Resources for Teaching and Learning
Bloomberg: Here’s Who Owns the Most Land in America - "The 100 largest private landowners in the U.S. own 40 million acres—an area the size of Florida." Via Pitney Bowes staffers on LinkedIn. This is an interesting interactive map with a very detailed explanation of how the data was gathered and verified. The project includes data from Pitney Bowes and the use of QGIS.
Village Inn: This would make a good test or homework question. Visit this page and click on locations, then key in a location to search. The question: explain all the parameters in the code string, which might look like this, looks like this. Hat tip to Village Inn for helping with a fundraiser for a friend's school.
https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/geocode/json?address=location&key=AIzaSyDsNZtt7eAcOwB9ekjZWlcjBTd6-k9QJ6c&sensor=0
Guerrilla Cartography: Atlas in a Day - Join teams across the globe to develop submissions for an atlas. The atlas theme will be announced the day of the event. The organizers will combine all the maps submitted into an atlas that all participants will receive.
Statistics Canada: QGIS Training Tutorials: Using Spatial Data in Geographic Information Systems - There are four videos in the current set. Thank you Canadian government!
NPR: Book: 'The Geography Of Risk' - "NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with Gilbert Gaul about his book, The Geography of Risk, which examines the cost of hurricanes in recent years and why federal tax dollars are covering more of those costs." Timely.
LinkedIn: The Settlers of the United States of Catan - "Houseal Lavigne Transforms the National Land Cover geospatial data into the iconic board game Settlers of Catan" The creators make the map, in low or high res, available.
Esri: 2020 ArcGIS Online Competition for US HS+MS Students - Read the storymap to learn how to enter.
On and Off Campus
Baltimore Sun: Harford promoting agriculture with ‘Farm Finder,’ barn quilt passport - "Using geographic information systems (GIS) technology, the farm finder was developed in-house by the administration under Harford County Executive Barry Glassman, in partnership with Harford Community College and North Harford High School’s Natural Resources and Agricultural Science Magnet Program." It's a configurable app.
UMaine: NSF grant awarded to develop framework to harness forest ecosystem integrity, resilience data - "Compiling data to better assess, understand and forecast complex forest landscape changes is the goal of a four-year, multidisciplinary regional project led by the University of Maine." Faculty and students from three participating universities will collaborate.
WLWT: Miami University Mapathon to help Bahamas - "They [faculty and students] turned back the clock and used online open source geospatial tools to trace outlines of buildings onto mapping grids. They used satellite images and were able to see what the Bahamas looked like before the destruction of Hurricane Dorian." HOTOSM is always looking for more help.
Western Michigan: Skyrocketing drone usage leads WMU to offer consulting service - "Western Michigan University has stepped in to fill the equipment and expertise gap by offering consultants who provide the necessary drones, cameras and sensors to get the job done, then collect the necessary data and interpret it for clients."
The Spectator (UW-EC): Following in their footsteps - "Two female geography students participate in research at Fort IX mass execution site in Lithuania," "Kelly Jerviss and Hailee Jefferies, UW-Eau Claire geography students, spent three weeks this past summer participating in multidisciplinary research on an international team."
Awards
Open Education Consortium: Winners of Open Education Awards - Among the winners who "provide outstanding contributions in the Open Education community" was Open Geography Education, an effort founded by Adam Dastrup. The project was one of 17 awardees.
The Advocate: 4-H club takes third in Esri competition - "The Greater Baton Rouge Region 4-H Technology Club won third place in the recent Esri 2019 Map Gallery Competition. Global Geospatial Institute sponsors the state of Louisiana as a member of the 4-H National GIS/GPS Leadership Team." Yes, this is self-serving. I wanted to give a shout out to new subscribers from GGI! Welcome!
Thurston Talk: Washington Monthly Names Evergreen ‘Best in Nation’ in Master’s University Category - "Washington Monthly magazine has ranked The Evergreen State College as first out of 606 schools granting master’s degrees." So, what are graduates doing? Katrina Keleher ’19, earned a Master of Environmental Studies with a GIS certificate and recently began working with the Northwest Indian Fisheries Commission as a GIS specialist. That's a great degree+certificate combo!
American Geographical Society: The American Geographical Society Names 2019-2020 AGS Geography Teacher Fellows - This is year four for this effort.
Sharpiegate Responses
NYTimes: Maps don’t lie - This is via The St. Louis Trib since I ran out of free articles in the Times.
CityLab: The Ominous Power of ‘Sharpiegate’ - Laura Bliss interviews Mark Monmonier, a distinguished professor of geography at the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. He's the author of How to Lie with Maps, which was required reading in my cartography class in 1985.
People
Star Tribune: John W. Webb, author of groundbreaking geography textbook, dies at age 93 - "In 1968, he co-authored 'A Geography of Mankind.' 'The text was pioneering in that it was organized by themes such as government, religion and economy as they appeared across the world, 'said John Adams, professor emeritus at the U. 'This was a sharp departure from the prevailing approach, which examined the world by looking at a sequence of regions,' Adams said." That Adams guy? He's the Adams in Adams, Abler and Gould, aka The Blue Bible, another important textbook.
Courses
Esri: Spatial Data Science: The New Frontier in Analytics - The next MOOC! No start date is set, but the first offering is planned for 2020.
|
|
