Fall NEARC 2024

The New York Department of State, Office of Planning, Development, and Community Infrastructure, with Stone Environmental, have reimagined the New York Geographic Information Gateway website using ArcGIS Online. Now that the new Gateway is live, the team has turned their attention to a version of the website for kids in grades 3-6. The website is called KidsMapVenture and the team built it with ArcGIS Hub, ArcGIS StoryMaps and an ArcGIS Instant App. The purpose of the site is for kids to learn about geography with interesting, engaging ArcGIS Online content and external websites. Also, KidsMapVenture empowers educators with resources and activities for their students to enhance learning about geography, particularly in New York State.

Our team carefully designed content that is relevant to New York State learning standards to support teachers’ curriculum and help kids gain skills in geographic awareness. We conducted user research with adults and students, integrating their input into an accessible design. Learn how our team configured a GIS website for a younger audience, the tools they used, user research sessions that helped enhance the content, and design choices that make the website interesting for kids.

Since 2020, homeschooling has increased nationally due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Even after school restrictions were lifted, many families chose to continue homeschooling. Homeschooled students often have ample time for in-depth project work and center their learning around their individual interests. Thus, homeschooling families can be an ideal audience for geographic-based inquiries. This presentation will focus on an online pilot project that incorporated the ArcGIS Online Schools contest as a means of engaging homeschooled children ages 5-14 in conducting geographic research. Challenges and lessons learned from this project can help to inform future GIS outreach efforts.

Long gone are the days where teaching was strictly done with chalk on a blackboard. The modern, web-connected classroom allows educators to access teaching materials, tools, and examples from around the world like never before, at the touch of a finger. This presentation will introduce and demonstrate several free online GIS tools that can be used to enhance teaching in geography, history, and the sciences.

I have been working with undergraduate student interns since 2017 in both field situations and in data analysis.  There have been multiple hurdles, but also some terrific successes.  One of the biggest lessons I've learned is how prepared I need to be to create a very robust layer for them to collect data within.  It's very different from a layer I might create for my own use as multiple people will use it and need to interpret it without assistance.  My goal is to talk about how I manage GIS interns and how I hope to improve this process in the future.  

What if there was an incredibly easy to use tool for K-12 students (which can also be used in introductory higher education courses) to explore data, layers, and maps? The National Geographic MapMaker application provides an intuitive interface that any grade level can utilize to explore global datasets in 2D and 3D. When educators need an application focused on a specific geography or topic, they can build the same experience with the configurable Atlas application.

While it’s not overly difficult to make a basic ArcGIS Dashboard, it can be very challenging and time consuming to create a dashboard which looks appealing and is easy to use, especially when your intended users lacks GIS experience. This presentation will explore helpful tips and tricks for making attractive, easy-to-use dashboards based on my own successes (and failures) while working on a variety of mapping projects over the past four years.

Kettle bogs have unique profile of a sphagnum moss ring surrounding open water.  As a group project an Advanced GIS Class used this unique characteristic along with seven other characteristics to identify kettle bogs within NY State’s Adirondack Park.  Approximately 140 kettle bogs were identified, which is 1.27% of all the water bodies in the Park.  These results are being used for further research on kettle bogs.

The African Building Heritage Project is an international and multidisciplinary initiative involving scholars from the United States and Benin. The American team comprises Killion Mokwete (Architecture), Patricia Davis (Communications/Cultural Studies), Jessica Parr (History/Archives), Bahare Sanaie-Movahed (GIS Specialist), Halima Haruna (History PhD Student), Gavin Gershman (Architecture Undergraduate Student), and Sophie Legget (GIS Co-op).

This project focuses on producing 3D models of historically significant, at-risk sub-Saharan African buildings using LIDAR data obtained from a LEICA handheld scanner and a drone. These buildings are georeferenced, and attribute information is collected on-site using Survey123. The results are incorporated into a searchable web database using the ArcGIS Online suite. This geospatial archive leverages technology for preservation and access, promoting the study of African architecture and preserving digital facsimiles of buildings threatened by climate change, resource limitations, and other challenges.

In December 2023 and June 2024, our team traveled to Porto Novo, Benin, as our project’s pioneering site, where we scanned five buildings, including a nineteenth-century mosque built by Afro-Brazilian returnees. Benin holds cultural and intellectual significance for Haitians and the broader African Diaspora.

Our NEARC presentation will cover the project's conception and introduce the African Built Heritage hub. Due to varying travel and research schedules, some team members may contribute their parts of the presentation via pre-recorded comments or Zoom.

Keywords: Digital Cultural Heritage, African Architecture, GIS, Cultural Preservation, 3D Modeling, Digital Archives, ArcGIS Hub, ArcGIS Dashboard, ArcGIS Survey123, ArcGIS StoryMap, Education.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has revolutionized the field of GIS, but is still being grappled with in education. We know that both students and the workforce are using AI, yet are uncertain of its long-term impacts on learning and socio-environmental systems. At Dartmouth College, the Geography Department has been exploring AI technologies in GIS classes from introductory to advanced and assessing their impact on student learning. This presentation offers our experiences, findings, and points of discussion for a new technological future.