Teaching with GIS or about GIS? University educator's dilemma

Teaching who: for us, for companies?

About GIS, with GIS

Education or training

Tools or techniques/methods

Geography side approach towards Geoinformatics (the big picture for geographers)

European Context -> INSPIRE?

Terminology: GIS geoinformatics, GI Science … GI Society, GI Science and Technology

Spatial thinking

Geoinformatik in Germany -> spatial process with methods of informatics

What about Geomatics (origin surveying)

Cartography & geodesy as sub sections of …

NCGIA curriculum from the 1990s

Tartu Geo, a podcast about geography and geoinformatics

Tahmin, a student in our Geoinformatics for Urbanised society MSc programme, and I have been working hard over the last months to record, edit, and polish on our podcast project: a GIS-themed educational podcast from our Department of Geography (Geograafia osakond) here in Tartu, Estonia.

Introducing: Tartu Geo, a podcast about geography and geoinformatics related fields along with education, research, history, philosophy, ground breaking ideas and innovation. The show will also host guests from different sectors who will share insight about their research and work. We try to bring up new episodes every 15 days with exciting and newer topics of geoinformatics and geography. Stay tuned and happy listening.

https://tartugeo-podcast.com/

Please bear with us, we are still amateurs :-D The sound quality in some guest interviews is not great, but overall it is getting better and better as we progress. We have already several episodes lined up, and the podcast can be loaded from all the convenient places like iTunes, Stitcher, Spotify and of course you can add the feed also directly to your podcast app.

Please let us know any suggestions or advice that can help us grow. Like always comment, like and subscribe.

A review of selected latest journal articles in the field of Geoinformatics

I spontaneously filled an open slot for our regular PhD seminar in the Chair of Geoinformatics. As I described in an earlier blog post, I occasionally browse through latest published articles like scanning for headlines in the daily news. And with an app like Feedly or Inoreader you can tag interesting articles for later and group them. Now was the chance to re-iterate through some of the latest articles - literally aiming for only few months old to a maximum of 1-2 years old. I initially came up with a group of ca 30-35 articles, which was still too much for a single seminar.

GIScience is not a homogenous and strictly defined discipline, and there is no consensus among GIScience researchers about the relevant publication outlets.

Filip Biljecki (2016) “A scientometric analysis of selected GIScience journals”, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 30:7, 1302-1335, DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2015.1130831

The original idea was to cover a few different topics that are also relevant for the teaching and research we do in the department, such as:

- cloud processing and Google Earth engine

- machine learning and GIS (statistical modelling)

- at least like European level/scale modelling

- some modern cartography/visualization topics

- terrain modelling

I'd then give a short overview of journals, and the selected papers hand out copies one each. 5 minutes reading/skimming and then one circulation, and another 5 minutes, and then discussion. The timing turned out to be too optimistic and we spent more time discussion the papers and interesting facts the participants found for themselves.

• Comparison of FOSS4G Supported Equal-Area Projections Using Discrete Distortion Indicatrices, ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2019, 8(8), 351; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi8080351
• Performance Testing on Marker Clustering and Heatmap Visualization Techniques: A Comparative Study on JavaScript Mapping Libraries, ISPRS Int. J. Geo-Inf. 2019, 8(8), 348; https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi8080348
• Examining the sensitivity of spatial scale in cellular automata Markov chain simulation of land use change, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 33:5, 1040-1061, DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2019.1568441
• The scale effects of the spatial autocorrelation measurement: aggregation level and spatial resolution, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, 33:5, 945-966, DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2018.1564316
• Comparative usability of an augmented reality sandtable and 3D GIS for education, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, DOI: 10.1080/13658816.2019.1656810
• Deeply integrating Linked Data with Geographic Information Systems, Transactions in GIS 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.12538
• GIS&T pedagogies and instructional challenges in higher education: A survey of educators, Transactions in GIS 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.12534
• The spatial allocation of population: a review of large-scale gridded population data products and their fitness for use, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 11, 1385–1409, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-11-1385-2019
• Google Earth Engine: Planetary-scale geospatial analysis for everyone, 2017, Remote Sensing of Environment, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rse.2017.06.031
• Big spatial vector data management: a review, Big Earth Data, 2:1, 108-129, DOI: 10.1080/20964471.2018.1432115
• Contemporary American cartographic research: a review and prospective, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, 46:3, 196-209, DOI: 10.1080/15230406.2019.1571441
• Automated and semi-automated map georeferencing, Cartography and Geographic Information Science, DOI: 10.1080/15230406.2019.1604161