Google Earth Meets Higher Ed: Reflections on NeoGeography Cathy Moulder Director of Library Services, Maps, Data and GIS McMaster University Library CARTO 2008

This Session… The state of the world (limited subset)  Web 2.0  NetGen students NeoGeography Teaching with Google Earth research project What next?

Web 2.0 Phrase coined 2004 A perceived second-generation of Web- based services that emphasize online collaboration and sharing among users Examples = social networking sites, file sharing sites, wikis, blogs, folksonomies, mashups, etc.

Characteristics of Web 2.0 Users access applications entirely through internet browsers Users control the data Users participate and socialize Users add value to applications as they use them Populism sponsored by giants

NetGen Students Born in or after 1982 Marc Prensky, “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants”, On the Horizon 9.5, 2001

Characteristics of NetGen Students Social Achievement & goal oriented Experiential Visually oriented Community activity oriented Oblinger & Oblinger, Educating the Net Generation (Educause, 2005)

NeoGeography Web 2.0 mashed with geo info Use of the Web to create, assemble and disseminate geographic information provided by individuals Consists of a set of techniques and tools that fall outside the realm of traditional GIS or professional cartography

NeoGeography “Volunteered Geographic Information” (Goodchild, “Citizens as Sensors”, 2007) Emphasis on Web 2.0 attributes like social networking, collaboration, non- expert publication, innovation, sharing

wikimapia.org

maps.google.com (User-generated content)

World Wide Web Web 2.0 NeoGeo Maps GIS Web Mapping Research Project

NeoGeo as a Teaching Tool Project limited to:  Google Earth  Existing student assignments  University level  Any discipline

What’s Out There? Published literature:  “Neogeography” GeoBase, Computer Database (Thomson Gale)  “Google Earth” GeoBase, Scholars Portal, GeoRefS Mostly descriptions of GE and it’s wonders, excitement about it’s potential Most articles out-of-date before the ink dries

What’s Out There? Blogs and web-based help sites:  Google for Educators (GeoEducation)  Google Earth Outreach  Juicy Geography  Ogle Earth  Google Earth Blog Lots of instruction guides Mostly “wow factor” and K-12 level

What’s Out There? Conferences:  Where 2.0  Geological Society of America (Abstracts with programs)  Virtual Globes in Science Mostly “wow factor” and visualization uses, but steady growth

What’s Out There? Sites for sharing KML and KMZ files:  Ogle Earth Link List  Google Earth Lessons Bucket o’ Links  Google Earth Community Mostly “naïve geographers” and points of personal interest Virtually no metadata

Christopherson and Thomsen, Geosystems: An Introduction to Physical Geography, 7 th ed. (Prentice Hall, 2009)

Website of exercises to accompany Solem and Foote, Teaching College Geography. (Prentice Hall, 2009) forthcoming

Student Assignment Tasks Using GE n=110 tasks in 14 assignments

NeoGeo Reels Them In Thinkers like Mike Goodchild believe that NeoGeographies will lead more students to geography and to GIS: “Just as the PC democratized computing, so systems like Google Earth will democratize GIS...” (Nature , 2006) 100,000 GIS students < 0.1% of all students / year

One of the 21 st Century Fluencies is Spatial… A spatially literate citizen must:  Understand & recognize the world from above  Derive needed information from a map  Recognize & interpret patterns  Comprehend such basics as scale  Know that geography is not a list of place names

Very Soon, at a University Near You…