L. Jesse Rouse

As mentioned in the email I sent out to the faculty during Geography Awareness Week in November, I will attempt to schedule a first meeting for a campus GIS Users Group. There are a good number of folks on campus using GIS, but we have not had much communication since I arrived on campus a couple of years ago…which just happens to be when we got a campus wide software license. Check the campus GIS listserv (gisconnection@listserv.uncp.edu) to put in your two cents worth on the schedule for the meeting and I will be sure to post the day/time and agenda. Primary on the agenda will be to make clear what software we carry licenses for and what open source options you might use to fill in the gaps for your teaching or research needs.

I will be teaching a new class (for me) this semester…check out GGY3770, Geography of American Indians. The course will meet MWF at 10:10. We will look at the peopling of the americas through today and look at human:environment interaction as well as cultural/societal change and tensions in prehistoric and historic periods. Basically a bit of everything space and place throughout the americas.

I will also be working with a small number of students to create a digital reconstruction of the UNCP campus to mark the 125th anniversary of the university. Please contact me if you are interested in taking part in the project.

Once again we have reached Geography Awareness Week (Nov 13-19). We do not have anything specific planned this year for campus, but you can check out National Geographic’s content at http://geographyawarenessweek.org.

Also, be sure to check out GIS Day on Wednesday to contemplate how Geographic Information Systems and related geospatial technologies can impact your work.

I put up a pre-episode that I put together to test hardware and work out kinks before the first episode…you can find the episode and the new site at observingtheearth.com.

As part of my NC Space Grant I will be rolling out a podcast series in early April. The podcasts will focus on Earth Observation data, tools, and examples from across disciplines. There will be a mix of video and audio podcasts but most will be fairly brief (5-10 minutes). Check back for the official launch information.

The new podcast has been taking my focus off of Spatial@UNCP, but I will try to get it back on track, at least 1 a month, as I get a stockpile of Observing The Earth episodes completed.

Cartography, GGY2500, is the first course in our ‘geospatial track’ and provides an introduction to the wealth of geospatial data and technologies that are used almost all disciplines today. The lectures and in-class labs will focus on map reading and interpretation, spatial data, Geographic Information Systems, Remote Sensing, and web mapping technologies as they relate to presenting information through maps. The class will meet MWF at 11:15-12:05 in 1246 Oxendine. Other courses in the ‘geospatial track’ that will be taught in future semesters are Intro to Geographic Information Science and Remote Sensing.

GGY2500 is a required course for the Environmental Science major and Geography Minor and Concentration.

I am off to this year’s NC GIS Conference in Raleigh. This event occurs every other year and has become known as one of the country’s foremost local GIS events. I will add occasional updates to this post through the Academic Assembly on Wednesday and then through the conference on Thursday and Friday.

The afternoon at the Academic Assembly has kicked off with Greg Ferrara talking about ITRE at NCSU and their work with the NC SHP on motor carrier enforcement.

Next is Eric Lester talking about IAVO’s application GeoGenesis including their free version GeoGensis Lite which you can download and play around with.

After a quick break Ken Galluppi from RENCI is talking about geoanalytics with a lot of focus on cloud. Switching to Jeff Heard to continue…looking at an infrastructure to build what Ken was talking about. the Big Board…teleconferencing over a map aka real time interactive map.

Now Ann Moss Joyner with Cedar Grove Institute is taking us to the use of GIS for advocacy and social justice.

I just sat down from my presentation. I talked about NCView and why other institutions should join.

Chris Badurek of ASU is talking about monitoring rural sprawl which I can say is definitely an issue in Watauga Co. and I hope to add to it some day

Thanks to Jeff Essic of NCSU for putting together the Academic Assembly.

Just a quick heads up that the campus labs should now all be updated to ArcGIS 10. This version has a lot to offer especially since we have jumped from ArcView to ArcInfo, but it also comes with a significantly updated interface. If you plan on using ArcGIS for class or research and do not have it on your personal computer I can provide you with the installation materials as well as free access to online training from Esri which you can check out at training.esri.com.

I also plan to do a one day hands-on intro session to ArcGIS 10 sometime during the semester, I will send details out to the general faculty list and here on the blog once I get things firmed up a bit. Meanwhile, I have been using ArcGIS 10 for a few months now, so if you have any questions or issues let me know and I will see if I can help.

It is, in fact, the end of the summer ‘break’. Both summer sessions went well from my perspective and while the online class wasn’t all that I hoped it would be, I think I did well for a first time through. The key is to not allow any wiggle room in terms of time, structure everything as tightly as possible. I structured half the class (the writing assignments and projects) and left the tests and exams open ended time-wise. Everyone got there writing assignments and projects in on time and most waited ’til the last minute to take the map tests and exams not leaving themselves enough time to do as well as they could. SO…the lesson learned…STRUCTURE EVERYTHING .

With the fall starting, so too will the Spatial@UNCP podcasts. I am going with an every other Thursday schedule again this year and will probably lean towards mapping and cartography topic in the fall since I am teaching Intro to Cartography. If you would like to join me on a podcast to talk about how you are using geospatial technologies in your class, research or service let me know. If you have anything specific you would like to hear about let me know.

FYI, Geography Awareness Week is the week before Thanksgiving (Nov 15-19) and I hope to have at least one guest speaker on campus to talk about their work in Geography. GIS Day is always the Wednesday of Geography Awareness Week and I hope to do something during the activity hour that day on campus. Of course all of these things are contingent on not being crushed by the fall.

It seems that house hunting is taking up an inordinate amount of time in my two weeks since classes ended, but writing is occurring, GISing is in action, and postering is underway. I have a World Regions in Summer 1 and an online section of World Regions in Summer 2. The online decision was initially because I will be at the ESRI Education User Conference and International User Conference, but I was astounded by the fact that it filled in less than a day after summer registration came online. I have turned away more people than are in the class! Clearly next summer I will offer an online option again (assuming it goes well this summer).

I do plan to offer a 2 day Intro to GIS workshop in late July or early August, so keep an eye out for details on that when they become available.