The grant ($300,000) goes to Lehigh University (I spent a summer there in high school) to build professional materials for teacher and curricula for middle school environmental literacy.

The program will rely on geospatial information technologies (GIT) to help students analyze information and data on three core topics: energy, climate change and the impact of human activity on the environment. Issues such as urban and suburban sprawl, water resource usage, pollution, and ecosystem management will be included in the curriculum.
...
The WELIM [Web-enhanced Environmental Literacy and Inquiry Modules] initiative is a pilot program that directly addresses both concerns simultaneously using GIT. The technologies, which range from handheld GPS systems to Web satellite imagery, help students explore geography and collect data while becoming more familiar with their environment.

- press release

With this past weekend's Beijing summer olympics closing ceremonies the event goes into hibernation for another four years. What will we recall? Phelp's eight swimming golds? The Chinese taking more golds than another other country? A first olympic gold medal for Mongolia (in Judo)? Perhaps. But will anyone following the games say they learned a bit more about the world, about geography.


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The National Science Foundation is giving the Missouri University of Science and Technology a $500,000 grant "to make Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software available to students in laboratory environments."

Part of the grant has faculty members "designing a comprehensive learning system to introduce civil engineering students to the software."

The news story from the school include the obligatory Google Earth quote:

“It’s like Google Earth only you can customize and analyze spatial data,” says Dr. Ronaldo Luna, associate professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at Missouri S&T.

Slashdot highlights an LA Times front page story about professors dumping traditional text in favor of open source and non-free online texts.

We are doing that at Penn State Online Masters in GIS. So far, two texts are open source: Open Web Mapping (updated URL per course author comment below) and The Nature of Geographic Information. I'm working to open source my course (Comparative GIS) for Winter quarter.

Faculty and alumnae of UMass are hopeful the a new chancellor, Robert Holub will consider removing the Amherst from the main campus' name: University of Massachusetts-Amherst. The school has several other sites: Boston, Worcester (Med Center), Dartmouth and Lowell. The idea is to make the flagship campus more "flaghshippy," raise the profile, make it seem less of a commuter school, and bring more resources. Those on the other side suggest that having the geographic references makes all the campuses equal. They are not, of course, since you can only study medicine in Worcester. The other issue, for me, a long time Baystater, is that Amherst is way far away from the center of the Massachusetts population and action: Boston. That's fine; I think it's great to get students out of the city so they are not distracted (State College, PA anyone?)

I just don't want anyone from out of state thinking they are coming to Boston if they attend the main campus. Alas, Amherst is not as famous at State College. Besides, college names offer a great way to learn geography. As kid I had to look up this odd place called Miami of Ohio. And I love that there's UNC-Chapel Hill; what a nice mental picture. And, I've learned that it's the University of Alabama in (not at, no hyphen) Huntsville. No, keep the Amherst.

- Boston Globe

Hopeworks 'N Camden has been deservedly featured at many GIS conferences. The program aims to keep Camden youth in school and on track with technology training, including GIS work. This week the program finished its first print work - a free map of the city. Funded by student-sold and sometimes student-created ads, the maps remaining from the original run of 8000 will be available for free. Another use for this newly acquired data? Perhaps it can be contributed to OpenStreetMap?

- Courier Post Online
- Philadelphia Inquirer