Skyping from Niagara in the News!

Our second pilot test of Skyping from Niagara Falls was recently written up by the Buffalo News's nature and science columnist, Gerry Rising. Here's the start of Gerry's story...

Nature Watch: High-tech teaching promotes study of geology

Two weeks ago, I went back to school. I spent an entire day attending Don Duggan-Haas’ nine classes. In a very small way, I even participated in the instruction. This was not, however, a usual classroom adventure. One of those eight classes was in Michigan, one in California, one in Washington state and five were in New Mexico.

Read the rest of the story here. 

Make a Virtual Fieldwork Experience Using a Simple Template

UPDATE: Since this tutorial was created in March of 2012, Prezi has substantially revised their interface. The Graphic Organizer within the Prezi has also been updated so that the text within it may be edited, and arrows and boxes containing the questions can be deleted or added. A new set of tutorials will be created to reflect these changes, but the basic procedures are largely unchanged, and the tutorials below are still useful.

There is a new version of the Template, now linked below and here. This link was added February, 2013.

Federal Geographic Data Committee Launches Geospatial Platform Website -- A rich map resource

This short post is to highlight a cool resource that just came to my attention.

From the EPA Climate Change and Water E-Newsletter:

Federal agencies and their partners collect and manage large amounts of geospatial data - but this data is often not easily found when needed or accessible in useful forms. The Geospatial Platform provides ready access to federally maintained geospatial data, services and applications, as well as access to data from our partners across state, tribal, regional and local governments as well as non-governmental organizations. The website makes it possible for users to create customized maps, or to integrate their own data into the maps, and share the maps through web browsers and mobile applications. The Geospatial Platform was developed by an interagency committee composed of representatives from the Executive Office of the President, the Department of the Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). For more information on the Geospatial Platform website, please visit:
http://www.geoplatform.gov/home/index.html.

The site has tools for creating maps as well as a gallery of maps created by others. Maps in the map gallery vary in what they cover and how to explore them. United States Omernik Ecoregions map is very slick and easy to use. Enter an address or zoom to the region you want to explore and click on the map to see a detailed description of the ecoregion. This is an easier to use source for identifying ecoregions than the one I've been using for gathering this information for the VFE Database Entry Form, so I'm updating that link to this one.

NOAA Weather Radar and Weather Warnings shows the areas under a watch, and a key that doesn't seem to quite cover all the possible warning types, so in the two times that I've looked, there are areas under warnings that don't seem to quite map the key. It's a cool map, but not as technologically slick or user-friendly as the Ecoregions map.

There are more maps to explore here, as well as tools for making your own. Explore the site and note things of interest and then share them in the comments below.http://www.geoplatform.gov/home/webmap/viewer.html?webmap=c694f5e9b94246c98506df9b1592dba3