Thursday, May 28. 2009

Location-based Attendance (in College)

The Japanese university Aoyama Gakuin University, which is located just outside Tokyo in Sagamihara city, will give incoming students iPhones - for education and attendance taking purposes.

How will attendance be taken? Via an iPhone app where the student keys in an ID and the class number. GPS will be used to insure they don't log in from home, along with a check of the router used to connect. The app is now in the testing phase with a formal launch in June, for 550 first and second year students and some staff.

This seems strange to me because they actually take attendance in college now via paper slips or sign in sheets. I don't recall any college class I took or taught where attendance was taken.

- Reuters

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Education at 08:59 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Thursday, May 21. 2009

Google Docs, ESRI Technology for Colorado Middle Schoolers

Deb Hooker who works for the Poudre School District in Colorado writes in the Coloradoan about the new computer curriculum the be launched next year.

Beginning with the 2009-10 school year, most sixth-graders will take a new nine-week Web 2.0 technology course that includes units on researching on the Web; Internet safety (appropriate use and ethics); data analysis; introduction to programming; Web site design; geographic information systems, or GIS; and Google Docs (collaborative Web-based office tools).

Seventh-graders may also choose to take an additional 18-week computer gaming and digital technology class that expands on the sixth-grade class, including units such as digital video production and video game programming.

The new courses involve using free, open-sourced software available on the Internet. Recently, representatives from Google and the Environmental Systems Research Institute, or ESRI, trained PSD middle school teachers and school technology coordinators on how to use tools such as Google Docs and GIS software.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Google, ESRI, Open Source, Oops, Education at 07:50 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Wednesday, May 20. 2009

Winners and Winning Question from Geography Bee

Seventh-grader Eric Yang from Texas is this year's National Geographic Bee winner. The winning question was: Timis County shares its name with a tributary of the Danube and is located in the western part of which European country? Answer: Romania.

Yang won a $25,000 college scholarship, lifetime membership in the National Geographic Society and a trip to the Galápagos Islands with National Geographic Bee moderator and “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek.

Second-place winner and recipient of a $15,000 college scholarship was Oregon’s Arjun Kandaswamy, 14, an eighth-grader at Meadow Park Middle School in Beaverton. Third place and a $10,000 college scholarship went to North Carolina’s Shantan Krovvidi, 13, a seventh-grader at Ligon Middle School in Raleigh.

Nearly 5 million students take part in the National Geographic Bee each year.

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Education at 20:03 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Tuesday, May 19. 2009

Education Tidbits

Penny Carpenter teaches a course about GIS (Geographic Information Systems) at the Byron Martin Advanced Technology Center in Texas. When she saw no maps of the cases of H1N1 virus in the state, she took the challenge to her students. "Her students began creating color maps on classroom computers showing the Texas counties that had swine flu cases and how many cases have been confirmed."

- Lubbock Online

The Knight Foundation announced 12 Fellowships for journalists to study at Stanford for the 2009-2010 school year. Among them, a woman who will explore geographically focussed journalism.

"Krissy Clark, reporter, American Public Media, San Francisco. Clark will focus on geographically aware journalism, cataloging available technologies, studying potential new revenue streams and creating models for merging geospatial technology with journalism."

Note to conference organizers: sounds like an interesting keynoter, eh?

- announcement
- bio

Geoimage and DigitalGlobe have announced the winner of their competition to witness the launch of DigitalGlobe’s Worldview-2 satellite from California later this year.

Dr. Arko Lucieer from the University of Tasmania won a raffle to watch the launch of DigitalGlobe's new satellite later this year. The contest was open to those who placed an order for either QuickBird or WorldView-1 satellite imagery from Geoimage, an Australian authorised reseller of DigitalGlobe imagery products. Arko, a lecturer and researcher in Remote Sensing and Geographical Information Science needed imagery of Macquarie Island. I'm sure he'll weave the trip into his teaching and research.

- SatNews

In June thirty prison professionals from Saudi Arabia will move to Ada, Ohio to study prison management in a new two year program at Ohio Northern University. The interesting part is curriculum: "Coursework will include American government, GIS (the mapping of crime in a certain area), Prison Policy, Prison Management with emphasis on rehabilitation, parole and prisoner control, and a comparative course to see how Saudi Arabia and the US compare to other countries in prison management."

- Ada Herald

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Education at 06:00 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |

Monday, May 18. 2009

National Geographic asks...

Hello, do you know which of these countries has the northernmost capital city?

A. Iran
B. Japan
C. Norway


Knowledge of the Earth and everything on it is important, but it's essential for the 55 fourth-through-eighth graders getting ready for the 21rst annual National Geographic Bee this Wednesday.

You can test your geographic knowledge at our daily GeoBee Challengeand see how you do!

(And the answer is C. Norway)

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Education at 08:21 | Comment (1) | Trackbacks (0) |

Friday, May 8. 2009

Education Tidbits

A UK-based Pakistani student won top honors at the GIS Research UK conference held in April. Muhammad Adnan who works as a computer research officer in the Spatial Literacy in Teaching & Learning (SPLINT) at the Department of Geography, University College London, and is also pursuing a PhD there, was awarded "Best Young Researcher of the Year." His work focuses on
the integration of real time feeds of a variety of public domain data from multiple and often disparate sources.

- The Pakistan Daily

- Santa Ynez Valley Union High School science teacher Chip Fenenga was surprised last weekend to receive the California Geographical Society’s Distinguished Teaching Award for his work teaching GIS in the school's Environmental and Spatial Technologies Program. The school played host to the society's annual event. A bonus: ESRI "upgraded the school’s Environmental and Spatial Technologies lab with their latest-version software for this conference, which was a donation of more than $75,000."

- Santa Ynez Valley News


The Digital Durham Web site includes U.S. Census data, photographs, personal and public records dating back to post-Civil War Durham and recently added more than 30 newly digitized maps from the city Department of Public Works and university libraries. The Duke-Durham collaboration merges Google Earth technology with historic city maps for use by educators, historians and the Durham community.

- Duke University Website

Posted by Adena Schutzberg in Education at 06:46 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0) |