The Board of Regents next week will consider state Education Department recommendations to make the global history and geography exam optional. Instead, students could take an additional math, science or vocational exam, starting with freshmen who enter high school in 2013.
Why? To focus on STEM topics that relate to jobs. Historians are noted as complaining, but no geographers.
- WSJ
Beltway companies are digging in when it comes to growing more students (aka future employees) in STEM (science, technolgy, engineering and math). Northrop Grumman aims to put half of its charitable giving into STEM education. And BAE is working specifically on geospatial STEM.
This summer, BAE Systems plans to host a month-long program in Reston meant to introduce at-risk high-schoolers to the kind of geospatial technology BAE has created to help the military and intelligence agencies see information on maps.
The idea, said Josh K. Weerasinghe, vice president for global market development in BAE’s intelligence and security unit, is to move students “over this hurdle from an interest to something that’s very real, that makes them look at college as really a positive alternative.
- Washington Post
How do you get good summer GIS coders? Hold a contest. That's what Snowflake Software did at the Electronics and Computer Science program at the University of Southampton. The prize for the winner of the Code-Off is a summer internship.
The hotly contested event involved first and second-year Computer Science students, and saw many innovative approaches to the task, which was to visualize some OS MasterMap GML data from Ordnance Survey. The winner at the end of the day was first-year undergraduate Computer Scientist, Hendrik (Henco) Appel.
Ian Painter, Managing Director of Snowflake Software, comments: "OS MasterMap from Ordnance Survey is the most detailed map in the world – we’re talking hundreds of millions of map features. So firstly scalability in reading the data is very important. Henco’s selection of the SAX parser was a really good choice (especially given that he’d never used one before). Next up was displaying the data - to render OS MasterMap is no mean feat, so seeing some extensive use of Graphics2D was again a good choice. Finally, and what stood out the most for me, was Henco’s use of the attributes on OS MasterMap to enable the switching of the data themes. All in all Henco’s coding covered the three key areas: importing, displaying and interacting."
- Univ of Southhampton News
by Adena Schutzberg on 04/25 at 03:34 AM |
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Today [Monday] the city’s marketing, tourism and partnership organization NYC & Company launched the NYC Map mobile app in partnership with homegrown startup CityMaps, with plans to orchestrate an extensive marketing program to promote the app as the city’s de facto tour guide.
- Ad Week
- iTunes download
Garmin will provide a fully integrated, factory-installed infotainment system for most American 2013 model year Suzuki vehicles. Garmin's infotainment system combines a 6.1-inch high-resolution touchscreen display with a full-featured infotainment platform, including AM/FM/CD radio, multi-media playback, backup camera support, Bluetooth® hands-free connectivity, Pandora radio...
- press release
Fifty-eight percent of consumers who have a smart device use location-based applications, despite concerns about safety and use of their personal information for marketing purposes, according to a survey from nonprofit global information security association ISACA.
The survey was of 1000 U.S. residents over 18. Here's the full results.
- press release
Skout, a location-based social network for meeting new people, has secured $22 million in new funding from Silicon Valley VC firm Andreessen Horowitz.
- press release
by Adena Schutzberg on 04/03 at 05:50 AM |
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While not strictly a medical type map, the 41 Percent NYC map of the last 10 years of abortions in the city is revealing. The map plays the data from 2000 to 2009.
- LifeNews
There is an imbalance between the rapid growth of cardiac catheterization laboratories, which provide percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures, relative to the growth in the overall U.S. population, as well as patients who experience an acute heart attack, or ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI), according to a study presented March 25 at the 61st annual American College of Cardiology (ACC) scientific session.
In this study, the researchers compared changes in U.S. PCI capacity and access during the last eight years. Using geospatial and statistical analyses of data from the American Hospital Association, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Census Bureau, they analyzed PCI capacity relative to population density and STEMI prevalence.
...Thus, the study authors reported that PCI growth is most rapid in the east, where capacity is already sufficient and the lowest in the west where PCI capacity remains the lowest. "Efficient and equitable STEMI systems require geographical balance, which highlights a need for changes in both policy and protocols at regional levels," they wrote.
- press release
One of Nigeria’s telecommunications companies, Etisalat has partnered with Esri to deploy Android based GIS apps to map polio risk areas and tracking of routes covered by Polio immunization teams during vaccinations in the country.
The app taps ArcGIS server, with data from the device's GPS. "Uploaded server information are used for map creation (risk mapping) and generation of automated reports, which can show the distribution of risk, success, activities, findings, and plans, for polio teams, program managers, donors, and other stakeholders." Funding is from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
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press release [I let Esri know that Esri is mis-expanded in the press release.]
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/28 at 03:47 AM |
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Today, [Feb 22] in conjunction with the newly-launched BusinessUSA initiative, the Department of Commerce announced the launch of their business app challenge. The $10,000 contest challenges app developers to find innovative ways to utilize Commerce and other publicly available data and information to support American businesses. The business app challenge calls on developers to utilize at least one Department of Commerce data set in creating an application that assists businesses and/or improves the service delivery of Business.USA.gov to the business community. Developers may choose the platform that best suits them. Applicants may design for the web, personal computer, mobile handheld device, or any platform broadly accessible to the open Internet. A list of developer-friendly data sets can be found on the Business Data and Tools page of Data.gov.
Apps due by April 30, 2012.
- Announcement on Commerce Dept Blog
- Contest Details
Coming March 23 and 24:
The AT&T San Diego Apps Challenge is focused on creating apps that improve the quality of life for San Diegans! Mayor Jerry Sanders and the City of San Diego have partnered with AT&T to challenge software developers to use city and partner data to create new apps for their chance at $50,000 in prize money. For more info please click this link: http://sdappschallenge.com/
Our Mobile App Hackathon (an event produced by the AT&T Developer Program, City of San Diego, and Apigee) is designed for attendees (technical & non-technical) to pitch ideas, build apps, get fed, compete for prizes across different categories and most importantly: meet new people and scout for teammates to work on new or current projects in San Diego. Our hackathon will introduce you to the latest cutting edge tools to help deploy your own app with a website backend, fully hosted in the cloud so that you can create the next great San Diego app.
- invite via eventbrite
New York’s BigApps contest, now in Version 3.0, has won no small amount of praise. Using data supplied by public agencies, Web developers compete for $50,000 in prizes, awarded based on voting by the public and a panel of judges. Voting on this year’s entries ends on Thursday.
As usual, there are a number of location based apps including one that shows vacant public land and whot to contact to explore developing it.
- NY Times
by Adena Schutzberg on 03/05 at 03:00 AM |
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With the goal of encouraging innovation in a fun way, ACM SIGSPATIAL is hosting an algorithm contest with winners to be announced at the ACM SIGSPATIAL GIS conference in November 2012. Contest participants will submit original computer programs to be evaluated by the contest organizers on a common dataset. The first place team will receive US$ 500 plus one NVIDIA Quadro 6000 (or similar) graphics card. Second place will receive US$ 400 plus one NVIDIA TEGRA tablet device. Third place will receive US$ 300 and one NVIDIA TEGRA tablet.
The 2012 contest will be about map matching, which is the problem of correctly matching a sequence of location measurements to roads.
- contest page via @michael_d_gould
How about a game based learning contest? Ideas for teaching spatial literacy and/or geography would be valid!
In an effort to circulate innovative ideas about integrating electronic gaming in the classroom, the NEA Foundation, in a partnership with Microsoft U.S. Partners in Learning, is hosting a competition for the best ideas on "how interactive technology and game-based learning can improve teaching and learning," according to the Foundation's website. Game-based learning can mean anything from understanding physics through the popular Angry Birds app to delving into the structure of society in the computer game Minecraft.
The Challenge to Innovate (C2i) competition is open to educators, students, parents, or anyone who has an idea and has registered for free as a member of the U.S. Department of Education's Open Innovation Portal, which acts as a public forum for improving education. Participants post their gaming idea to the portal, and other registered members—most of whom are educators and parents—award points to the ideas they think are most innovative and helpful.
- US News
Aim: The main aim of the OneGeology Best Application competition is to demonstrate the wide range of potential applied uses and applications that the OneGeology Portal, and geological data/services that it provides, can offer for easy discoverability, access and use.
...
The registration of the applications developed for this competition will be accepted until the end of May 2012.
...
The winner of the competition will receive a free registration for the 34th International Geological Congress, Brisbane, Australia (August 2012) and will also have the opportunity to present the new innovative application during the Geoinformation Symposium/ OneGeology Session at the conference.
You must be under 35 to enter.
- website via @jeffharrison
Through their Google+ page, Google Maps announced the inaugural Map Your University competition for all students in the U.S. and Canada. Through the use of Google’s Map Maker, Google is asking current students to create detailed maps of their campuses that will be viewable on Google Maps and Google Earth. Winners of the competition will be award fun Google-y prizes such as Android tablets, phones, GPS devices, and more.
- Web Pro News
New York City kicked off voting today in its third annual BigApps competition, which rewards apps that use some of the city’s open data sets to build apps. But one of the most popular resources appears to be Foursquare, which is in use in more than half of the top apps in early voting.
- GigaOm
by Adena Schutzberg on 02/10 at 06:02 AM |
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