can with horizontal stripes) and select your 360 image URL column.  This should paste the name of your linked data field into the window.  The field name will have curly braces around it, as you can see below.   Save your Experience Builder application by clicking the save icon, near the upper-right corner. Press the Publish button. Click the vertical ellipses next to the publish button and select “Change share settings”. Click the “Share” button and set your sharing as you previously did for the feature service and map. Press the “View” button to see your published experience builder app with your 360° images linked to a marker and displayed on your map! My final map is here (showed earlier).  If you follow the basic idea above and create your own map with 360 content - post a link below.  It'll be fun to see the differences and advances you make. Enjoy!   Extra credit: 1. Don’t want a regular pop-up on the map – just the embedded image displayed?  In Experience Builder, click the map widget on the canvas.  Scroll the settings menu down, that appears on the right side of the browser. Toggle the setting for “Disable Pop-up”. Save and republish. 2. You can use this workflow with 360° images, videos, or VR scenes (with or without headset) - as long as you only need to point to the asset with a URL.  This approach won't work if you need to use an HTML iframe to render the asset.   3. Visit my storymap of 360 image embed tests here.  If you want to show a 360 image paired with a map or story, you can drop a link or iframe in a storymap embed widget.  The process is simple.  This page shows various tests of 360 image hosts - and the functionality those hosts include in their embedded image viewers.   ... View more

Save the date: Thursday, May 12 2022, 8-9pm EDT   Register as Directions Magazine today!     ... View more

As of March 2022, The ArcGIS API for Python team added support for a duplicate function for storymaps.  Duplicating allows for scripting of, "computer, make a copy of this storymap and give it to user X. Please."   This  python function is probably most useful for educators when they want to create a templated storymap and then issue a copy of that template to their students as a part of an assignment.    The challenge today:  Currently The ArcGIS API for Python API has not been rolled out to ArcGIS Online Organizations for use in Notebooks.   You'll need to install python and the new API to your local computer.  You probably want to install Python 3.8 and then install the 2.0 API.  At this time, I suggest this is a tech-heavy workflow.  If you're not comfy installing Python, configuring environments, and adding packages, I would suggest waiting until the API is added to your ArcGIS Online Organization.  Once it's in your organization, you can copy and paste this Python code to duplicate your first storymap.   For help getting started, see the developers' site.       ... View more

  In preparing for the spring and an opportunity to get outside and do projects, let's take a moment to review one of the most fundamental data structures in GIS - the table.  In fact, to keep things familiar we'll use a Google Sheet that you or your students can edit and then show the data in a map. For instructors who want to build their own table-first approach to collecting data, a step-by-step walk-through is included.  Explore the storymap at: https://arcg.is/aWuTq   ... View more

A new collection with about a half-dozen in-depth articles on creating assessment instruments with Survey123 or Storymaps is now available. Some of the included resources are intended for classroom teachers, while others are intended for instructional designers. Included in the collection, you'll also find a new tutorial that walks through creating a traditional quiz using ArcGIS Survey123. Find the collection online at: https://esriurl.com/EduAssessments  ... View more

Ever want students to investigate multiple storymaps or maps and give them a single quiz, test, or worksheet to gauge their knowledge?  GeoQuests might be able to help. Ms. Smith has identified two maps in the Living Atlas and one from Esri GeoInquiries that she wants her 8th grade students to study - and answer her Google Form in the process. This worksheet on climate will be assigned as homework.  She can either give the students four URLs (three maps and one Google Form) or she can give them one GeoQuest URL. A GeoQuest acts like glue - it binds together what you have already created.  Your worksheet, quiz, or questionnaire instrument needs to be in Google Forms, Survey123, or Qualtrics.  You should set the sharing permissions such that only your students can access your form. The storymaps or maps can be shared publicly, organizationally, or within an ArcGIS Online group.  Like the form, the story map or map visibility is controlled however you (or someone else) has already set it. This instructional utility can be useful for creating assigned readings with worksheets, quizzes or tests that rely on students interpreting multiple interactive maps.  https://esriurl.com/geoquests    ... View more

If you build learning materials in Storymaps and want to embed interactive self-assessment items for students throughout the materials, you're in the right spot.  Take a quick look at this example to get an idea of what I'm thinking about. This is the third post in a series on creating interactive self-assessments in storymaps for learners (post 1, post 2). This work was informed by several brilliant insights from Peter Knoop. This approach requires both Survey123 and Storymaps - and to help you explore the details and possibilities, I've posted it all in a new storymap. https://arcg.is/GTCmX I'd love to get your feedback and/or your own examples using this technique or another one.  Post your comments below! ... View more