The Importance of Spatial and Visual Thinking

Kirk Goldsberry, professor of Geography at Michigan State University, makes a nice argument in this Harvard Business Review online post about the importance of spatial and visual literacy. I think each day about how well (or not) we manage to prepare all students (not just geography and associated areas) for critical consumption and use of spatial information. Unfortunately, most of the time, I come to say 'not very well'. Taking my own University's general education curriculum as an example, there are requirements in place to foster literacy in the written word, in science, in foreign language, in the arts and humanities, but very little if anything around spatial and visual literacy. Yet, pretty much any subject matter is spatially situated and modern culture is saturated by visual media. One of the comments on Kirk's posting came from Jack Dangermond, president of Esri, who added an observation that spatial thinking has found its way into the public mind through other avenues than academics. Clearly, every-day technology brings the power of maps and spatial data to more people than ever, and I hope all geographers celebrate that. I also side with Kirk that P-16 education need to recognize spatial and visual literacy as a main foundation for a well rounded individual. Reading, math, science, and art skills are great. Understanding their visual expression in space and time makes them even greater.

A RECIPE for Meaningful Gamification

In this video Scott Nicholson at Syracuse University shares his ideas around Meaningful Gamification that goes beyond the simple points, badges, and levels to dig more deeply into factors that will generate intrinsic motivation and engagement.
Here's a link to his blog - http://becauseplaymatters.com/

The story behind "The Game That Can Give You 10 Extra Years of Life."

This great piece in the Huffington Post describes "...the biggest disaster in TED history!" It gave me an opportunity to revisit Jane McGonigal's talk from last year to hear how games (among other things) can make us live richer and healthier lives.

Be sure to follow up on http://blog.superbetter.com and look at some of the research behind those remarks. In addition, just watching and engaging with the talk would also add 7.68245837 minutes to your life-span. So, while the talk is 19 minutes, your are really only spending less than 12 minutes watching it...?

GLS 9.0 conference presentations

Myself and Brendon Mikula from our GeoGames team presented two posters at this year's Games+Learning+Society 9.0 conference. It was an energetic and stimulating meeting as usual and our latest work and results were very positively received by those who visited our displays (and there were a lot of people). Poster 1 describe the overall architecture of our Online Map Game platform and Poster 2 presents some of the early results from user studies using the game in Geography undergraduate classrooms.

A Futurology of GIScience

Yesterday I had the great opportunity to address the 2013 University Consortium for GIS symposium attendees gathered at George Mason University. I was asked to talk a bit about what I think are important trends that will affect the GIS area in the near future, so I provided these few observations:

• Location are becoming a required feature of (ever smarter) services 
• Maps are created, designed and used differently –socially driven by anyone 
• Any spatiality (Warped and imagined spaces and places) that helps organize an activity will be used.
• Most applications will not be “serious and some will be "super-serious"

If you care to look through it here is the full presentation.