Tuesday, August 31. 2010

Education Tidbits

"Algoma University, in conjunction with ESRI Canada, is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Nicola Shaw as Health Informatics Research Chair and Scientific Director for the Health Informatics Institute. In her role, Dr. Shaw will build on the health informatics (HI) research and potential that exists in Algoma region." What's the connection to ESRI Canada? "The research chair is funded for five years through support from the Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corporation (NOHFC), ESRI Canada and Algoma University. "

- press release

"The Virginia Geospatial Extension Program, based in Virginia Tech’s College of Natural Resources and Environment, has teamed with the Virginia Community College System ( VCCS ) and the Virginia Space Grant Consortium to develop a geospatial Web portal that will help train the future generation of geospatial technicians in Virginia."

- press release

NITLE the is National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education. Its Sean Connin has launched a new podcast series titled "Spatial Perspectives: A Podcast Series" which features "the narratives of colleagues engaged in spatial teaching and study in the liberal arts." First up is Jon Caris (GIS Specialist), who describes his work at Smith College’s Spatial Analysis Lab and shares his reflections on cross-curricular uses of GIS, the growing interest in spatial humanities, and much more. I think that's a great idea and encourage those teaching GIS in geography and other departments to listen, too. Your expertise, insights and experience can help grow GIS use in liberal arts!

- Nitle Blog

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Tuesday, August 24. 2010

Education Tidbits

Banning High School in southern California is getting ready for the new school year, including for the first time, GIS classes. A new school building is under construction and expected to be completed next April. Two of the 23 classrooms are for teaching GIS.

Press-Enterprise

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Monday, August 23. 2010

State of Augmented Reality Aug 2010

I confess I was not excited by the "world`s first mobile Augmented Reality Magazine Edition" (press release, blog and video from GIS User) but I was interested in the details of the session on the topic at Search Engine Strategies.

It's serendipitous that we just finished this topic in my course at Penn State. My students, heads down hard core GIS types, were not familiar with AR at all. And, there issues/concerns matched those at SES only slightly.

One topic both the session and my students addressed: "- Use AR to solve a specific need" My students were not impressed by GIS as a gimmick, but really wanted to find implementations that really made work or life better.

The other topic that overlapped dealt with privacy issues. One of my students painted the same scenario as Mike Leibhold: "Facial recognition and social mining are also interesting AR developments, but the idea is a little scary and opens up a can of worms where privacy is concerned. Imagine taking a picture of a complete stranger and having the ability to find out information about them." I'll point out here what I did in class: AR in and of itself is simply an interface to that information; right know you could probably get that same information via a Google search. It's just be delivered in a different medium. In short, don't shoot the messenger.

One point my students raised that doesn't seem to get much discussion is safety. What are the issues with driving a car and getting enhanced information via the windshield or eye glasses? What about pedestrians walking looking through cell phones to access information?

Finally, one of my students saw the potential for AR use in geographic education. I'm a bit skeptical of that for now, but others are taking it quite seriously. In the SES session Mathijs Gajentaan (Winvolve) noted a Civil War AR project that's underway and looking for funding.

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

Thursday, August 19. 2010

Education Tidbits

Ohio agriculture education teachers are participating in the Future Farmers of America's FFA Farm Area Maps for Emergencies. The trained teachers will enable a "student-led effort to develop detailed farm emergency response maps for use by local emergency responders." Teachers were trained at Rhodes State College, Lima where they learned about GIS/GPS and mapping skill development.

- Zanesville Times Recorder

Gannett Fleming, which owns GeoDecisions, led the way for an employer led university curriculum at Harrisburg University of Science and Technology. It even worked with the school on the GIS classes. By focusing on the needs of local companies, the new model has trained and placed students in a variety of STEM (science, technology engineering and math) jobs. Among them? Jobs at GeoDecisions.

- Huntington News

The 2010 Eureka Prize winners have been announced at a ceremony in Sydney, Australia. A team from the University of Western Australia's School of Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, led by Professor Ba-Ngu Vo with Professor Ba-Tuong Vo and Professor Antonio Cantoni won tge $10,000 Eureka Prize for "Outstanding Science in support of Defence or National Security." They developed an approach to tracking algorithms with the potential to significantly increase the capacity to handle multiple objects of interest, using less demanding computing power than usual tracking methods.

- Computerworld

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Tuesday, August 17. 2010

Strange Edu Ad for GIS Degree

Google Ad I saw on GIS Lounge

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Quote of the Week

"Sometimes you can get a four-year degree but not work in what you studied, but that's not the case here."

Joseph Bliss, a GIS major at Gainesville State College in Oakwood, GA on his degree. He works full-time for a company that studies pipeline data and was quoted in the Gainsville Times.

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