The National Atlas of Korea: Rare opportunities for cartographic and geographic educationGregory Chu, Univ. of Wisconsin-La Crosse
Chulsue Hwang, Kyung Hee University
Jongnam Choi, Western Illinois University
The 2014 National Atlas of Korea is one of the most advanced and well designed national atlases of all of Asia. It serves an innovative role in the design and contents for any national atlas in multiple aspects: data selection and portrayal, integration of media and maps, providing pedagogy, and unrestricted online access. Published by the National Geographic Information Institute, maps highlight multiple decades of a massive Spatial Planning effort. With data contributions from most government agencies at national and local levels, the Atlas integrates aspects of socioeconomic, political, educational, demographic, and environmental data that harmonized with national development. Produced by South Korea government, the Atlas also integrates rare but accurate data about demographic, economic, urban, and migration attributes of North Korea. The Atlas is a tremendously valuable resource for teaching about Korea. Several freely downloadable lesson plans were developed for use by American secondary school teachers.
The Lake Champlain Basin Atlas: An Online Portal to Watershed Exploration and EducationRyan Mitchell, Lake Champlain Basin ProgramOriginally developed in 2002 using static PDF maps, the online Lake Champlain Basin Atlas is one of the Lake Champlain Basin Program's (LCBP) most effective education and outreach tools. The atlas includes standard themes as well as content focused on management issues specific to the Lake Champlain watershed. It is used extensively by students and educators as a source for research and for mapping exercises. The LCBP is redeveloping the atlas using contemporary web mapping tools, both open source and proprietary. With links to the source data and to ArcGIS Online feature layers, the new atlas will be a portal to exploration of the watershed and a point of departure for mapping activities that use modern tools and techniques. I will discuss the redevelopment of the atlas and its use in LCBP E&O efforts, and explore additional educational applications and the role of atlases in education in the digital age.
View Slides »Implementing a new geospatial data discovery interface across a multi-institution consortiumNathan Piekielek, The Pennsylvania State University
James Whitacre, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Geographic information systems (GIS) have been commonly used mapping and analytic tools for more than twenty years. Early in this period, a lack of geospatial data often limited GIS users so that individuals were commonly producing geospatial data for their own use. More recently, the availability of geospatial data has increased dramatically so that the focus has shifted away from the data production efforts of individuals and towards large-scale multi-institution data documentation and discovery projects. In 2015, nine university members of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC; aka Big Ten) began a collaborative effort to build and populate a geospatial data portal. The portal leverages the newest data documentation and discovery tools including GeoNetwork to create ISO metadata records and GeoBlacklight as the platform for a web-based discovery interface. A beta version of the portal is operational and will be described and demonstrated.
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GIS-based Discovery Interface to Paper Map Sets - 10 Minute Talk
Christopher Thiry, Colorado School of Mines The staff of the Map Collection at the Arthur Lakes Library, Colorado School of Mines has created a new and unique way that provides access to its international paper map sets. The GIS -based Discovery Interface Project has created a visual, interactive, searchable, web-based portal that provides patrons with an easy way to understand what maps are owned by the Library, and how to access them. Embedded within the interface are links to records in the Library’s catalog, and, when available, links to scanned copies of the maps. These interfaces have allowed patrons, from afar, to easily search our map holdings, and quickly understand what is available. Also, two of the websites created for this project are discovery tools for scanned maps. The processes developed by the Map Collection’s staff are the start of a crowd-sharing effort that will allow other libraries to easily create their own discovery portal and thus provide access to their map collection. The staff has written clear instructions on how to recreate this project, and made the plain copies of individual indexes available for all to use. This project has stripped away the layers of library jargon that often interfere with patrons finding the information they need. The interfaces leave behind problems of language and library terms, and even the confusion of using a library’s catalog. Usually, patrons know exactly what part of the globe they are searching for; these portals take the user right to their area of interest and shows what paper maps are available.
iPad Apps for Teaching Geography - 10 Minute TalkAbdullah Al-Zubaidi, United Arab Emirates University
Naeema al Hosani, United Arab Emirates University With the information technology revolution geography teachers are looking for different innovative ways to teach geography and keep students involved by providing them with an immersive digital experience, and using many of the online tools that are available nowadays. One of the very useful devices for teaching and learning is iPad. The aim of this study is to investigate at different iPad apps, which can be used as some of the most engaging online tools for teaching geography to students of all ages. Results indicated that these apps provide a number of stimulating games, quizzes, and some other materials that can possibly bring life to geography learning. It is concluded that using apps in teaching geography provides interactive content to engage students and keep them motivated, and they perform better.
