{"id":21142,"date":"2013-07-17T07:55:00","date_gmt":"2013-07-17T12:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=21142"},"modified":"2013-07-17T07:55:00","modified_gmt":"2013-07-17T12:55:00","slug":"worlds-largest-cartography-class-commences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/07\/17\/worlds-largest-cartography-class-commences\/","title":{"rendered":"World&#8217;s largest cartography class commences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wired.com\/wiredscience\/2013\/07\/anthony-robinson-mooc\/\" target=\"_blank\">Greg Miller<\/a> interviews the instructor of the biggest single cartography class &#8230; a vast online class of nearly 30,000 people:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Wired<\/strong>: How did you get interested in geography?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Anthony Robinson<\/strong>: I started my undergraduate education as an electrical engineering major. Then I just randomly took a human geography class, and it completely woke me up. Right away I knew I wanted to be a geographer.<\/p>\n<p>[&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wired<\/strong>: What was the motivation for the <acronym title=\"massive open online course\">MOOC<\/acronym>?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Robinson<\/strong>: Here at Penn State I direct our online geospatial education programs. I was able to make the argument that this is needed. There isn\u2019t one yet, and I\u2019m sure there\u2019s a lot of untapped interest in this stuff. When I meet someone on a plane and tell them I\u2019m a geographer, they\u2019re like \u201cWhat?\u201d They don\u2019t even realize that\u2019s a thing. Something like a MOOC, that\u2019s free and has a high profile, might get more people interested in what we do.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Wired<\/strong>: Why is it just happening now?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Robinson<\/strong>: One thing that really helps right now is we\u2019re past the age of having mapping software that takes you weeks and weeks to have the basics. The software I\u2019m using in the course, ArcGIS Online, works in a browser. It\u2019s very usable. It\u2019s not perfect but it\u2019s quite good. Also, there are tons of datasets that are available now and searchable. Those are things we spent weeks and weeks on even when I was an undergrad, and that wasn\u2019t that long ago. The technology threshold that it takes to make a map and do some spatial analysis has now ratcheted down to the point where it\u2019s possible to do this with people all over the world working on different technology platforms. I don\u2019t think I could teach this class even two years ago.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Greg Miller interviews the instructor of the biggest single cartography class &#8230; a vast online class of nearly 30,000 people: Wired: How did you get interested in geography? Anthony Robinson: I started my undergraduate education as an electrical engineering major. Then I just randomly took a human geography class, and it completely woke me up. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"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":""},"categories":[79,28,16],"tags":[58,624],"class_list":["post-21142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-media","category-science","tag-internet","tag-maps"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-5v0","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21142"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21145,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21142\/revisions\/21145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}