KanGIS provides all manner of technical and pedagogical support for any teachers and schools interested in using geotechnologies, including GIS, the Global Postioning System, and remotely sensed data.

The Geographic and Land Information Society (GLIS) is pleased to announce a very exciting new competition for high school students studying geographic information systems (GIS.) There is a rapidly growing use of GIS in schools, which gives students an insight into exciting high-tech careers that collect and analyze geospatial data. GIS incorporates aspects of mathematics, computer science, physics, social studies, geography, and is applied to just about every sector of the economy. We at GLIS want to reward those schools who are excelling at the use of GIS and show the world how bright young minds can use GIS technologies to better understand the world around us, to solve many different types of problems, and to create opportunities.

The competition takes advantage of the Internet in that all submissions are digital and submitted via email-attached files. Environmental Systems Research Institute, Inc, sponsors the competition by providing the latest in GIS software to the winners of the competition. GLIS is providing teaching excellence prizes to the teachers of the winning high schools.

I encourage teachers and students to go to our website and discover how easy it is for you to enter this inaugural national competition in geographic information systems.

Good luck to you all.

Gary Jeffress, Ph.D., PRLS President, Geographic and Land Information Society

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The National Council for Geographic Education announces the:

E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Grants

The Miller Grant program was established in 2004 though the generous donation of E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller. The program was created to further the mission of improving geography education in the United States. The grants are intended to advance the frontiers of geographic education by supporting and promoting innovative research in theory, practice, and application. Projects should enhance our understanding of geographic learning and teaching through original investigations of learning processes, techniques, and content. Projects may focus on geographic learning and teaching at any age level from pre-school to adult. Investigations concentrating on the micro-scale examination of individual learners and teachers are welcome as are studies that pursue issues of geographic education at the classroom, school, district, college, state, national, or international levels. A strong empirical focus is encouraged, especially projects that involve classroom-based research on learning and teaching and those that might improve the pre-service and in-service training of geography educators.

See NCGE for more info.

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From Joseph Kerski:

Did you know that the USDA has a geospatial extension program?

The National Geospatial Technology Extension Network and its list of USDA Geospatial Extension Specialists is located at:

http://geospatialextension.org/

Currently, 14 states participate in the program.

Their mission is to facilitate the practical use of Earth systems science and technology, and help meet the growing demand for a spatially literate workforce. This is made possible through seeds sown by NASA, USDA and NOAA, and the science and education networks provided by Land Grant (Cooperative Extension), Space Grant, Sea Grant and other local partners.

I worked with the Nebraska geospatial agent in May while I was there (Karisa Vlasek), and she and the entire program is an excellent example of a well-run federal program in education that is making a difference.

You might keep these folks in mind as good people to partner with regarding GIS in education. In addition, they have some useful materials on their site that you might be able to use in your own training and other work in educational GIS.

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From JJK: This is one of the best articles I've read summarizing the current explosion in mapping applications such as Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, what "mash-ups" are, and how it all came about, in the October 2005 issue of Technology Review:

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/10/issue/feature_maps.asp?p=1 Browse the Earth - Killer Maps - by Wade Roush

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National Geographic Magazine has a dedicated layer in Google Earth which provides a rich and enlightening educational experience.

You can quickly turn on & off the Latitude & Longitude lines on the surface of the earth and visually see how confluences line up.

From JJK: If you send someone a Google Earth Placemark in an email, you can double-click on the attached Placemark file ( a KMZ file) and Google Earth will fly you to the specific location that the sender specified. Of course, you will need to have Google Earth http://earth.google.com already installed for this to work. Imagine drawing a map with the layers and perspective you are interested in sharing with the students, and then sending this Placemark to them. This, as many other things we have seen this year, opens up new possibilities in spatial thinking in education.

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