Spatial Thinking: Perspective, Skills, and Content.

What exactly is spatial thinking?  There have been many attempts to define it.   My interest in it lies mostly on the geographic side, so, perhaps my definition is better labeled as “geospatial thinking.”  This overlaps some with “geoliteracy“, which has also been receiving increasing attention.  My working definition of spatial thinking is “Identifying, analyzing, and understanding the location, scale, patterns, and trends of the geographic and temporal relationships among data, phenomena, and issues.”

More important to me than the definition, though is that the diverse communities of scholars and practitioners who care about this topic work together to ensure that it is supported, taught, and put to use in education and in society.  What is our goal in terms of spatial thinking?  I like how the NRC report puts it:  It is to cultivate the spatial thinking “habit of mind.”  This habit of mind is the geographic perspective on how the world works, including how systems function, how and why certain relationships exist, and also how we might approach and solve problems.  How can we cultivate spatial thinking?  That, friends, is the subject of many of the essays that appear in this blog, from pedagogical strategies to specific skills and technologies used.  What could be our measure of success?  If we can identify key points in the educational curriculum where spatial thinking can enhance what and how we are teaching, and in those points, to put spatial thinking skills into practice, then I think we have succeeded.

What is your definition of spatial thinking?   When, where, and how do you think spatial thinking should be put into practice?

This monster did not appear from nowhere. Science – including geography, the science of “what is where, and why” – helps us understand the present and see into the future. Our vision grows stronger with each year, but we still have a long way to go.

Air, water, fire, and earth … we cannot yet control the storms, the quakes, the floods, the fires, though we may perhaps influence them … consciously or not, and whether we admit it or not. We can only hope to understand them better, and learn to make better decisions regarding them. Science – including geography – will yield many lessons. It is up to us to learn the lessons. And, until we understand well enough the many rules of our perilous planet, we will continue to mourn the lost.

Our thoughts and prayers go to the families and friends of these events.

Of the many nominations received, we’ve selected the following five nominees to appear in the Celebrating Student Success plenary session Saturday morning July 6 in San Diego:

Steve Chignel, Colorado State University

Julien Clifford, Texas A&M Corpus Christi

Mohan Rao, Austin Community College

René Smit, University of Pretoria

Nekya Young, Texas Southern University

We regret that we can’t bring every worthy nominee to San Diego. However, we will proudly screen excerpts of the following nomination videos during the Celebrating Student Success plenary:

Mariana Belgiu, University of Salzburg

Luke Burns, Leeds University

Dara Carney-Nedelman, Unicoi County 4-H Team

Kelsey Ciarrocca, George Mason University

Christopher Grundling, University of Pretoria

David Hapgood, Center of Geographical Studies, NSCC

Iván Elías Ruiz Hernández, Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez

Emmaline Long, Cornell University

Nancy Milholland, University of Southern California

Elisabeth Moughan, Unicoi County 4-H Team

Cameron Robertson, Center of Geographical Studies, NSCC  

Amanda Stanko, Arizona State University

Chris Stayte, Miami Valley Career Technology Center

Congratulations to all these successful students, and thanks for their efforts in preparing nominations. We’re looking forward to seeing their videos featured during the plenary session!

Some members of the European Geography Association, with Karl Donert above left, President of the European Association of Geographers.

It is an honor for Esri to partner with and support this organization, along with our colleagues at the University of Utrecht and elsewhere.  The goal of EGEA’s network is to exchange knowledge and information for geography students and young geographers. To achieve this goal, EGEA organises congresses, student exchanges, hosts foreign students, and publishes a newsletter. As all of us in the field of geotechnology are well aware, networking is critical for success.  But what is also critical is empowering students and young professionals as they begin their careers in this field.  How can we as the geography and GIS professsional community best do that?

Associations such as the EGEA can help grow an effective geo-workforce of tomorrow through development of skills, confidence, and, in short, cultivating lifelong learning and career growth.  Also playing a key role are resources such as the new GeoPivot and the Geomentor program.  But I also think effective nurturing starts at earlier ages, reflected in the efforts that we and others are making in such programs as 4H, the National Girls Collaborative Project, and other after school programs, and through working directly with primary and secondary students and educators.  We have numerous complicated issues to solve in the 21st Century, and most of these issues have a geographic component that can be understood through the use of geotechnologies.  These young people with whom we are working are skilled, committed, and eager to make a positive difference in our world.

Are you involved in any of these efforts to help build the next generation of geo-minded professionals?   What other efforts do you think our community needs to make?

At the end of May, Judy is retiring, turning in her mouse and monitor and phone. Never one to let grass grow underfoot, she has already set up volunteer work in the community. A bit of travel with family, “digging in the dirt” around home, fishing, and helping friends and relatives will keep her fully occupied.

On behalf of thousands of users, thanks for making everyone’s life better, Judy! We will miss you!

The Esri EdTeam

East Dakota and West Dakota

GIS is often used to help us understand the world as it is, or was in the past, or model what it could be like in the future. But it can also be used to explore what could have been. Take the case of North Dakota and South Dakota. These two states were carved out of the Dakota Territory in 1889.  President Harrison did not want to show favoritism when he signed the documents in terms of which state was admitted first, so they are listed alphabetically, with North Dakota listed as the 39th state and South Dakota listed as the 40th state.  In many ways, the manner in which the two states were divided, by an east-west line near the 46th Parallel, made sense. Yet what if the territory had not been divided into North Dakota and South Dakota yet as East Dakota and West Dakota?

Several geographers over the years have speculated about the physical and cultural ‘divide’ that persists to this day.  Many residents of the two states use  the term “East River” to refer to lands east of the Missouri River, and “West River” to refer to lands west of the Missouri River. To me, this is the perfect lesson whose value is enhanced with the use of GIS, and specifically, the creation of data within ArcGIS desktop and the serving and sharing of that data on ArcGIS Online.

Using ArcGIS desktop, I created my two states using county lines that followed the Missouri River.   What to do about the Bismarck?  I left Mandan, on the west bank of the Missouri, in WD, in part because when one departs Bismarck on I-94, it really does feel like one is entering the “west”.  Northwest of Bismarck, where the river turns west, I included the counties in northwestern North Dakota as part of West Dakota.  The reason is that I considered that they have more physical and cultural characteristics in common with the west than the east. I highly enjoyed my next task:  Selecting my two capital cities: Rapid City, “WD” and Sioux Falls, “ED”.  I considered Fargo for the ED capital but settled on Sioux Falls for several reasons.  Thus, Sioux Falls, ED is like Cheyenne, WY: Tucked into the corner of a vast territory. After my work in ArcGIS desktop, I shared my states on ArcGIS Online so others can use it as part of an educational lesson.

East Dakota has 79 counties. Its population rose from 637,720 in 1900 to 979,147 in 1950 to 1,119,642 by 2010. West Dakota has 40 counties. Only 65,604 lived there in  1900, in large part the miners who were still combing the Black Hills) but by 1950 it still only contained 289,571, and in 2010, 367,229 lived there. Thus, my East and West states are more lopsided in population than are the north and south states. Interestingly, over the past few years, my West Dakota is growing more rapidly than East Dakota with the expansion of the energy sector near Williston.

This activity, anchored squarely in the “what if”, helps students think spatially about physical geography, cultural geography, and history.

What sorts of “what if” scenarios can you create with a GIS?

Volcanoes map in ArcGIS Online with Webcams.

Each webcam is tied to selected volcanoes as images tied to the popups that appear when the user clicks on each one of them.  The webcams update every minute or every few minutes depending on how the webcam operator set them up.  This map can serve as an engaging introduction to a unit on the differences in the types of volcanoes.  And since the map is inside ArcGIS Online, additional content such as earthquakes and plate boundaries can be added with the click of the mouse. After doing so, students could investigate the relationships between all of these phenomena in a plate tectonics unit.  What is the distribution of volcanoes around the world?  Why do some types of plate boundaries have more volcanoes than others?  Why do some volcanoes appear to be associated with earthquakes while others are not?  Other questions can be investigated (why are some of the webcams dark?) and tools can be engaged (what is the closest volcano on this map to where you live?).  Zoom in on specific volcanoes and change the basemap to a satellite image, exploring the land use and assessing risk to the population in the area.

Using these same simple techniques, you or your students could add additional volcanoes and webcams to my map and save it in your own account.  Or you could create a different web map in ArcGIS Online examining other phenomena in real time:  Traffic in a different parts of a city, trails in different ecoregions around the world, river heights and depths around the world, wildfire, weather, and much more.

How might you use these techniques and maps in your own teaching and learning?

How good is your data?

People in library science really understand data and their implications, and some of the metrics I find most useful come from the library and information science community. My colleague Linda Zellmer, Government Information and Data Services Librarian at Western Illinois University, uses a “CRAAP” test, originally from CSU Chico and based on the CRAP test from LOEX. This is a schema to evaluate information: Currency, Relevance, Authority, Accuracy, and Purpose. When I teach with or about GIS, to get across the point that assessing data quality ultimately depends on metadata, I frequently refer to the FGDC’s “top 10 metadata errors” document. The document’s number one identified error is “not doing it!”: ”If you think the cost of metadata production is too high, you haven’t compiled the costs of not creating metadata, including loss of information with staff changes, data redundancy, conflicts, liability, misapplications, and decisions based upon poorly documented data.” Ouch!

One of my favorite papers examining measurement standards comes from Dr Jingfeng Xia of Indiana University, who, in his research published in Issues in Science and Technology Librarianship, proposed a set of dimensions for data quality measurement. He discusses measures such as accuracy, consistency, completeness, and integrity, but also accessibility, validity, timeliness, currency, conformance, uniqueness, and others. One of his main points is that both quantitative and qualitative metrics are essential for determining the quality of geospatial data.

As my co-author Jill Clark and I point out in the book The GIS Guide to Public Domain Data, it is more important than ever before to document your data, and understand what you are using, because with each passing day it becomes easier to combine data from an amazing array of sources. With opportunity comes responsibility!

Maps and the Geospatial Revolution

According to Robinson, this 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 is designed to help you rethink what maps are and what they can do, create your first map to tell a story, evaluate and critique the design of maps, explore what is revolutionary about Geography.  This course runs for 5 weeks and will have you making maps, analyzing issues and patterns from natural hazards to ecoregions to population change, using exciting new tools such as ArcGIS Online.

Interested?  Examine the excellent video series from Penn State on the geospatial revolution.  Follow @MapRevolution on Twitter for updates.  And most importantly, join the course!