Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Esri Education GIS Conference – Proposals Due Nov 1

From the Esri Education Team:

Seems crazy to think about next summer when classes have barely started, but believe it or not it’s time to think about presenting at the 2014 Esri Education GIS Conference. The conference, with the theme “Education’s Grand Challenges-GIS Opportunities,” will explore the big issues currently confronting K-12 schools, higher education, and informal education and the relevance of GIS to those challenges.
Details and submission form: http://esriurl.com/EducCFP
Deadline for submissions: November 1, 2013
Suggested Topics
Education’s Grand Challenges
  • Impacts of the Common Core and other standards
  • The uncertain future of higher education
  • Assessment, badging, and alternative credentialing schemes
  • Online learning and the object formerly known as “textbook”
  • Equitable access and affordability
GIS Opportunities
  • Relevance of GIS to new education standards
  • GIS massive open online courses (MOOC) and online programs
  • What works in teacher professional development
  • Successes and challenges in adopting ArcGIS Online
  • Assessing core competencies in GIS
  • Increasing operational efficiency with GIS
The Esri Education GIS Conference will be July 12-15, 2014 in San Diego, CA.  For more information, see www.esri.com/educ

Mapping the Environment: 10 Resources


Esri Education Manager Joseph Kerski and his colleague Tom Baker recently met with environmental educators at the North American Association for Environmental Education annual conference.  Messages there through the Esri exhibit included:


1.  Map your nature center, school campus, or university’s facilities with ArcGIS.  It can make your center or campus run more efficiently, provide a safer environment, and save energy.
2.  Map and analyze your field data with ArcGIS Online.  It is easy to do, and your students can map anything from invasive species to litter to tree species to water quality, and more.  Use smartphones, GPS, probes, or other methods to gather data and locations of that data for easy input to ArcGIS Online.
3.  Analyze local to global environmental phenomena around the world with these same tools.  For example, you can compare population density to ecoregions to determine which ecoregions are most at risk from human impact.
4.  Dig deeper into further analysis with ArcGIS Online for Organizations and ArcGIS Desktop.  For example, you can determine answers to questions such as “how many water wells are within 500 meters of the riparian zone?”
5.  Tap into your K-12 statewide license or your university license for Esri technology.  Your state’s schools, your school district, or your university may already have a license, just waiting for you to use it!
6.   Connect with other educators using geotechnologies, receive training, discover lessons and data, and more, via the Esri GIS in Education Community.
7.  Use Story Maps to communicate your environmental story.  Esri showed this new Story Map for points of interest in the city of Baltimore for the conference attendees field excursions, for example, cityview.baltimorecity.gov/shortlist/, but others exist here on environmetal themes.
8.  Show students how valuable they become as environmental scientists with GIS skills on their toolbelts by investigating some projects that use GIS and by watching some videos.
9.  Access STEM Connections to GIS on the Esri Education Community site, including case studies, activities, maps, links to standards, and more.
10.  For additional connections between environmental education and GIS, access a Spatial Environmental Education article in Earthzine that Kerski authored, that focuses on Teaching and learning about the environment from a spatial framework.
What can you do to teach and learn about the environment with the above resources?
Original post by Esri Education Manager Joseph Kerski 

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Earth Science Week October 13-19, 2013!


October 13-19 2013 is Earth Science Week, http://www.earthsciweek.org. "Mapping Our World" is this year's ESW theme, and, again, is a huge opportunity to promote geospatial tech. Before the shutdown, Esri helped folks at NASA create a nice poster http://climate.nasa.gov/esw2013. Esri's resources (including "Mapping Our World") are available at http://edcommunity.esri.com/esw.

Original post by Charlie Fitzpatrick, Esri Schools Program Manager