September 12, 2011.\u00a0 Today was a great day.\u00a0 I arrived early to make sure all the computers were working and that I had enough handouts for my Human Geography students.\u00a0 Ethan arrived early to make sure the GPS units were charging for an outing with my GIS class.\u00a0 My students arrived and began a lesson created to help them learn about Territorial Morphology and Boundary Typology using GIS.\u00a0 Working with a partner they navigated the world map looking for prorupt and perforated states\u00a0 – \u201cDoes Vatican City count?\u00a0 What about Azerbaijan?\u201d\u00a0 – it\u2019s clear that many of them haven\u2019t looked this closely at a world map in a long time.\u00a0 \u201cWhere\u2019s the Danube?\u201d\u00a0 \u201cWhat\u2019s next to Egypt?\u201d\u00a0 I love hearing the students talk to one another, and help one another.\u00a0 I love the occasional \u201coh cool\u201d that slips from their mouths.\u00a0 But mostly what I\u2019m so happy about is that none of the computers crashed.\u00a0 Not one.\u00a0 For the entire class period.\u00a0 Success!<\/p>\n
I think back to September 2010.\u00a0 Students enter the Spatial Analysis Lab in the brand new Carole Weinstein International Center and begin what I tell them is going to be a very exciting lab.\u00a0 They open the file, as instructed, and within 5 minutes computers start crashing.\u00a0 When they don\u2019t crash they run so slowly that instead of hearing the occasional \u201coh cool\u201d I hear the occasional \u201coh damn\u201d.\u00a0 Students are rubbing their heads in frustration. \u201cGIS\u201d, they say, \u201cstinks\u201d.\u00a0 Some students must exit completely, others begin texting while they wait for the computers to restart.\u00a0 I\u2019ve lost them.\u00a0 I\u2019d spent so much time creating these lessons \u2013 with the help of a Course Enhancement grant from the CTLT \u2013 only to face this.\u00a0 The problem?\u00a0 Data storage and retrieval.\u00a0 Netfiles.\u00a0 The solution: a Server.\u00a0 It\u2019s the only way to efficiently serve large amounts of data to a lab (or classroom) full of students simultaneously.\u00a0 But, how to get there?\u00a0 Money, cooperation from IT and IS and many other acronyms.\u00a0 Training.\u00a0 More training.\u00a0 Loading data onto Server and rewriting all lessons for the new year and BAM!<\/p>\n
Today, students completed their GIS Lesson without any technical difficulties.\u00a0 No performance issues.\u00a0 No slow drawing maps.\u00a0 No crashing.\u00a0 This is beyond great.\u00a0 This is where I wanted to be.\u00a0 Instead of being frustrated by the technology they were able to complete their lesson during class time.\u00a0 They are gaining familiarity with concepts of human geography, spatial thinking, and rudimentary GIS skills.\u00a0 In the first 3 weeks of school, our lab has been used by: 4 SAL interns, 4 Geography Faculty, 1 Biology Faculty, 1 Chemistry Faculty, 20 FYS \u2013 Biology students, 23 GIS students, 22 Human Geography students, 13 Mapping & Sustainability students, and 30+ Physical Geography students.\u00a0 We\u2019ve made maps for the Law School, the School of Continuing Studies and the Jepson School of Leadership Studies.\u00a0 I\u2019m so proud of how far this lab has come, and so excited about its future.\u00a0 Yes, Vatican City counts.\u00a0 The Danube \u2013 Europe.\u00a0 And it\u2019s Libya.\u00a0 Libya is next to Egypt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
September 12, 2011.\u00a0 Today was a great day.\u00a0 I arrived early to make sure all the computers were working and that I had enough handouts for my Human Geography students.\u00a0 Ethan arrived early to make sure the GPS units were charging for an outing with my GIS class.\u00a0 My students arrived and began a lesson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4215,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5830],"tags":[5843,24537,5838,5842,675],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-from-the-directors-desk","tag-gis","tag-sal","tag-spatial-analysis-lab","tag-territorial-morphology","tag-university-of-richmond"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Tv8N-1M","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/sal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}