Geospatial Brain Power
Does learning GIS improve spatial reasoning capabilities in high schoolers? A team from six universities is studying the students—and their brains—to find out. A group of researchers from six American universities are studying what effect spatial education has on the development of the spatial thinking and reasoning skills of high school students. The research team…
Beyond Compactness: A New Measure to Evaluate Congressional Districts
Redrawing congressional district boundaries, an activity that happens every ten years following the decennial census, may be the most consequential application of geography in the United States. As congressional elections have become less competitive, many are raising questions about the current boundaries of congressional districts, often citing lack of geographical compactness as their rationale. Geographical…
AI and GIS: Finally Delivering on the promise
The field of artificial intelligence (AI) isn't new, and neither are its grand promises. AI as an academic pursuit has its roots in the 1950s. Early AI researchers were filled with optimism, but—despite some initial work that appeared groundbreaking, such as the first artificial neural networks—the field saw slow progress over the next several decades.…
Deoxygenation of the Ocean Affects Everyone, So Act Now
By Dawn J. Wright, Esri, and Sylvia A. Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Did you know that more than half of the oxygen we breathe comes from the ocean? This oxygen is produced in large part by the photosynthesis of billions and trillions of small plants in the ocean called phytoplankton, as well as the blending…
Stop Teaching GIS
Teach how to learn GIS instead. That was a guiding principle as I recently redesigned the gateway course to the Penn State Online certificate and master's degree programs in GIS. I began developing Nature of Geographic Information in 1998, at the outset of the Penn State Online ;I designed the course to serve adult students…
Exploring New Orleans and Beyond Using Web Mapping Tools, Maps, and Data
The evolution of geographic information system (GIS) technology to the web presents an excellent opportunity for the geography community to foster spatial thinking among colleagues, students, and administrators. The use of web maps, spatial data, and analysis tools to examine local to global issues has never been so powerful and easy to embrace. It also…
Teaching Modern GIS
As educators, we are always faced with challenges on how we structure our curriculum activities to ensure that we are in line with modern industry practices. This is easier said than done—for one, there is likely no consensus on what a "modern geographic information system (GIS)" means; and two, it takes a tremendous amount of…
Educational GIS Activities in Africa
Over the past decade, most universities and some secondary schools across Africa have been exposed to geographic information system (GIS) technology. Teaching about and with GIS on that continent has been both challenging and rewarding. On April 9, 2017, the panel session "Teaching GIS in Africa" was held at the Association of American Geographers (AAG)…
AAG Staff Participate in Esri Education GIS & User Conferences in San Diego
AAG Staff participated in and exhibited at the annual Esri Education GIS and User Conferences July 8th-14th in San Diego, California. The conferences are a great opportunity for the AAG to conduct outreach to the GIS community, engaging with current AAG members, signing up new AAG members, advertising the Annual Meeting for both attendees and potential exhibitors,…
AAG at the Forefront of Geography Education Change
I will keep this column relatively brief because I want you to read a companion piece by Michael Solem, Director of Educational Research and Programs for AAG. In my August column I identified eight actions that I see as key to healthy geography departments: teach, promote, build, innovate, nurture, manage, reflect, and envision. In my…
The Most Detailed Ecological Land Units Map of the World
Esri and the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) have announced the development of the highest-spatial-resolution ecological land units (ELUs) map of the world ever produced. The global ELUs map portrays a systematic division and classification of ecological and physiographic information about land surface features. The work was commissioned by the intergovernmental Group on Earth Observations (GEO),…
Esri Donates $1 Billion in GIS Software to US K-12 Schools
Responding to President Barack Obama’s call to help strengthen STEM education through the ConnectED Initiative, Esri president Jack Dangermond announced today that Esri will provide a grant to make its advanced mapping software running on cloud infrastructure provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) available for free to the more than 100,000 elementary, middle, and high schools in the…