Esri Story Maps Experiment

This blog post is about me experimenting with Esri Story Maps  specifically the Cascade type, with a view to using them in educational situations both tutor authored (e.g. a case study location) and student authored (e.g. a report on a field study).  Esri Story Maps is a variant of what I call  Atlas Tours (map animations linked by a narrative).  Students find them creative and they can be linked to practising graphical literacy and also linked to fieldwork.

Screenshot of Esri Story Maps, click to open.

Background:  I'm currently writing a paper about this and the main example is using Esri Story Maps in a module run by one of the co-authors Damien Mansell (other co-author: Derek France).  The paper deliberately avoids discussing the actual tech in order to focus on educational principles so I thought I should have a crack with Esri Story Maps to explore the tech side of things.  I was thinking about various topics to tackle but then Kilauea erupted, my colleague at the Open Universtiy, Prof David Rothery, wrote a Conversation piece about it and I felt I had to have a go because it seemed a nice way to revisit a flash based resource about it whilst volunteering for the USGS in 2003.

Esri Story Maps background:  Esri Story Maps is a free platform for creating Atlas Tours, previously I've talked a lot about Google Earth Tours, which are also free to use.  The formats differ:

• Esri Story Maps (Cascade) is 'scrollytelling', a format that started with the stunning Snow Fall by the New York Times in 2012.  The narrative is delivered by text and the scrolling drives film and animations.  For some reason users prefer scrolling to clicking 'next' buttons and that shows in web analytics - e.g. they will read further.  
• Google Earth Tours can be audio or text narrated and usually form more of a virtual flight around a study site.

Esri Story Maps Functionality:  My comments apply to creation both by tutors or students unless noted otherwise. It's pretty easy to use (in depth tutorial by John Nelson), here are some useful things you can do with it in an educational setting:

Zoom in:  Create a map with various layers on it.  Zoom in from a high viewpoint to a detailed viewpoint to convey spatial situation.  In the Kilauea example, I zoomed in from a high view of the Pacific to show the location of Big Island Hawaii in the Hawaiian island chain.

Progressive zoom animation into part of Big Island Hawaii

Time Animation/Show different data layers sequentially:  Different layers can be shown sequentially, this can be a time animation (e.g. spread of Post Offices across USA over last two centuries) or other comparisons of layers such as land cover types in the UK e.g this by Esri education UK (full Esri Story Map  source is worth looking at)

This is well worth a look https://t.co/FxynyZwPYS

— Adam Corlett (@adamcorlett) September 26, 2018

Map Search Activity:  I think this one better suited to tutor-authored Esri Story Maps: create an Esri Story Map to introduce a concept or case study and then insert a zoom/pan-able map for them to search as an activity.  In the Kilauea example I found an eruption map (from ArcGIS Online) which I suggested students explore to find other example of vulcanism.  In a similar development, Esri education includes a more sophisticated version of a searchable map with clickable views in their example above. 

Enhance text with Video:  Esri Story Maps allows you to embed other web elements in the presentation.  In the Kilauea example I embedded a video but you could also embed other web elements such as other 'single map' story map types such as the swipe and spyglass.

I've previously discussed good practice about creating Atlas Tours, all of which are possible with Esri Story Maps

Technical gotchas:  Esri Story Maps is fairly easy to use to create a presentation, and Damien found students generally very supportive of using it to create an Atlas Tour in an assignment (which we'll discuss in the paper).  However, if you invite students to create an Esri Story Maps, some technical points to emphasise to them:

• You have to remember to save edits.  In a lot of cloud apps, save is automatic so this can cause confusion.
• Creating a map is done in ArcGIS Online and then bought into Esri Story Maps platform.  This is clunky IMHO and may cause confusion with students not understanding the two virtual spaces they are working in.  

Neither of the issues is major IMHO. 

Conclusion:  As with all edtech, there is a tutor investment of time necessary to explore using Esri Story Maps but it could be used to enhance Geography or other spatial teaching right now.  

In memoriam: Ron Schott

This is a joint post by Richard and John Bailey, (Program Manager Google Earth Education)

Ronald C. Schott was one of the original community users and advocates for the use of Google Earth in Earth Science and Education. Sadly we found out this weekend, that Ron died last week of natural causes.

In the early days of the Google Earth Community and related blogs, Ron was always the most positive voice, and led the charge for use of GE in Earth Science. It could be argued that he was THE original advocate as he was an early Keyhole user, and pushed the Earth Science / Education angle from those first days via his Geology Home Companion Blog. This all despite his traditional training as a geologist and focus on fieldwork. He saw there was a great opportunity for the science and technology to come together.

His blog, along with his active twitter and G+ profiles have been credited by many in the Geology and EdTech (and both) communities as major influences on their own geology careers, social media and other writings. He was known for spending a lot of time helping and interacting with geologists, students and armchair explorers that he’d never even met but who asked for help. One of his pet topics was advocating for a Google Earth “Geology layer”, which ironically the new layers now has the potential to make possible.

Ron was famous for his Gigapans - the one of his office is a classic.  As part of the fun, Edi and Berti are often lurking in there (someone tell me which one I've pictured below?).






It was in this world of Gigapan imagery where Ron excelled, he was one of the original beta testers and had few peers. His catalogue of uploaded images stands as a unique contribution to the world Geology community: Ron Schott and his 1,000 Gigapans.  He was also know for his excellent use of social media to promote Gigapanning and Gigapans and he did the same with Google Earth: his involvement in the #WOGE (Where on Google Earth?) game helped fuel an active blog and social media interest around Earth (and also led to the "Schott rule").

Ron was also part of the Virtual Globes at AGU sessions from day one, as both a contributor and organizer. Spun out from this, at the Penrose Conference held at Google in 2011, Ron organized the fieldtrip to the Marin headlands around using Google Earth “in the field”. We were later collaborators on on NSF-funded projects around using Google Earth and Geo for Education.

Coming into the present day, it was somewhat surreal that Rich messaged John with the sad news that we’d lost Ron and it flashed up on John’s phone as he stood watching sunrise over one the world’s most spectacular outcrops: Uluru, a massive sandstone inselberg in the heart of the Australia’s arid "Red Centre".

John writes: Although we’d both had fewer interactions in the last few years since I joined the GEO team, Ron was a friend, and a big part of the world that led me to joining Google, he will be greatly missed.

Rich writes:  Like John, I hadn’t spoken to Ron for a while at the start of this year.  However, I’m active on Twitter and Ron was ALWAYS popping up in my timeline and liking my tweets over the years since the Penrose conference.  The response to the news on Twitter shows it wasn’t just me, he was a huge part of many geologists experience on Twitter.

Rich writes:  Twitter led me to my last conversation with him, I had a hangout with him back in March picking up a thread of discussion on virtual fieldtrips.  We chatted about a ‘road trip’ geology idea I’d had, as always he was a technical guru and gave me some excellent notes to consider, both technical and educational.  We ended with me promising to set up a group web call with some other people about virtual fieldtrips, one of those ‘when I have the time’ ideas that we all have.  Of course everything else intervened and, to my shame, it fell off my todo list.  I feel sad to have missed the chance to hear his views on the recent developments in our field one last time.

The last word should go to Ron on his beloved gigapan work:

“I hope that the images I shoot will help educators teach the science of geology and will inspire others to get interested in geology and strive to learn more about the planet they live on”

Richard Treves, blog owner. 

John Bailey
Program Manager
Google Earth Education

We also lost Declan de Paor this week, a separate blog about him to follow.

Google have just released 'VR tour creator'.  Excellent!

This allows anyone to:

• Identify a series of streetview photospheres
• Add 'points of interest' to them with text or photos
• Publish to the world

Which is essentially a way of authoring a Google Expedition.

This is a great tool for education projects, I've seen examples done already with other tools (sorry, can't find link) but Google make it very easy for students with this cloud offering.

Hello World tour (translation: my first tryout)

I've already had a play, creating a tour using photos of my work place:  the Open University campus at Milton Keynes (the OU is 100% distance learning so the campus isn't somewhere the majority of our students ever visit).  As with most recent Google tools, the usability and interface was well thought out and designed so I had no real problems.

The embedded iframe above won't work on certain machines, fire up the post on a recent laptop to see it.

Example activity - comparing town and city shopping.

If it would help get your creative juices flowing, here's an an example student activity I thought up: compare town shopping and city shopping.  I live in Leighton Buzzard, UK, a small town (streetview).  I work in Milton Keynes, a city with well developed shopping centres (malls)(streetview).  Students could be challenged with a field trip task:  Go and take photos to illustrate the differences of shopping in a small market town with a traditional UK high street vs shopping in Milton Keynes.  What you'd hope they'd identify:

• City shops are all under cover with easy parking and lots of choice
• Town shopping offers less choice, less service (e.g no cover or particularly good parking) but maybe more personal - you may get to know the people running the shops. 

The challenge for students would be to:

• Identify photos to take
• Identify photospheres (in streetview) to use
• What points of interest to use and what text to put with them.

Solving these challenges is a great way of getting the students to explore the problem AND comes with the advantage that they can share their work with parents (school kids) or a link from their CV/resume (Uni students).

Educational advantages:

I happen to be writing up a paper on students creating map tours as an assignment, here's some thoughts expanding on the above (and the comments work for Esri story maps or Google Earth tour builder too):

Novelty:  Students react well to using a new medium provided they don't have to invest too much time learning to use it - i.e. It is highly usable.  Their feedback will say things like 'Creative', 'taught me new skills', 'fun', 'interesting', different'(based on studies I've read on student produced podcasts, story maps, films)

Interactivity:  Based just on the current study I'm doing, Students appreciate being able to create interactive resources with little effort.  They haven't created something a tour like this before, they've all seen interactive materials on the web so being able to create one for themselves adds lots of value.

Reflection:  Creating a tour like this can involve students in some really helpful thinking and reflection particularly if they are guided to:

• Plan what they’ll do before starting (easy to do if it’s a field trip)
• Think what they can do in the field (or what they're going to get done in class if its not a field trip)
• Have a clear 'write up' phase where they collect their materials together in the tour and reflect on what they did and try and improve it. 

These distinct stages of processing can encourage deep learning of a subject if students engage properly.

Power of Photos:  Finally, deciding what photos to take, looking to see what they've taken and being able to link the photo in with the photosphere is very rewarding for students based on feedback from student created map tours I'm analysing (in Esri Story maps as it happens).

Educational disadvantages to a VR tour:

Problems to watch out for:

Techincal issues:  Is the equipment/software the students are going to use easy to operate and reliable?  Tour creator caused me no problems but I had trouble getting photos from my phone onto my laptop for editing.  Technical glitches like this can destroy the value of doing something adventurous like a VR tour for students.

Instructions:  Are students clear what they're doing?  They will obviously need more guidance than if they are just writing a report like they've done before and their excitement and enthusiasm will be seriously affected if they aren't clear about what they're doing.  For university students, this is related to having to take great care explaining how their work will be marked.

Versions:   There are advantages to cloud based software but one of the disadvantages is that there is no tutor control on versions used.  You have to use the latest version and Google are bound to change VR tour creator, this means annually instructions have to be changed and adapted to the tool.  With PC based software, the educator can choose whether to update or stay with an old version.

Some thoughts on what could be added

There is enough power in the tool as it is to develop some really interesting student activities.  However, there are limitations and any activity needs to be designed to avoid a situation where the limitations create problems.  Here are some of my thoughts on this:

No map 'spine' possible:  The 'spine' refers to where the narrative sits, so for this blog post, the spine is web text and you can follow links off the spine to streetview, other web pages etc.  The spine in VR tour creator is a web page which links you to the photospheres.  This design can work very well in cases where the relative location on the earth of the photosphere photos is not interesting, e.g. the international space station expedition:  the interest is what it looks like on the inside rather than the spatial spread of the photospheres.  However, some situations cry out for a map which illustrates the spatial relationship.  E.g. if you were looking at vegetation in West Wales (a favourite holiday destination of mine), Photospheres of grass with no trees are found in exposed locations out in the strong wind coming straight off the Atlantic.  In protected deep valleys out of the wind, woodland predominates in the mild, wet climate.  To explain this situation in an expedition it really helps to use a map to point out exposed and unexposed locations.  So IMHO, a good addition to the tool would be the option to have a map as the spine.

Can't easily add your own photospheres:  To create a photosphere for use in this tool you'd need to do it in advance and upload it to Google Maps.  I'm not clear if doing this guarantees it will be available to use for students.  This prevents some nice possible activities such as a geology field trip to a quarry which isn't on a public road and doesn't have a photosphere - you can currently only use locations in streetview.

Can't add links or videos:  The only media that can be added currently is text or photos.  This is limiting, often a video is much more meaningful.

BUT, its worth repeating, this is a great free tool which opens up lots of opportunities for use, I'd love to see what activities educators create with it!