When the world changes dramatically, it’s important to lean on each other. Our panel of geospatial friends from around the US offer their insights on getting your class online quickly. Whether you’re Mac or Windows…Higher Ed or K-12…there is a wealth of information here related to delivering instruction online. We discuss communication and online presence, utilizing existing resources, technology consideration, resources (also see below), and tips & tricks.
We welcome your input. If you have a resource to add, please email us editors@directionsmag.com. We have video and audio versions.
Topic Timing (if you want to jump ahead to something in particular):
- 2:52 Communication & Online Presence
- 16:02 Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
- 39:40 Technology Considerations
- 58:24 Resources
- 1:13:26 Tip & Tricks
Videos
Video with Captions(below)
You can also view it on YouTube.
Audio
Download or listen.
Resources
General Online Instruction & Tools links
- https://hub.jhu.edu/2020/03/12/how-to-teach-online-courses-coronavirus-response/
- https://careerwise.minnstate.edu/education/successonline.html
- https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-online-teaching
- https://www.umass.edu/oapa/sites/default/files/pdf/handbooks/teaching_and_learning_online_handbook.pdf
- https://chroniclevitae.com/news/2176-4-lessons-from-moving-a-face-to-face-course-online
- https://www.educationdegree.com/articles/teaching-online-how-to-guide/
From the DirectionsMag vault:
- Distinguished Geospatial Speaker Series: Implementing Open Geography Education https://www.directionsmag.com/webinar/9446
- Education articles & podcasts: https://www.directionsmag.com/topic/2
- Education webinars – https://www.directionsmag.com/webinars?itemTypeIds=&query=&start=19&topicIds=2#items
- The Expanding Reach of Geospatial Intelligence: Lessons Learned from 21,000 Students – https://www.directionsmag.com/webinar/4464
- MOOCs, Maps, and the Geospatial Revolution – Sharing the digital classroom with 48,000 students https://www.directionsmag.com/webinar/4501
ESRI-based Curriculum suggestions
- John Nelson of Esri’s Education team shared via Twitter an announcement of the Esri Cartography MOOC materials, data and links to YouTube videos were made available to all educators in this transition. http://esriurl.com/cartomooc
- Esri Free and fairly short Lessons http://learn.arcgis.com
- Esri Training (most education licenses have licenses for this) – http://training.esri.com (Don’t recreate a wheel, look through existing Learning Plans, adopt, adapt or even have students create their own plan and submit it for your review for the remainder of the semester https://www.esri.com/training/learning-plans/ )
- Educator Support webinar https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/03/16/covid-19-educator-support-enabling-remote-access-to-arcgis-in-higher-education-webinar?et=watches.email.blog
- Esri’s Education Page: https://www.esri.com/en-us/industries/education/overview
- Instructional Resources: https://www.esri.com/en-us/industries/education/schools/instructional-resources
- Esri Press books will be available through the VitalSource Helps program starting on Monday, March 23. Some basic info – see the FAQ link for more details. Students will have access to up to 7 titles of their choice (from any publisher, but a total of 7 titles)
- Students have to sign up with VitalSource and access e-books through Bookshelf using their school-assigned email.
- Access is provided through May 25, 2020. After that, the e-book(s) will disappear from their Bookshelf library. Notes will still be downloadable
- FAQ for students/educators is here: https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044467674-Student-and-Instructor-Frequently-Asked-Questions
Joseph’s suggestions
- Joseph Kerski’s blog of essays of data sources and societal considerations around GIS and spatial data: https://spatialreserves.wordpress.com
- Joseph Kerski’s YouTube channel on GIS in education https://esriurl.com/ourearth including new video on Ethics in GIS.
- The UCGIS Body of Knowledge. https://gistbok.ucgis.org/
- COVID Esri GIS support page: https://community.esri.com/community/education/content?filterID=contentstatus%5Bpublished%5D%7Ecategory%5Bcovid-19-educator-support%5D
- Moving your course to distance learning, highlighting the attachment: https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/03/16/moving-your-course-to-distance-learning
- Opportunity to move to SaaS: https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/03/17/covid-19-educator-advice-opportunity-to-move-to-saas
- Teaching about coronavirus with maps, data, and dashboards: https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/03/16/teaching-about-the-coronavirus-covid-19-with-web-maps-dashboards-and-infographics
- Connecting surveys, maps, dashboards, and story maps: https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/03/13/lesson-connecting-surveys-maps-dashboards-and-story-maps
- Using the photos with locations tool: https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/03/10/using-photos-with-locations-tool-in-education
- Office hours: https://community.esri.com/community/education/blog/2020/03/18/covid-19-esri-educator-support-office-hours
- FAQ for students/educators is here: https://support.vitalsource.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044467674-Student-and-Instructor-Frequently-Asked-Questions
Rich’s suggestions
- “Are Hospitals Near Me Ready for Coronavirus? Here Are Nine Different Scenarios” https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/covid-hospitals
- GeoTech Center: https://geotechcenter.org
- IGETT http://www.igettremotesensing.org/
Shannon’s suggestions
- Quick overviews created by Shannon (creative commons – use them, change them, edit them):
- Creating data using Drag Drop Map (links out to some copyright friendly help guides too) http://tinyurl.com/dragdropmap
- Getting started with Storymaps a google doc that links out to many resources about storymaps. (http://tinyurl.com/wmstorymaps )
Open Education Textbooks ( when the students have had to leave them behind)
- OERCommons for textbooks https://www.oercommons.org/hubs/19/browse?f.search=gis&__hub_id=19 or https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks?term=Geographic&commit=Go
- Open Textbook Library at University of Minnesota https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/textbooks?term=Geographic&commit=Go
Open Education Course Materials
- MIT Open Courseware: https://ocw.mit.edu/search/ocwsearch.htm?q=GIS
- Penn State’s Open course resources: https://open.ems.psu.edu/courses
- GeoTech Center’s Education page: http://www.geotechcenter.org/education.html
- Esri’s GIS for Teaching Portal: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/PublicGallery/index.html?appid=a6f143ecb65b47ef89e68d5f1e8d5683&group=a78f1ba7b81a44eca9cf6d5c1b7c523d
Other OER Resources
- Use George Mason’s real-time federated search of OER content (google like, but for OER) Mason OER Metafinder (MOM)
- World Digital Library – Have students search map or maps and have a writing assignment (very cool resource) https://www.wdl.org/en/
- Community College Consortium for OER has a great page on finding OER materials https://www.cccoer.org/learn/find-oer/
Exploring OpenSource:
Q- GIS Resources (GIS across platforms including Win, Linux, Mac)
DOWNLOADING
- Main website: https://qgis.org/en/site/index.html
- Recommend downloading the Long-Term Release (LTR) will be safest. (new features are found in the newer release, think beta so less stable). https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/download.html
DOCUMENTATION & MATERIALS
- A Gentle Introduction to QGIS: https://docs.qgis.org/3.10/en/docs/gentle_gis_introduction/index.html
- Get started with Q-GIS https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/index.html#trainingmaterial
- User Guide: https://docs.qgis.org/3.10/en/docs/user_manual/
- Training Manual: https://docs.qgis.org/3.10/en/docs/training_manual/
- Other Tutorials & Training Materials: https://qgis.org/en/site/forusers/trainingmaterial/index.html
- QGIS Tutorials & Learning Resources https://www.qgistutorials.com/en/docs/learning_resources.html
- More QGIS Tutorials and Tips including Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced. Also includes Network Analysis, Python Scripting with (PyQGIS) and web mapping, https://www.qgistutorials.com/en/
- Spatial Thoughts Blog: https://spatialthoughts.com/category/qgis/
VIDEOS
- QGIS 3 for the Absolute Beginner Video published by Klass Karlson (great outline links to parts of the video in his description) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCnNWyl9qSE
- His full video collection is at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxs7cfMwzgGZhtUuwhny4-Q
Stace’s suggestions
- Finding Data: https://earthworks.stanford.edu/
- HDX Humanitarian Data Exchange https://data.humdata.org/event/covid-19
- Raster / Earth Observation https://developers.google.com/earth-engine/datasets
- Stanford Geospatial Center’s LibGuide for Remote Resources https://guides.library.stanford.edu/remotesgc
- OBS Studio https://obsproject.com/
Have more questions? Contact our panel
Hashtags: #SOSTeachGIS, #GIS, #GISchat, #TeachOnline
- Joseph Kerski, Education Manager, Esri jkerski@esri.com
- Stace Maples, Geospatial Manager, Stanford University stacemaples@stanford.edu
- Miriam Olivares, GIS Librarian, Yale University miriam.olivares@yale.edu
- Rich Schultz, Associate Director and Co-PI, National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence richardbschultz720@gmail.com
- Shannon White, GIS Certificate Coordinator, William and Mary shwhite@wm.edu
More suggestions for our resources? email us editors@directionsmag.com