Mark Your Calendar for GIS Day 2008!

Mark Your Calendar for GIS DAY! -- You may already have big plans for Geography Awareness Week and GIS Day. If not, this could be the perfect opportunity to introduce GIS to your students! Mark the week of November 16 -22 and, specifically, November 19 for GIS Day.
For ideas on activities, both high and low tech, visit the following websites:

ESRI - Tenth Annual GIS Day
http://www.gisday.com/

My Wonderful World - A National Geographic-led Campaign
http://www.mywonderfulworld.org/gaw.html

1, 2, 3, GO! with AEJEE & Hawaii Data

If you are ready to install and use the ArcExplorer software and the Hawaii data from the jump drives (provided at the Summer 2008 Intro to GIS Workshop), here are the three steps to get up and running:

1. Download and install ArcExplorer Java Edition for Education (AEJEE) from the ESRI website: http://www.esri.com/software/arcexplorer/about/arcexplorer-education.html

2. Transfer Hawaii data from your Jump Drive -- Copy the GIS_HI_Data directory on your jump drive over to your hard drive into the following location: C:/ESRI/AEJEE/DATA.

3. Open AEJEE; Click "Add Data" (or the yellow and black addition symbol) and open the Coastline shape file. Note - A common mistake is to go to File:Open. Remember that this will only see .axl files (map projects) and will NOT see .shp files which are the data layers.

GO! Continue on with your GIS Inquiry of Hawaii. Continue adding data that will assist you. Check/uncheck layers as needed. Change symbology and add labels to help further your analysis.

Online Election Map (GIS) Tools

If you are interested in having your kids follow the elections while also introducing them to various online GIS tools, here are a couple of interesting websites to try:

Google Elections '08 Map Gallery
http://maps.google.com/help/maps/elections/

National Public Radio 2008 Election Map
https://gw.medb.org/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=http://www.npr.org/news/specials/election2008/2008-election-map.html