Tuesday, August 10, 2004

ESRI Conference -- Day Four

The transition to the International Users portion of the ESRI Conference continues. Yesterday brought the keynotes talks and plenary sessions. Today the first set of sessions and presentations begin. (Actually, there was also a final set of presentations in the Educational Users Conference first thing this morning.)

Since a colleague, who has already returned to Seattle, requested that I sit in on a session he was interested in, I began my day in a International Users session called "Poverty Mapping: Spatial Analysis for Poverty Reduction."

This session began with a series of three presenters. First up was Christopher Legg and his talk was entitled: "Mapping Poverty and Nutrition in Nigeria." Mr. Legg presented much information about conditions of poverty in Nigeria and probably causes. Much of what he had to say was quite sobering and disturbing. Much of his talk was also quite technical in nature, having less to do with the contribution ERSI/GIS can make in studying such an issue and more to do with a presentation of his findings. Mr. Legg is part of an organization called Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS). This appears to be a very important agency and one worth our support. They do offer access to maps and other information, so I look forward to exploring this resource.

The next presentation was by Dr. Bonita Chamberlin and was called: "Afghanistan: Yesterday ,Today, and Tomorrow?" Dr. Chamberlin has dedicated 28 years of her life to this part of the world and her talk effectively traced some history to show what has lead up to the current very serious situation in that country. Although similar to a talk you might expect in a history or social issues class, her presentation was fascinating. She did include various maps to illustrate some of the changes (like deforestation and drought) that have dramatically weakened the country and its peoples. The amount of hunger is staggering. One resource for information she pointed us to was United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Again, an effective presentation with little overt connection to ESRI and less having to do with accessing data that can be used in classroom projects and assignments.

The final paper to be presented was "Spatial Analysis of Food Poverty in Ecuador" by Andrew Fallow. Like the first of these three talks, Andrew's was more statistical and technical in natures. While many concerns about poverty and hunger in Ecuador were reflected in what he had to say, not much dealt very directly with how to get one's hands on data that can be turned into assignments to use with kids. He did mention a site called Poverty Map and this appears to be a place where data might be available. He also mentioned the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (Centro International de Agricultura Tropical -- CIAT) as a place to check for data. I noted that CIAT's homepage includes links to CIAT in Africa and CIAT in Asia, both of which I'm betting will lead to useful resources.


The last session for me of this day -- and of this ESRI trek to San Diego -- was a set of papers under the umbrella-title: "Creating Resources for GIS Education."

The first paper was presented by Lisa Theo from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire. Her subject was "Simplifying Urban Georgraph Concepts: A Teaching Toll for K-16 Educators." The main focus of her talk was a project she began revolving around billboards in the south central region of Wisconsin. She and two grad students plotted billboard locations, types, and proximity to advertised businesses. One of her main points, I think, was how something as mundane as billboards can really teach a fair amount once you decide what factors are important to tally and track.

The next presentation was "Chinese and Taiwan Historical GIS" by Hsiung-Ming Liao. In some ways, Mr. Liao brought many resources to the fore in that important region of the world. Some of those sites include:

Chinese Civilization in Time and Space Project -- this seems to have tremendous potential with historical and cultural information

Taiwan History and Culture in Time and Space -- another place with information about a region in Asia with much potential

The minor snag here is that there is a backlog of material not yet available in digital form but the big problem is that much, if not all, of what is available online is not yet available in English. As a taste of what's to come, though, it's hard to imagine the coming explosion of what's going to be available online in a few months, let alone years, down the line.

"Using a Global Resource for Teaching About Global Inequality" brought this session to an end. Presenter Brian Fulfrost from University of California at Santa Cruz focused on the UC Atlas of Global Inequality. I don't have a way of reviewing all his PowerPoint slides, but one of the things that immediately stood out to me in the list of goals Brian displayed was the site's dedication to education, teachers, and students. It's going to take a while to explore this site, but, based on what Brian showed us, the online tools, built-in databases (and the commitment to add yet more diverse data sources), the capacity to compare countries based on a variety of criteria, the creation of charts and/or graphs, and other resources being developed -- seeing this was an exciting way to end my stay at ESRI. Not only did this demonstration illustrate the increasing availability of tremendous amounts of data online but, most importantly, it showed that tools are being designed and being made available online that make it easy to use the data to learn something. And that there are people out there -- like Mr. Fulfrost and the team of which he is a part -- that keep foremost in their minds that easy, simple access to this kind of data by the community, including we teachers and our students, is of crucial importance in making the power of this information a huge asset in kids' education and teacher curricula. Bravo!