NACIS 2017

Web Mapping: What are we teaching? | La cartographie Web : où en est l’enseignement?
Presenter: Carl Sack, Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College
Most maps are now consumed online, and interactive web maps and map apps have continued to proliferate. Clearly there is a need to include web mapping concepts and tools in cartography and GIS curriculum to prepare students to meet the current needs of the industry. But in what form? What concepts and tools should we teach, and how should we teach them? This talk will illuminate the practices of 20 cartography and GIS educators who have "taken the plunge" to incorporate web mapping into their courses. It should spark ideas for anyone who has thought they'd like to do more with teaching web mapping but aren't sure where to start or what to include.

Big Data Visualization for Public Engagement | La visualisation des mégadonnées pour l’implication du public
Presenter: Mike Foster, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Copresenters: Sarah Williams and Carlos Sandoval Olascoaga, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cortni Kerr
How can visualizing and mapping"big data" help policymakers and the public to understand issues around social justice in urban mobility, transit, and equitable housing? To answer this question, students and faculty from MIT's School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) developed two interactive data visualization exhibitions through a course devoted to learning emerging technologies around data and visualization. The course focuses on relevant social issues around equitable public transit in Riyadh and assessing impacts of the 2016 U.S. presidential election on housing policy. Student teams designed data-driven visualization and mapping projects utilizing social media, cell phone usage, voter registration rolls, election results, and transportation data, to map, visualize, assess, and communicate the social and economic implications hidden in big datasets. The public exhibitions highlight each project to facilitate conversations between citizens, policymakers, and stakeholders around key planning issues that serve to affect and transform urban and social dynamics.

The Power of Maps in Pre-College Education | Le pouvoir des cartes dans l’enseignement pré-universitaire
Presenter: David Glassett, Peaceful Valley Maps 
Have you ever bemoaned the lack of geographic literacy in today's youth? Are you a parent or mentor to children 0–18 and want to know how to incorporate more cartographic education? My wife and I (well, mostly my wife) homeschool our four school-age children (K–6), who are developing a strong cartographic literacy. Additionally, I've used cartographic techniques as a method for teaching teenagers critical thinking. Online and print media resources are abundant in teaching even the youngest children. I'll share my experiences, anecdotes, resources, and children's maps to help us all improve the next generation's geographic and cartographic literacy one child at a time.

Cartography in World Regional Geography textbooks | La cartographie dans les manuels de géographie des régions du monde
Presenter: Kazimierz Zaniewski, University of Wisconsin–Oshkosh
This presentation is a comparative analysis of maps in terms of their quality, typology, and thematic range in seven popular textbooks used for teaching World Regional Geography or similar courses at the universities across the United States. A typical textbook contains some 200 maps occupying about a quarter of the book page space. One-third of all maps can be classified as general reference maps. The remaining 70 percent are thematic maps, and one-third of them shows quantitative information, mainly through the use of choropleth and proportional symbol techniques. The maps vary in size from two-page spreads to less than a quarter-page space. Most of them are of high quality although some contain content and design (sometimes embarrassing) errors.