Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/4ac3784538064850bcea91ae588e6392  is a story map that I just revised, with messages on thinking about audience, to hands-on portions where you build your own story maps.  I do hope it is useful. --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

Here are some tips and guidance that I hope will be helpful in the area of mentoring and geomentoring:    https://geo-jobe.com/mapthis/geomentoring-strategies/    --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

Greetings all:   I have been interviewing people in the geospatial field from all over the world in nonprofits, business, academia, and government agencies; perhaps it will spark some career inspirations as you journey forward:     https://www.directionsmag.com/playlist/6651   --Joseph Kerski  ... View more

All:   I thought this group might like to read this and try this: https://community.esri.com/t5/education-blog/touch-the-future-integrating-augmented-reality/ba-p/1051038 Touch the Future: Integrating Augmented Reality with Field Work, GIS, and Argis Solutions   --Joseph Kerski ... View more

Many of us have encountered the following question from students: “What should I do for my GIS project?” Or, perhaps   you   are that student looking for a GIS project. While the best project is the one that students come up with themselves, sometimes, suggestions are helpful to get started. See my recently updated guidelines here.  I look forward to your comments! ... View more

Recently I wrote an essay about the 10 most important GIS skills that working with ArcGIS Online fosters.  These include creating expressions, symbolizing and classifying, performing spatial analysis, and more.  However, working with GIS fosters far more than key and core GIS skills, as important as they are.  Furthermore, GIS is not "just maps" - maps help us understand patterns, relationships, and trends, but mapping is not the end goal:  Rather, understanding is the end goal.  Understanding something in a deeper, richer, more holistic way, and the smarter decisions and action that can result from that understanding.  As Richard Saul Wurman said, "Understanding precedes action."  In this essay, I explore what I consider to be the 10 most important educational benefits that working with GIS fosters, starting with spatial thinking.  I look forward to your feedback. The Top 10 Educational Benefits to Working with GIS   (1)  Spatial Thinking.  Maps have always been appealing; they convey a large amount of information in a small amount of space. In the past, this space was always constrained by physical media--stone tablets, wood blocks, silver plates (yes, silver!), film, and paper.  Today's digital maps are all around us, and increasingly embedded in dashboards, story maps, articles, video, and multimedia of all types.  They are in 2D and 3D representations, with the fourth dimension of time increasingly enabled through animations and space-time cubes.  Spatial thinking is key to understanding our increasingly interconnected, complex world, and key to solving the serious problems we are facing in that world.  Spatial thinking is greatly enabled by interacting with interactive maps made possible through GIS.   Through GIS, students are not only consuming maps created by others, but they are creating their own maps, infographics, and web mapping applications, and therefore deeply connecting with the creative process.  Learning to think spatially, sometimes called graphicacy, is every bit as important to teach at all levels in education as numeracy, articulacy, and literacy, as educators and scholars have argued as long ago as 1971.   Spatial thinking is coupled with holistic thinking--considering the world as more than just the sum of its parts.  It is also connected to seeing the world as a system of systems--the biosphere, lithosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, cryosphere, and anthrosphere-the human sphere.  Spatial thinking also fosters the understanding of cycles such as the carbon cycle and the hydrologic cycle.   (2)  Critical Thinking.  Critical thinking I believe must include three aspects:  (2a) Critical thinking about data.  (2b)  Critical thinking about methods.  (2c).  Critical thinking about maps.   Questions to pose as you teach with GIS include:   What difference would changing the data set theme, resolution, or scale make in the final analysis?  What difference would changing the Arcade expression make in the appearance of this map, and why?  What difference would an erase rather than a union function make in the final sites we are considering, and why?  Can you trust this map to make a decision with?  Is this map or layer suitable for your project?  Can you trust the data that you yourself collected in the field?  What are the inherent errors in data, from map projections to missing attributes, and how can you manage this error? (3)  Problem-based Learning (PBL).   GIS was created to solve problems.  Using GIS in education helps students frame, visualize, and grapple with problems.  It even enables students to create solutions to those problems, whether it is about natural hazards, climate, urban greenways, litter, energy, social inequity, or the other complex issues of our day.  PBL implies active learning, and GIS is a natural fit because when using GIS, student are actively engaged as scientists, planners, and other professional decision makers.  Students in PBL  learn by actively engaging in real-world and personally meaningful projects.   Using GIS, students have flexibility to choose projects and problems that they see in their community and their world that are serious and need addressing.    (4)  Geographic and Scientific Inquiry.  Inquiry involves asking questions, gathering data, assessing the quality of that data, evaluating methods, analyzing the data and the results of the methods used, making decisions and recommendations, and taking action.  This process usually sparks additional questions, and the process continues.  The effective use of GIS is keenly tied to this process of inquiry.  At its core, GIS has always been "a thinkers tool" as I and Charlie Fitzpatrick have often written and said.  GIS requires students to ask questions.  Students aren't used to asking their own questions; they are used to instructors asking them questions.  How can we encourage students to ask thoughtful questions of their own?  A good map teaches you to ask a better question, as I explain here.  Asking questions leads to tenacity in problem solving, and those who ask questions are those who employers want to hire to improve the efficiency of the workplace.   (5)  Data Fluency.   In this essay, I made the case based on Jukes et al.'s book Understanding the Digital Generation that using GIS fosters data fluency.   The book's authors prefer the word "fluency" over literacy because it conveys a sense of lifelong learning, such as becoming fluent in a language--in this case, the language of technology.  There are five important fluencies:  (1) Solution fluency:  Whole brain thinking, including creativity and problem solving applied in real time.  (2)  Information fluency:  The ability to access digital information sources to retrieve desired information and  assess  and critically evaluate the quality of information.  (3)  Collaboration fluency:   This "teamworking proficiency" is the "ability to work cooperatively with virtual and real partners in an online environment to create original digital products."  (4)  Creativity fluency:  The "process by which artistic proficiency adds meaning through design, art, and storytelling."  (5)  Media fluency:  The ability to look analytically at any communication media to interpret the real message, determine how the chosen media is being used to shape thinking, evaluate the efficacy of the message, and the ability to publish original digital products to match the media to the intended message.    Space does not permit me to make all of the connections between these fluencies and what students do when they use GIS and geographic inquiry to grapple with problems.  However, I have witnessed thousands of times over the past 20 years that students doing so engage in all five of these fluencies.   The creating of story maps alone is key to creative fluency (#4), and thinking critically about maps is key to success with #5 and indeed, success in many aspects of modern life.   (6)  Community Connections.   GIS is a tool used globally and on global problems such as climate, education, water, and other United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), but it is at the same time a tool that students and educators can use to engage with issues at the local level, such as planning a new bike trail, nurturing public art or community gardens, or tackling traffic accidents or graffiti.  With the rise of community data portals such as ArcGIS Hub, and indicators in real time of what is happening on, under, and over the planet, and students' ability to collect their own data, there is no shortage of data to examine, map, and use in understanding and engaging with local issues.    (7)  Field work.   I contend that field work needs to include (A) field methods, and (B) getting outside!  Field work is essential not only understanding our changing world, and our communities, but is essential for nurturing an "Earth Ethic" in students, so that they will appreciate, and want to care for, the marvelous planet on which we live.  Successful field work involves planning, executing, and analyzing results.  It is keenly tied to project planning, dealing with uncertainty, working with high-tech and low tech methods, and dealing with data--the units that will be used, the variables, and the resulting data tables, images, geodatabases, and maps.  It sometimes involves contacting others in the community for access to certain lands or to garner their support and participation.  Survey123 or other Esri GIS apps can be used, but students can also use other citizen science apps such as iNaturalist, phone apps for noise or plant species, and bring the data into the ArcGIS environment for spatial analysis.  Field work was an integral part, for example, of a Data Citizens project I was involved in, where students and faculty mapped storm drains and learned about the water and sewage system of their own community.  Field work, even if it is just on the school or university campus, involves the act of getting outside and observing, both with tech tools but also with one's own five senses.  It is a key part in overcoming "nature deficit disorder" as explained by Richard Louv in his book Last Child in the Woods.   (8) Career Pathways.  "When are we ever going to use this after we get out of school?" is an oft-heard phrase articulated by students.  While we shouldn't use GIS in education "just because" it is in demand in the workplace, GIS does provide students with key career skills that will never "go out of style".  Why?  In part because students who use GIS become valuable employees for nonprofit, academia, local-to-international government agencies, and private industry.  They are able to make decisions, work with data, and see holistically.  The "Whys of Where" will be increasingly asked in all aspects of the workforce in the coming years.  We are faced pressure on our one single planet for which there is no spare.  Sustainability and resilience will be in every organization's plan in the future, and GIS will always have a key role.  Furthermore I have seen time and time again how students' own professional behavior "rises up" because they know they are using a set of tools that are being used in the professional community.   See the career videos here and listen to these podcasts I have created for dozens of intriguing people using GIS in their day to day work.  (9)  Content Knowledge.  For years I and my colleagues have argued that when you are teaching and learning with GIS, you are learning core content knowledge.   GIS was never about "buttonology" - memorizing where tools and buttons are on the GIS interface and learning how to use them.   Even if you are teaching and learning in a GIS or GIScience course, every procedure has real data behind it, and so you are concurrently learning about plate tectonics, ecoregions, climate, the hydrologic network, transportation, energy, city zoning, or many other aspects of our natural and human-built world.  GIS is core to science, social science, and many other fields.  And GIS is rapidly expanding to fields outside geography, GIS, and planning, such as health, business, civil engineering, data science, history, humanities, and many others.  Those fields use their own data, approaches, and problems, and students in those fields are learning about impacts of lifestyles and the environment upon health, supply chain management, building energy efficiency, and a myriad of other topics in those disciplines.  In both of these "teaching GIS" and "teaching with GIS" categories, I would argue that content knowledge is acquired more rapidly than memorizing large volumes of information, because students are actively engaging with the data and methods as a practicing professional would in those fields.  (10)  Students as Change Agents.   Students empowered with the skills, content knowledge, and perspectives detailed in this and the previous essay have the confidence and ability to become change agents in their future workplace.  I also make the case that given the examples detailed in the Esri community space over the years, such as here at a high school and here at the community college, that students are already change agents in their own school and university, and beyond.  GIS can also serve to help young women and other underrepresented populations step into technology-based careers.  Educators from primary to university level as well as those in informal educational settings such as museums and 4H love using GIS because it embodies why they all got into education in the first place--making a positive difference in the world through caring, engaged students.   Which of these 10 benefits have you personally witnessed when teaching or learning GIS?  Which of the 10 do you think will be most important during the remainder of this decade?  What benefit have I left off this list?  I invite your comments below.    ... 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How can the spatial framework and geotechnologies be used to foster data literacy, and to teach and learn about water?  How can GIS be used to effectively engage students in such content and skills?  These were key questions that were a part of the Dyouville University's Data Citizens Western New York project, which brought together university instructors and reasearchers, community leaders, secondary social studies teachers, and project consultants to design, implement, and evaluate an innovative professional development model for Civics and Geography educators through Dyouville University.  Its chief aim was to improve teacher competence and confidence in GIS, providing teachers with technological skills needed to prepare tomorrow’s spatial citizens.   It created a teacher professional development model designed to support geography, civics, and government teachers and students as they explore global historical questions using geo-spatial data to analyze and address civic issues.  One of the focal points was to use water as a theme to bind field data collection activities, the natural and social sciences, and to incorporate key community issues.  The project leaders chose storm drains as the study unit--objects so much a part of everyday life that we seldom think about them, yet they are fundamentally tied to the physical and human-built environment. To support the project, I created a series of videos that walks an educator or student through the process of thinking about water from a spatial lens, to gathering resources, creating and deploying a field survey, creating 2D and 3D maps, performing spatial analysis, and creating a dashboard and a story map to communicate the results of the project.  I assembled the videos in the following playlist, in the hopes that they will spark some creative ideas for you and others who watch them:  Teaching and Learning about Water with GIS - YouTube The contents of the videos are as follows: Why teach with these approaches, tools, and data? How to teach with these approaches, tools, and data? Resources – data, tools, and methods. Resources:  Lessons. Creating a survey and a map from that survey. Adding relevant data to the map. Using Spatial Analysis to understand connections. Creating a 3D scene.   Creating a dashboard.  Creating a story map.  Playlist of 10 videos that guide a person through the concept through the completed investigation. This project took full advantage of "modern web GIS" components--Survey123, 2D maps and 3D scenes,  spatial analysis, dashboards, story maps, the Living Atlas of the World, and more.  In fact, one of my favorite parts of the project is that it began with "What is spatial thinking and GIS?", guiding the educators through short but insightful lessons so they could gain confidence in using the tools, data, and technology, and then a scaffolded approach to field data gathering > mapping > adding layers > doing spatial analysis (create watershed and trace downstream) > creating a 3D scene > creating a dashboard > creating a story map. An example dashboard from this project is here: One of the story maps is here: The front part of one of the story maps communicating the project and its results. This project also demonstrated how versatile GIS instruction is:  The spring 2021 cohort of educators were all online, and so was I and the entire instructional team of colleagues.  The summer 2021 cohort were together in a social distanced large auditorium classroom on the Dyouville University campus, with some of the instructional team with them, but with 2 instructors, myself included, there virtually.  With GIS running in the cloud in ArcGIS Online, data as services from ArcGIS Online and local ArcGIS Hubs, lessons and supportive materials online, and the ability to share not just maps and apps, but best practices for instruction, all online, it is really the perfect convergence.  And for those of you reading this, this is the perfect time for you to start using GIS if you have not already.  The project used the ArcGIS system from Esri, the David Rumsey map collection, the National Geographic Map Maker, SketchUp, and a few others.  For the institute, a combination of existing Esri GeoInquiries lessons and lessons the instructional team wrote were used.   If you would like to watch the recordings and examine the resources that were created for this project, see this page.    It has been an honor working with the fine team at Dyouville University, with my colleague Anita Palmer of GISetc, and with the two cohorts of social studies secondary educators who have gone through the program thus far.   Many of us have been together from the project's inception, from the original letter of support for the project from Esri and others, to planning the content for the institutes, and delivering the content.  This was a dedicated team who planned things down to the finest details, and I must say that I love working with organized people!  I must also salute the educators who, despite these disruptive times, determined to effectively teach and learn with GIS and are now implementing those skills and content.  As is always the case in educator professional development, I learned a great deal from the educators.  The project will continue this summer with something wonderful--a teacher-and-student field trip to local water treatment facilities in Buffalo, and other places with a water theme, and the project will continue on into next year.  Therefore, expect to hear additional stories and results from this project demonstrating that it is creating positive change!   ... 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In high school, my friend and I had ongoing debates about the "Top 10 coolest bands of all time."  We never could win each other to "our side" of the argument, but it was fun to discuss anyway.  Nowadays, perhaps because of the flood of information, because of time constraints and the need for concise pieces of information, and because it offers a place for anyone to have a voice, the web is full of Top 10 lists.  These include those on the "Top 10 places to visit in <fill in your state or country> before you die", the "Top 10 most influential people in history", and on and on.  These lists are often subjective, sometimes fun to read, sometimes can be informative, but can often serve as effective "conversation starters" in class in debate or in other instructional scenarios.  In today's complex and rapidly changing education and technology environment, where educators need to focus on "what really matters", such a Top 10 GIS based skills list could be valuable.  Therefore, I ask, you, the reader, to think about:  "What are the 10 most important skills to nurture and develop for success in using ArcGIS Online?"  Let me reassure you here at the outset that I do not believe that these are the only type of skills that teaching with GIS fosters.  Indeed, my colleagues and I have written extensively about the inquiry, communication, and other skills fostered by working with spatial data and geotechnologies in this blog, in videos, and in journal articles, and elsewhere.  Furthermore, since GIS instruction always is about real issues in real contexts, whether it is natural hazards, species richness, soils or landforms, climate and weather, population change and demographics, social justice, or other key 21st Century issues, students are gaining content knowledge in a wide array of disciplines when they are using GIS in instruction.  In addition, I believe that GIS offers spatial thinking, systems thinking, holistic thinking, and other perspectives far beyond skills and content knowledge.  See my 3-legged stool of geoliteracy for more.  And we could certainly talk about the broader skills in managing projects, working with data types, formats, and delivery mechanisms (portals, Hubs; streaming vs. downloading), and learning attitudes such as embracing change, asking questions, and so on.   But for this essay, let's focus on core GIS skills.    While any "Top 10" list is rightly open to debate, and I welcome that debate in the comments to this essay, I would argue that if you and your students master these 10 skills, you can do virtually anything in this exciting and powerful platform!  Do I really mean anything?  Yes, because I believe teaching your students these skills is like teaching them "how to fish"--they develop the perspectives and problem-solving abilities that they can transfer to different issues and regions.  This education community blog is filled with examples of students doing amazing things, from primary to secondary to university (read more here and here) and beyond.  The Top 10 GIS Skills (1)  Working with Maps and Layers:  Searching for, opening, and saving maps, basemaps, layers, and 3D scenes; managing content, and creating and using metadata. (2)   Creating Map Content:   Creating feature services, spreadsheets, multimedia, and other content, and making maps from that content.  (3)  Map Navigation:  Changing scale and map projection, finding locations and places, measuring, bookmarking, and selecting.   (4)  Symbology:  Changing symbology (style), classifying, clustering, filtering, rendering imagery.  (5)  Attributes:  Working with tabular data:  Selecting, creating field and tables, sorting, summarizing, and creating and using popups.   (6)  Field data:  Collecting and mapping field data from field data collection apps (such as Survey123 and iNaturalist), GPS and fitness apps, geotagged photographs, and from analog methods (such as notes on a clipboard!).   (7) Drawing and Sketching:  Configuring popups and other map objects (map notes in Classic Map Viewer, Sketch layers in New Map Viewer).  (8)  Creating expressions (in Arcade) and using them in filtering, labeling, and symbolizing.  (9) Creating web mapping applications including story maps, infographics, and dashboards. (10) Performing analysis: Proximity, summarizing, map overlay, map algebra, routing, joining, spatial statistical tools, and more. This list can be used to create assessment tools if you are teaching a course or a workshop.  It could also be used as a pre-test for a workshop you are planning--what are attendees' skills before they begin?  It could be compared to a post-workshop evaluation using a variety of assessment instruments.  I like using ArcGIS Story Maps, for example, as content that I can evaluate technically and also to make sure students understand the concept (such as tsunamis or population change).  I can assess the maps online and also assess a 5-minute  live or recorded oral presentation that the students give as they walk their peers and me through their story map. While my essay title is focused on "ArcGIS Online", I contend that many of these skills are important in using other GIS software such as ArcGIS Pro, ArcGIS Urban, ArcGIS Insights, Business Analyst Web, and even non-Esri GIS software.   But those other software sets involve developing some unique skills as well, such as understanding how to bring data from a GIS to a statistical package and back, for example, using the R Bridge in ArcGIS Pro.  Certainly there are "honorable mentions" that I would like to include in this list, such as (1) developing coding skills in JavaScript and Python which powers the web maps, and (2) editing point, line, and polygon mapped features.  But I cut myself off at 10 ! Other GIS skill lists are worth examining:   My colleagues and I in the T3G program organized the core elements of GIS into:  Create geographic data, analyze data, and visualize data.   USC, for example, groups the skills into data collection and evaluation, visualization, analysis, and modeling.   I also like this list from Oregon State University for its nudge about understanding workflows and from GIS Lounge for its focus on data.  And I have long been a proponent of the Geospatial Technology Competency Model from the GeoTech Center that begins with personal competencies:  "Are you organized?  Are you ethical?  Can you work with data?"   What skills, in your judgement, are most important in the above list?   What skills would you include in such a list?  Which of these 10 skills apply to using other tools, such as ArcGIS Pro?  What skills do you think might decrease or increase in importance as we move forward in this current decade?   I look forward to your comments below!   ... 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