ESRIEdTeam Youtube Channel

Looking for videos on how to explain GIS?  Use GIS?  Tips and tools, educational presentations, and more can be found on the ESRI Education Team Youtube Channel!

http://www.youtube.com/user/ESRIEdTeam#p/u/14/uka4olmZQ8M

Virtual Field Trips

Lesson plan on creating a virtual field trip in Google Earth from Dr. Paddington Hodza:

• Virtual Field Trip

Terrain Navigation in Google Earth

There is a wealth of information to be found in Google Earth mainly from embedded satellite and aerial imagery, street data and 3D terrain models.  Users can discover, for example, how people around the world are modifying natural environments into settlements, agricultural fields and mining sites. In addition, users can bring their own data (e.g. demographic, environmental, etc.) into Google Earth. They can explore, analyze and interpret this data and solve geographic problems.

• Terrain Navigation in Google Earth

MyWorld GIS

My World GIS™ is a Geographic Information System (GIS) designed specifically for use in educational settings.  My World allows learners to explore and analyze geographic data about our world.

My World's intended audience is middle school through college geosciences and geography courses involving investigations of geographic data.

My World is designed to meet the needs of students and teachers while keeping the constraints of educational settings in mind.  It combines the power of a full-featured GIS environment with the support and structure required by novice users in an educational environment. 

http://www.myworldgis.org

Layers of Our World

In this salute to GIS Day ESRI uses ArcGlobe 3D Analyst and ArcMap to provide multiple perspectives of Earth. Special thanks to Digital Globe and EarthSat for their images used in this video.

http://gisandscience.com/2009/10/08/video-layers-of-our-world/

Maps and the Geospatial Revolution

The past decade has seen an explosion of new mechanisms for understanding and using location information in widely-accessible technologies. This Geospatial Revolution has resulted in the development of consumer GPS tools, interactive web maps, and location-aware mobile devices. These radical advances are making it possible for people from all walks of life to use, collect, and understand spatial information like never before.
 
This course brings together core concepts in cartography, geographic information systems, and spatial thinking with real-world examples to provide the fundamentals necessary to engage with Geography beyond the surface-level. We will explore what makes spatial information special, how spatial data is created, how spatial analysis is conducted, and how to design maps so that they’re effective at telling the stories we wish to share. To gain experience using this knowledge, we will work with the latest mapping and analysis software to explore geographic problems. 

https://www.coursera.org/course/maps

Larimer County GIS

Online portal for Larimer county, CO.  To view layers associated with this county, visit the site directly:

http://maps.larimer.org/LandscapeExplorer/

ArcGIS Online

Did you know that Colorado has a statewide license for educational use of ArcGIS online?  Contact COGA directly for more details!

Quickly create interactive maps and apps and share them with the rest of your organization. Be productive right away with ready-to-use content, apps, and templates available for browsers, smartphones, and tablets.  

http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline

GRASS GIS

GRASS GIS, commonly referred to as GRASS (Geographic Resources Analysis Support System), is a free and open source Geographic Information System (GIS) software suite used for geospatial data management and analysis, image processing, graphics and maps production, spatial modeling, and visualization. GRASS GIS is currently used in academic and commercial settings around the world, as well as by many governmental agencies and environmental consulting companies. It is a founding member of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).

http://grass.osgeo.org

GIS Institute Road Map

Roadmap for GIS Institute - Goals

http://prezi.com/bqdypee8alj4/gis-institute-roadmap/

GIS Day

GIS Day provides an international forum for users of geographic information systems (GIS) technology to demonstrate real-world applications that are making a difference in our society.

The first formal GIS Day took place in 1999. Esri president and co-founder Jack Dangermond credits Ralph Nader with being the person who inspired the creation of GIS Day. He considered GIS Day a good initiative for people to learn about geography and the uses of GIS. He wanted GIS Day to be a grassroots effort and open to everyone to participate.

GIS Day is One Fun Day to

• Celebrate GIS with everyone
• Discover and explore the benefits of GIS
• Showcase the uses of GIS
• Build and nurture your GIS community

http://www.gisday.com/about.html

GIS Careers

Consider a Career in GIS

GIS is a key emerging and evolving industry throughout the world.

GIS careers exist in every imaginable discipline, from environmental science to commercial businesses and much more. This wide range of opportunities available lets you combine your passions or interests with GIS for a satisfying and successful career.

http://www.esri.com/what-is-gis/careers-in-gis

High School GIS Workshop

Short video about GIS in High Schools:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0f8QTWta5Eg

GIS And Remote Sensing of Darfur

In May 2004, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights issued the report Situation of human rights in the Darfur region of the Sudan.⁽¹⁾ Among its findings: there have been repeated attacks on civilians by the military forces of the Government of the Sudan and its proxy militia, the Janjawiid; the pattern of attacks on civilians includes killing, rape, pillage, looting of livestock, and destruction of property; and there has been massive, often forced, displacement of much of the population of Darfur. By early 2008, the U.N. estimated casualties in Darfur at 200,000 dead and 2.5 million displaced since 2003.⁽²⁾

http://www.yale.edu/gsp/gis-files/darfur/index.html

GeoMedicine

What is Geomedicine?

How does your environment impact your personal health? Geomedicine produces a new type of medical intelligence that leverages national spatial data infrastructures to benefit personal human health and improve the quality of the care medical professionals deliver.

http://www.esri.com/industries/health/geomedicine

What is GIS?

Looking for a way to explain what GIS is?  This great short flash video from ESRI can help to explain it!

http://www.esri.com/apps/esriclips/flash.cfm?path=71

ArcLessons

ArcLessons is a resource for you to share resources for using GIS in educational settings. You can browse a list of resources by category or use the search tools to find resources in your area of interest. You can contribute your resources to ArcLessons for other educators to use.

The resources on ArcLessons have been created by educators for use in a variety of educational settings. 

http://edcommunity.esri.com/Resources/ArcLessons

Lufthansa Virtual Pilot

Can you land the Lufthansa plane in the correct city?  Once the jet takes off, the name of a European city will appear on the screen.  You'll start with 8 seconds to correctly identify the location of that city by clicking on the map.  

http://www.lufthansa-vp.com/vp1/play.html

Funbrain

• FUNBRAIN will show you maps.
• For each screen, identify the correct country (or state). Check the correct box or type in the name (spelling counts).
• If you select level 5, you will also have to type in the name of the country's or state's capital.

http://www.funbrain.com/where/index.html

Visited Countries Map

This is a free tool for making your visited countries map. Check the countries you visited, choose colors, size of a map and press "Make map" button. You can also make your visited states map.

http://www.ammap.com/visited_countries/

Walk Score

Walk Score rates over 10,000 neighborhoods in almost 3,000 cities across the United States, Canada, and Australia so you can find a walkable home or apartment.

We believe that walkable neighborhoods with access to public transit, better commutes, and proximity to the people and places you love are the key to a happier, healthier and more sustainable lifestyle.

http://www.walkscore.com/cities-and-neighborhoods/

Tourality

Tourality, as a location based game (LBG), is a novel kind of game. Your real environment such as a urban district, some park or even a wood serve as a virtual playground, where your location and movements are identified via GPS-signal emitted from your cell- or smartphone. Your target is to reach certain predefined spots in the game set by moving towards them with your mobile device.

http://www.tourality.com

Purpose Games Geography Games

http://www.purposegames.com/geoquiz

Google Lit Trips

 Google Lit Trips are free downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. At each location along the journey there are placemarks with pop-up windows containing a variety of resources including relevant media, thought provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about “real world” references made in that particular portion of the story. 

http://www.googlelittrips.com/GoogleLit/Home.html

GeoSense

Test your knowledge of world geography alone or against another online player.

http://www.geosense.net

Geo-Globe

Explore the world with Geo - Globe's selection of interactive games, and find out about strange and familiar features of the planet! Ever wondered which continent has the most countries? Do you know how deep the ocean gets? How plants survive in the tundra? Which waterfall is the highest in the world?

http://library.thinkquest.org/10157/

GeoCaching

Geocaching is a real-world, outdoor treasure hunting game using GPS-enabled devices. Participants navigate to a specific set of GPS coordinates and then attempt to find the geocache (container) hidden at that location.

http://www.geocaching.com

Trivia Plaza Geography

World Geography Quizzes:

http://www.triviaplaza.com/geography-world-quizzes/

Free Online Geography Drills

We have all become resigned to that fact that Social Studies and Geography may be on the "back burner" for decades. But that doesn't quench our desire that students learn more about the world -- that doesn't deter us from wanting a better world where people know about their planet.

http://www.clickandlearn.cc/FreeUSA/Free.htm

Geo Quiz from PRI

The Geo Quiz from PRI's The World challenges your knowledge of people and places, geography and culture. Created by journalists in the newsroom, each Geo Quiz question comes with its own answer, a fascinating report or interview that reveals a mystery location.

http://pri.org/collections/geo-quiz

Online Personal Finance Games

Developed for middle school and high school students, this online game gives your students the chance to learn important personal finance skills as they play and compete.

http://www.genirevolution.org

Colonial Williamsburg Electronic Field Trips

Teach American history with the new Electronic Field Trip season. These live, interactive lessons explore the Bill of Rights, the three branches of government, 18th-century trades and the Continental Army, the complicated relationships between slaves and their masters, Civil War ironclads, and the War of 1812.

http://www.history.org/history/teaching/eft/

Cloud of Atlases

Maps without legends may not be immediately informative, but determining what they represent is extremely fun. If you’re into that kind of thing, here’s a game for you.
http://www.themorningnews.org/article/cloud-of-atlases

Global Detention Project

The Global Detention Project (GDP) is an inter-disciplinary research initiative that investigates the role detention plays in states’ responses to global migration, with a special focus on the policies and physical infrastructures of detention. 

http://www.globaldetentionproject.org/home.html

Geographic Inquiry into Global Issues

Geographic Inquiry into Global Issues was developed at the Center for Geography Education at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The National Science Foundation provided the funds, with A. David Hill as the Project Director. The modules were drafted by teachers and scholars and then tested in classrooms throughout the United States. In the original publication, teachers received a classroom set of Student Data Books and one binder that contained the Teacher's Guide and supporting materials. Professor Hill recently secured permission to distribute the modules free of charge to anyone who can use them for educational purposes.

http://www.unco.edu/geography/GIGI/GIGI%20HOME.htm

Introduction to Globalization

From Dr. Emily Skop of the University of Colorado Colorado Springs, this powerpoint introduces the concepts of globalization:

Introduction to Globalization 

Teaching with the News

The Choices Program's Teaching with the News initiative provides online curriculum materials and lessons to connect the content of your classroom to the headlines in the news. Topics cover a range of foreign policy and international issues.

http://www.choices.edu/resources/current.php

AAG Center for Global Geography Education

The AAG Center for Global Geography Education (CGGE) is an innovative, online collection of geography course modules for undergraduate education.   CGGE currently offers six modules: Global Economy, Migration, Population and Natural Resources, Global Climate Change, Water Resources, and National Identity.

Each CGGE module features a set of regional case studies, student activities, and collaborative projects that use the Moodle e-learning platform to connect geography classes internationally.  CGGE also sponsors workshops to support the development of new case studies and collaborative projects.

http://www.aag.org/cs/education/internationalization_projects/aag_center_for_global_geography_education_cgge

Water First

WATER FIRST Reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), is a character-driven film directed by Amy Hart that conveys the importance of clean water and sanitation in addressing all major global issues and achieving the MDGs set forth by the UN to reduce poverty in developing nations.

http://www.hartproductions.org/data/

Colorado Foundation for Water Education

The mission of the Colorado Foundation for Water Education is to promote better understanding of Colorado's water resources and issues by providing balanced and accurate information and education. We accomplish our mission through the production of high-quality educational tools and experiences-- which we've been doing since 2002.

 

http://www.yourwatercolorado.org/about-cfwe

Human-Environment Interaction, Four Corners Summer Institute 2011

In 2011, COGA hosted the Four Corners Summer Institute, a teacher professional development workshop that focused on the geography of human-environment interactions.  You can find the resources from this workshop here:

Human Environment Interaction (Four Corners Summer Institute 2011)

• Asking Geographic Questions
• Community Mapping: Putting Pieces Together
• Into the Field
• Place- and Community-Based Education in Schools
• Place-Based Education
• Reading Landscapes
• The Six Elements and Eighteen Standards of Geography
• Using an Urban "Attractiveness Index" as a Method in Teaching College-Level Field Geography
• Integrating Literture and the Social Studies with Google Lit Trips
• Lessons from the Bioregion
• Sense of Place and Place-Based Introductory Geocience Teaching for American Indian and Alaska Native Undergraduates
• Visualizing Economic Development with ArcGIS Explorer

Facing the Future

Facing the Future is a nonprofit leader whose mission is to create tools for educators that equip and motivate students to develop critical thinking skills, build global awareness and engage inpositive solutions for a sustainable future

In a world where the lives of our neighbors next door are inextricably linked to those of our neighbors abroad, students need to understand the linkages between local and global issues, and how they can personally help to build positive local and global communities. 

https://www.facingthefuture.org/Home/tabid/54/Default.aspx#.UqtnT5H-BuY

Social Explorer

Great online tool with maps that include both information on carbon emissions and on census data.

http://old.socialexplorer.com/pub/maps/VulcanMap.aspx

Tread Lightly

 Tread Lightly is a free climate change education and engagement program offered by TakingITGlobal (TIG), with the generous support of the Staples Foundation. Tread Lightly features innovative online educational tools and resources designed to empower youth to reduce their ecological footprints and take action on climate change.

http://treadlightly.tigweb.org

Project Learning Tree

HUGE collection of resources and lesson plans for a variety of geographic and environmental topics.

http://connect.plt.org/app/render/go.aspx?xsl=tp_community.xslt

Explore the future's rising seas

As the world warms, ice melts and water expands, sea level will rise – but faster in some places than others. These simulations, which assume warming in the middle of the range indicated by climate models, provide the best view yet of probable regional variation in sea level rise over the coming decades. 

http://sealevel.newscientistapps.com

Our Changing Planet

When we look around us, we can see that our planet's climate is changing rapidly. The National Earth Science Teachers Association and Windows to the Universe are working together with NBC Learn and the National Science Foundation to explore the impact that climate change is having on our planet. The resources below provide links to videos developed by NBC Learn on twelve key indicators of climate change, as well as lesson plans for teachers to use to explore the science behind these indicators with their students at the secondary level.

http://www.windows2universe.org/earth/changing_planet/changing_planet.html

My Community, Our Earth

My Community, Our Earth was created in the year 2002 through public and private partnerships, in preparation for the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, to address sustainable development issues, including biodiversity, climate change, poverty eradication, fresh water supply, and urbanization.

We approach the theme of sustainable development using a geographic perspective that allows innovative responses to local community challenges.  

http://www.aag.org/cs/mycoe

Leak Offers Glimpse of Campaign Against Climate Change

Leaked documents suggest that an organization known for attacking climate science is planning a new push to undermine the teaching ofglobal warming in public schools, the latest indication that climate change is becoming a part of the nation’s culture wars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/science/earth/in-heartland-institute-leak-a-plan-to-discredit-climate-teaching.html?emc=eta1&_r=0

MetEd

MetEd is a free collection of learning resources for the geoscience community. Whether you're an experienced meteorologist honing existing skills or a student looking for new topics of interest, we have something for you.

https://www.meted.ucar.edu

Learning More About Soils, Biomes, and Climate

In the activities below you will use web resources and internet-based GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to explore biomes and their relation to climate, soil fertility, and specific soil types.  

http://www.unco.edu/geography/sbc/

Learn More About Climate

LMAC translates climate change information into resources and tools for teachers, policy makers, and citizens. Watch videos, schedule a guest speaker, find standards-based lessons and interactive resources - all designed to increase your knowledge and understanding about this critical issue.

http://learnmoreaboutclimate.colorado.edu

Population, Consumption, and Climate

Professor Al Bartlett explains the connection between population growth, consumption and climate change.

Part of the series "Climate and Colorado's Future" produced by the Office of University Outreach at the University of Colorado Boulder and Landlocked Films.

http://vimeo.com/37077892

Colorado's Forests and the Pine Beetle Epidemic

Professor Jeff Mitton and researchers from the University of Colorado explain the connection between the unprecedented mountain pine beetles epidemic and climate change in Colorado.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX09bxMHlT8

Global Warming Effects Map

See the impacts of climate change on the planet!  Great interactive tool and map.

http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/gw-impacts-interactive.html?nav=FEATURES

Healthy Neighborhoods / Healthy Kids

Healthy Neighborhoods/Healthy Kids

The Healthy Neighborhoods/ Healthy Kids (HN/HK) Project is a service-learning/civic engagement and project-based learning framework for students designed by Shelburne Farms’ Sustainable Schools Project in collaboration with Smart Growth Vermont.

http://www.sustainableschoolsproject.org/tools-resources/hnhk

Climate Hot Map

Explore the signs of global warming on this map or Google Earth. The evidence of climate change includes heat waves, sea-level rise, flooding, melting glaciers, earlier spring arrival, coral reef bleaching, and the spread of disease.

The greatest concentration of global warming indicators on the map is in North America and Europe because that is where most scientific investigation has been done to date. As scientists focus increasingly on fingerprints of global warming in other regions—from Russia to Antarctica and Oceania to South America—the evidence they find will be added to the map.

http://www.climatehotmap.org

Global Climate Animations

The surface energy balance is the resultant of radiative components such as incoming and outgoing short-wave and long-wave radiation, and also non-radiative components such as sensible heating, latent heating, and the change in energy storage in water or substrate on land. The following animations show radiative and non-radiative components which emphasize the latitudinal and seasonal variations of solar input and surface-atmosphere energy exchange.

http://geography.uoregon.edu/envchange/clim_animations/index.html

Extreme Ice

Follow photojournalist James Balog to some of the most remote and beautiful places on Earth as he documents the disappearance of an icy landscape that took thousands of years to form. An artist, scientist, explorer, and former mountain guide, Balog braves treacherous terrain to site his cameras in ideal locations to record the unfolding drama. Remarkable time-lapse footage reveals massive glaciers and ice sheets splitting apart, collapsing, and disappearing at a rate that has scientists alarmed. This NOVA-National Geographic Television special investigates the latest evidence of a radically warming planet.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/extreme-ice.html