GIS Workshop for Planners

The North Carolina Chapter of the American Planning Association's Summer Planning Institute and Leadership Conference was held August 8-10, 2007, on the campus of Western Carolina University. The conference attracted over 100 attendees from all over NC but mostly the western part of the state. I was there to put on a short GIS workshop for 10 participants. After looking over some basics of GIS and ArcGIS specifically, we jumped into some spatial analysis and looked at a fictious analysis of property damage resulting from a tornado. We also covered several resources for learning GIS as well as an exhaustive search of local and regional GIS data sources.

More on the conference can be see here ==>

And the wiki pages from the GIS workshop can be accessed here ==>

Advanced Smoky Mountains Science Teacher Institute GIS/GPS Workshop

11 high school teachers are participating this week in the Advanced Smoky Mountains Science Teacher Institute that is being held at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. This is a wonderful opportunity for high school teachers to learn about the great diversity of flora and fauna in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park and the threats they face on a daily basis as well as learn about scientific inquiry and how to incorporate more in their classrooms.

The week started with millipedes surveys, identification and workshops on threats to millipede habitat like invasive earth worms introduced in the park. Bruce Snyder from the University of Georgia led this part of the class detailing his work and research in the Smokys with millipedes. The millipedes survey was coupled with a technology session on Global Positioning Systems and how they can be used as a scientific inquiry and data collection tool. This session was led by Mark Ethridge (Tuscola High School), Pete Kennedy (AB Tech) and Haven Hanford (NC DNR) - the 'GIS/GPS Team'. Following the millipedes survey (GPS) and identification, the class began an introductory session in Geographic Information Systems using the free GIS tool from ESRI, ArcExplorer. Students learned basic GIS skills and concepts related to map navigation, layers, attributes, selecting features by querying, tables and data management skills.

Day 2 of the GIS portion of the class, students took their own data collected in the field and integrated it into the GIS. Tables were generated and points were established on the map corresponding with the locations of millipedes surveys. Teachers incorporated this with aerial photographs and topographic maps of the area. The map above shows survey locations shown as graduated symbols. The larger red circles are plots where more millipedes were found and the smaller yellow circles indicate plots were fewer millipedes were found.

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The Geospatial Technology Program from AB Tech was happy to be involved with such a wonderful organization as Tremont and a great class! A big thanks go out to Jason Love, Citizen Science Director from Tremont and Susan Sachs, Park Ranger from GSMNP!

To some more info about the GIS/GPS portion of the workshop, check out the wiki here ==>
http://tremont.wetpaint.com/

Also, if you have GoogleEarth, you can view our Millipede survey data here!

Visitors from Valladolid Mexico

This summer, AB Tech was lucky to have visitors from one of Asheville's Sister Cities, Valladolid, Yucatan Mexico. There were 8 delegates from a technical school similar to AB Tech called the Instituto Technologico Superior de Valladolid. There were also 2 visitors from University De Valladolid. This trip followed a trip taken by Dr. Sharon Morrissey to Valladolid to begin a dialogue on how our schools can work together in the future with faculty and student exchanges.

Below - Raul Mendoza Alcocer the Director (like our President) of Instituto Technologico Superior de Valladolid with our own Vice President Dr. Sharon Morrissey pointing at a map of Asheville and Valladolid made by our Geospatial Technology Instructor Pete Kennedy.

Students and Faculty visited the Business Computer Technology Division one morning and learned about all our programs. Below is a slide show of their visit to our deparment. The group visited a Web Technologies class and of course visitied the GIS lab where we showed them maps of places they were visiting during their trip and gave them a short demonstration of some of the Geospatial Technologies we teach here in our certificate program.

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Dr. Morrissey and some others outlined the following as potential future partnership opportunities we will continue to explore with our friends from Valladolid.

(1) A return visit to Valladolid in February 2008 (AB Tech faculty and
students, Sister Cities members), staying with home hosts.
(2) ITSVA exchange students to spend 6 months or 1 year at AB Tech,
studying ESL and/or a curriculum program (hospitality, culinary, engineering,
management/business administration, networking, computer technologies,
HVAC).
(3) ITSVA faculty members to spend 2-4 weeks at AB Tech, shadowing our
faculty members in networking, culinary, hotel & restaurant management, mechanical
engineering, electrical engineering, HVAC.
(4) Mentor ITSVA in development of a Small Business Incubator/Student
Incubator program. (Raul plans to return to learn more about incubator
programs in the US.)
(5) Establish a CISCO Networking Academy at ITSVA.
(6) AB Tech humanities & foreign language students to study abroad in
Valladolid, staying with home hosts.
(7) AB Tech faculty to study the culture, cuisine, tourism industry,
history of Valladolid, staying with home hosts.

Tech Connect finds their way with the help of GPS

Last Friday, the chairperson of Business Computer Technologies, Pam Silvers worked with 10 high school students again this summer through the Tech Connect Program. Building from basic GPS skills the students learned while at AB Tech last summer - the group used GPS to navigate through a frisbee golf course set-up on campus. Geospatial Technologies Instructor Pete Kennedy and Digital Media Technologies Instructor Jonathan Ross were on hand to support with GPS, photography and of course playing a little frisbee golf!

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