Each of us in education assembles, over time, a working list of “tried and true” technological tools, books, organizations, and other resources that enable us to be the most effective instructors we can be. I too have assembled a list of the geospatial resources that have served me well in professional development workshops for educators as well as working directly with students from secondary to university level, in formal and informal settings, in the USA and internationally. Some are new, and some have been around awhile, but all have consistently been those resources that have fostered inquiry-driven, spatially-oriented, project-based education using GIS. And like yours, my “top 20” will be continually modified into the future.
- ArcGIS Online: http://www.arcgis.com
As my colleagues and I have written and created videos about for the past several years, Esri’s ArcGIS Online allows you to make your own customized maps, analyze thousands of data sets from local to global scale, map your own field-collected data, create map-based presentations, save and share your maps with others, and much more. - Esri Education Community: http://edcommunity.esri.com
Connect with other educators using GIS in the curriculum; discover lessons, data, videos, blog posts, and other documents supporting spatial analysis in the curriculum. - Worldmapper: http://www.worldmapper.org
I have always valued the effectiveness of teaching with cartograms, and this site allows you to create cartograms and analyze spreadsheets for hundreds of variables by country. It also allows you to download the data as spreadsheets and bring them into ArcGIS for Desktop for further analysis. - North American Environmental Atlas: http://www.cec.org/atlas/
Map and analyze terrestrial ecosystems, marine ecosystems, pollution, human influence, climate, and other variables for North America online or by downloading map layers for use in your GIS. - National Atlas: http://nationalatlas.gov
Study hundreds of subjects from A to Z – literally from agriculture to zebra mussels – for the USA online and through downloadable layers, and even through orderable printed maps. I know the staff behind National Atlas and they are all very supportive of GIS in education. - Social Explorer: http://www.socialexplorer.com
Examine historical Census data and compare to current statistics at multiple scales, including the ability to create online map animations. - GapMinder: http://www.gapminder.org
Understand the world’s past, present, and future changes through unique visual animated graphs of hundreds of variables. - Change Matters: http://changematters.esri.com/compare
Examine landscape changes resulting from natural and human causes using historical and current Landsat satellite imagery from NASA/USGS shown in a side-by-side online GIS from Esri. - NationMaster: http://www.nationmaster.com and StateMaster: http://www.statemaster.com
Unique, powerful chart and graph comparison tools backed by data for hundreds of variables by country and US state. - Esri StoryMaps: http://storymaps.esri.com/wordpress/
Relevant and timely stories from all over the world presented through maps, movies, and text, from Esri. - Geography Channel on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/geographyuberalles
1,000 geography-and-GIS-themed movies on ecoregions, scale, fieldwork, biomes, energy, water, population change, GPS, and other topics filmed on location. - Degree Confluence Project: http://www.confluence.org
Thousands of photographs and stories at regularly sampled intervals of whole degrees of latitude and longitude across the planet that provide an excellent portrait of the planet’s cultural and physical geography. I deny all claims as being rather tenacious about visiting these locations myself. - Geocaching: http://geocaching.com
Real-world outdoor treasure hunting game using hidden containers on the landscape requiring spatial thinking and GPS to discover them. - EarthCache: http://earthcache.org
Earth science virtual geocaches in unique places on the planet, inviting exploration on site or virtually to teach earth science concepts, processes, and physiographic regions. - Powers of Ten: http://micro.magnet.fsu.edu/primer/java/scienceopticsu/powersof10/
Animations and resources to teach about scale from the quark to galactic superclusters, using successive orders of magnitude. - Modern Language Association’s Language Map: http://mla.org/map
Map and analyze spoken languages in the USA from national to county scale. - GPS Visualizer: http://www.gpsvisualizer.com
Online mapping utility that creates maps and profiles from GPS data, addresses, and coordinates. - UNEP Environmental Data Explorer: http://geodata.grid.unep.ch
Create maps and analyze over 500 variables from the national, regional, and global scales covering themes such as freshwater, population, forests, emissions, climate, health, and GDP. - Geospatial Revolution: http://geospatialrevolution.psu.edu/
Professionally-produced series of videos illustrating the use of geotechnologies in society, and the importance of spatial analysis and GIS for 21st Century decision making. - NASA Earth Observations: http://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/Search.html
NASA Earth Observations is a set of georeferenced images for the planet on oceans, atmosphere, energy, land, and life, able to be examined online over space and time, and downloaded into a GIS for further analysis.
The danger of any list proclaiming to be the “top” is that it may be quite subjective, as this one admittedly is. Which of your favorite resources have I included? Which of yours have I left off this list?
–Joseph Kerski, Esri Education Manager