Category Archives: Event

Celebrate Earth Day 2020!

By Earth Day 2020, Education, Event, Resource, , , , , ,
Earthrise by Apollo 8 Astronaut William Anders/NASA

This Wednesday (April 22, 2020) will mark the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. While many of the large scale celebrations will have to be postponed; here are some ideas for ways to celebrate in your home or neighborhood.

#EarthDayAtHome with NASA – this website has a great collection of activities to explore our world. Here are a few that you might want check out: Terrestrial Tournament (vote for your favorite Earth images), Hit the Bricks (instructions for creating LEGO models Model 1 and Model 2), NEMO-NET (mapping coral reefs), download the ebook “Earth at Night” to view amazing images of our planet at night.

Water Rocks!, an Iowa based water education campaign, has two exciting Earth Week art contests.
1) Create a sidewalk chalk masterpiece showing your love for natural resources or ways to help protect planet Earth.
2) Gather interesting objects you find outside to create art from nature!
Check out the Water Rocks website for full details: https://www.waterrocks.org/.

ISU’s Live Green Monthly Newsletter is also another resource to find ideas for celebrating Earth Day. It is filled with practical tips for living more sustainably, fun DYI Green activities, opportunities for living green as well as other interesting articles.

Have a happy Earth Day!

Iowa Map Contest 2020 – Entries due 5/13/2020

By Activity, Education, Event, Iowa Map Contest 2020, Outreach, , ,

Just wanted to put out a reminder that the Iowa Map Contest is still going on. It’s a great opportunity for students in grades 4-12 to learn how to tell a story about Iowa’s special places using a story map. Also there are great prizes – $100 and a chance to go to the national map contest.

If you need help getting started, visit the official website and please read the earlier post for more details or send us an email.



All images are from the Noun Project authors Sergey Demushkin, Made X Made, Adrien Coquet, and Andrejs Kirma.

Iowa Map Contest 2020

By Education, Event

The 2020 Map Competition for Iowa middle and high school students is open.

Students in grades 4-12 are invited, with their teachers, to participate in this year’s mapping contest sponsored by Esri, the Iowa Geographic Information Council (IGIC), and William Penn University. This year’s theme is Mapping Iowa’s Tourist Attractions.

Contest Website: https://sites.google.com/site/iowamapcontest/home

Story Maps Website: https://www.esri.com/en-us/arcgis/products/arcgis-storymaps/overview

How to participate: Use the Story Map application to tell a story about an Iowa tourism site using a map and pictures.

Students submitting the five top middle school map entries (grades 4-8) and the five top high school map entries (grades 9-12) will receive a $100 cash prize and certificate. The top entry from each state will be submitted to the national competition hosted by Esri.

Schools must submit their winners to the state for judging by 4 p.m. on Wednesday, May 13, 2020. Iowa GIS professionals will judge the entries so Iowa awards may be announced, and send winning entries on to Esri for the national competition. Esri will announce the national winners on June 1, 2020. National winners will receive a travel grant to the Esri Education GIS Conference held in San Diego in July.

Happy GIS Day #GISDay

By Education, Event, Geography Awareness Week, Uncategorized, ,

Geography Awareness Week continues with the celebration of GIS Day.

Participate in the international celebration of geographic information systems (GIS) technology. GIS is a scientific framework for gathering, analyzing, and visualizing geographic data to help us make better decisions. On GIS Day, help others learn about geography and the real-world applications of GIS that are making a difference in our society. It’s a chance for you to share your accomplishments and inspire others to discover and use GIS. – From the ESRI GIS Day website

Check out ESRI’s list of 101 ways to participate in GIS Day. Here are a couple ideas that stuck out:
27. Submit a story map to the 2019 StoryMapper of the Year Contest. I have heard of storymapping student contests but apparently ESRI also has a contest open to anyone with a $5,000 prize.
61. Wear your favorite GIS shirt.
My favorite map shirt features the Upper Pennisula of Michigan. What about you?
92. Complete a Learn ArcGIS lesson.
This is a cool site with real world guided GIS lessons.

A Great Day For Earth Observation – Part II

By Earth Observation Day, Education, Event, Outreach, , , , ,

The second part of Earth Observation Day was dedicated to using OpenStreetMap to remotely map Wayland, Iowa and Mindanao region of the Philippines.

Amy Logan, an IowaView staff member, gave a brief introduction to remote sensing and OpenStreetMap. Then mappers began working on a TeachOSM task – Improving the Iowa OSM Basemap: Wayland, Iowa (https://tasks.teachosm.org/project/981). Beverly Conrad, the city clerk of Wayland came for the mapathon and was able to provide local knowledge about the areas participants were mapping. New mappers were encouraged to do the OSM iD Editor Walk-through before they began mapping. It provides users with a nice hands-on introduction of the OpenStreetMap interface and how to create data.

Beverly Conrad discussing a feature with mapathon participants.

Wayland is a small town (population: 966) in southeast Iowa that has wanted to move towards a GIS asset management system, yet much of their city needed to be mapped. As a result of the volunteer efforts of our 22 mappers during the Earth Observation Day mapathon event, partcipants mapped over 70% of the city, including over 470 buildings as well as sidewalks, alleys, parks, and other points of interest. Below is a before and after screenshot of the OpenStreetMap basemap for the City of Wayland, Iowa.

Thank you, Mappers!

The second project was a Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Task improving the basemap in the Philippines to promote food security. This project added details to the basemap such as minor roads and path, buildings, and farmland.

Coming Soon: Earth Observation Day – Tuesday October 15, 2019

By Earth Observation Day, Education, Event, Outreach, , , ,

When: Tuesday, October 15, 2019
Where: GIS Teaching Lab, Room 248, Durham Center, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa

This year the ISU GIS Facility in collaboration with IowaView will be celebrating Earth Observation Day. This year the theme is “Geoscience is Everywhere.” We have a great day planned.

To start out our day at 10:30am, Professor Peter Wolter will share how he is using remote sensing to measure forest structure and composition. Then we will have a Humanitarian Open Street Map Event 11am-12:30pm. No experience is needed. First, we will have an Iowa-Focused activity 11:00am-11:45am and then we will focus our efforts on an international Humanitarian OpenStreetMap activity from 11:45am-12:30pm. We will also have pizza and you are encouraged to try our new puzzles.

REGISTER NOW: https://forms.gle/pDeEHbLY1eEV6Ejq7Ejq7