The Future of Geospatial Education

GIS Professionals need to diversify their skills and quickly learn emerging technologies, argues Patrick Rickles. The use and understanding of GIS was historically limited to specialists. Today, GIS is commonplace, as spatially-enabled apps become standard on smartphones. With over a third of the world’s total population – an estimated 2.6 billion people - owning smartphones, and a reported 5 billion requests per week to Apple Maps alone, there are a large number of non-expert users of GIS, which is only sure to grow. GIS professionals need to diversify their skillsets and quickly learn emerging technologies in order to support these... (read more)

2017-04-04 05:09:14

It's not about Education, but Shared Learning

The pre-summer conference season is in full swing. It's a great opportunity for me and others on AGI Council, to meet AGI Members and the wider geo and data driven communities while learning about the latest innovations and discovering industry issues and challenges. Certainly the sheer volume and number of events happening with a relevance to geospatial illustrate the breath of what's happening on the UK geo scene. Let’s take some space here to share some highlights of recent events that I or fellow members of AGI Council have attended recently, broadly split into three types of event. Firstly, fantastic... (read more)

2017-06-02 01:30:59

senseFly Brings Drone Education to Esri User Conference

senseFly will showcase the simplicity of integrating drone imagery into current workflows at the Esri User Conference (July 10-14 in San Diego) in a series of workshops designed for surveying, mapping and GIS professionals. As the world’s leading producer of mapping drones and an Esri Silver Partner, senseFly will present the innovative ways in which its drones are being used with Esri’s Drone2Map for ArcGIS software to deliver on-demand high resolution imagery and robust GIS projects. Drone Surveying 101 – Wednesday, July 12 The first of senseFly’s two workshops will be led by Francois Gervaix, surveying project manager, and is... (read more)

2017-06-30 11:46:16

Working with Industry: Benefits for Research and Education

A key component of many MSc degrees offered in Universities in the UK – particularly those that fall under the heading of ‘vocational’ programmes – is the importance of external links – to what some of us might call the ‘real world’. The reasons behind establishing these links are many, but include: to (a) bring outside expertise into the classroom through the provision of guest lectures; (b) provide a way to help students engage with practitioners in the discipline or profession; (c) broaden student horizons; (d) help students begin to network with professionals and practitioners; (e) provide opportunities for students... (read more)

2017-12-08 11:40:57

Global Mapper Available to Higher Education for Free

Blue Marble Geographics has announced the availability of an update to the Global Mapper Academic Curriculum. Comprised of a series of hands-on lessons, the full package of lab materials is available free of charge to schools and colleges using Global Mapper in the classroom. Developed by Blue Marble Application Specialists, the goal of this program is to streamline the deployment of Global Mapper within the academic community while introducing some of the fundamental principles of GIS, in a concise and understandable way. Institutes of higher education in the U.S. and Canada can install Global Mapper for instructional use at no... (read more)

2018-04-09 01:20:44

Is it Time for Competency-based GIS Education?

Educational institutions have been exploring and implementing competency-based education (CBE) since World War II. This approach to teaching and learning breaks down topics into discrete skills known as competencies. Students must show mastery of each competency (or a group of competencies) before moving on to learn the next one. The U.S. armed services used CBE to train soldiers to quickly master the hands-on skills needed to support the war effort. Later, the approach was used to train staff in manufacturing and construction skills. In the past few decades educational institutions adopted CBE for certificates and degrees in academic topics. Exactly... (read more)

2018-08-16 03:10:00

Adena Schutzberg

Adena Schutzberg has worked in geospatial technologies for more than 25 years. She is a member of the Esri Education Team. (read more)

2017-08-03 02:09:57

Simon Kokkendorff

Simon Kokkendorff, academic specialist, is a mathematician by education and has previously been a research worker. He has been employed at the Danish Geodata Agency since 2008 on data analysis and is now primarily working with digital height models and coordinate transformations. (read more)

2018-07-06 03:09:03

Patrick Rickles

Patrick Rickles studied Environmental Management Science and Computer Science at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York (B.S. 2004) and Geographic Information Science at University College London in London (MSc 2005). He has over 10 years of experience in public and private sector industries (Oil & Gas, Software Engineering, Urban Planning) and was a Research Associate for the Extreme Citizen Science (ExCiteS) research group at University College London, managing researchers and developing GIS solutions. He is also working on his PhD (part-time) researching expedited education techniques of GIS in Interdisciplinary Research. He currently works as implementation specialst at the Department for... (read more)

2017-08-04 11:32:03

Niall Conway

Niall Conway is an Irish/Australian GIS professional, urban planner and casual academic. He aims to help people to understand and take advantage of the emerging world of geospatial technology and information.Niall's background is in urban and regional planning and sustainable development and he shows a big interest in the overlap between geography, technology and education. He has used Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to support decision-makers in the strategic planning, infrastructure and natural resource sectors. He has also worked in an academic role for one of Australia's largest universities. (read more)

2017-07-10 02:05:41