L. Jesse Rouse

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.

I apologies for falling behind on the podcast distribution. I have Episode 14 recorded and plans for 15 and 16, but between conference travel and editing interviews for the other podcast from said conferences and the end of the semester rolling through I have put Spatial@UNCP on the back burner for another week or so. I should be back to the “every two week” schedule by the first week in May.

Starting in July the podcast is going to go themed as part of the previously mentioned NC Space Grant and the Intro to Cartography class I will be teaching in Fall. Expect podcasts on specific technologies and data sources for the 2010-2011 school year. Until then, we will be talking Census and general GIS topics for the next 4 episodes.

I am very excited to be able to share that I was awarded an NC Space Grant, Informal Science Education grant. The title of the proposal was “Putting the Digital Earth to Work: introducing potential science and social studies users to Earth Observation sensors and their data” and it has a fairly focused goal of:

highlighting the data from remote sensors and the tools used to interact with them.

A second goal will be to reinforce users’ existing spatial literacy as the data captured by the sensors is highly spatial in nature. There will be a few targeted outcomes including the project website, an online map-based Earth Observation Virtual Laboratory, podcasts about earth observation, an educator workshop, and a set of open lesson plans.

If you are an educator (formal or informal), keep an eye here to find out more about the educator workshop that will take place in June 2011. It will be a mix of lecture, computer, and group activities…I think, but with 13 months to go, who knows what will change.