How the Iran War Spiked Oil Prices

Recent Land Use Changes: USA

This is interesting: A Shift in What’s Shaping U.S. Landscapes

The three main types of land use changes are urban sprawl, logging, and agriculture & here the New England has remained pretty stable over the last 40+ years or so. Why? The main land use changes had already occurred by 1988.

Ellis: Your Trusted & Experienced Teacher Colleague

This is pretty cool: imagine you have 24/7/365 access to a very experienced colleague who is also up-to-date with the latest research and best-practices when it comes to learning differences and mental health. Well, Ellis is supposed to be just that & (of course) is powered by AI.

• Ellis: Your On-Demand Classroom Companion
• Ellis Product Walkthrough 2026 (YouTube)
• https://www.askellis.org/

It's difficult to imagine that this could work...but a) it may be better than nothing and could b) be useful in Higher Education where the teachers (= professors) usually have little or no training or experience with such issues.

Ethics in GIS

Interesting read: Enlisting AI to Mainstream Ethics in Spatial Data Science Education

Here's a new-to-me term: Ethics Across the Curriculum or EAC - the idea that ethics should be woven throught the entire curriculum from beginning to end. Here are some resources:

• The Guide to the Geographic Approach  contains 15 open-access modules & some of those include ethical issues and questions.
• Now there is GISEthics.org and its collectiom of 21 case studies.

What to do in-practice? Three things: 1) use a formal case study analysis, 2) use a disucssion forum prompt, and 3) include an ethics-related learning objective. How you may ask? Try the AI-based Ethics Case Study and Discussion Prompt Creator and create yourself a case study that aligns with your course content, a customized discussion forum prompt. and even your learning objective for the course syllabus.

Here's a complete case study from Claudi.ai: When the Map Has a Memory

ArcGIS Story Maps

A compliation of useful resources related to Esri / ArcGIS Story Maps / ArcGIS Online

• How to create an accessible story structure in ArcGIS StoryMaps

Mapping / Legends

• Legends for storytelling part 1: Optimizing the basics
• Legends for storytelling part 2: Creative approaches

Your Name in Landsat!

Silly, but fun: Your Name in Landsat

Maybe even a good way to explore landforms in a Physical Geography class!

Poster Design: #evenbetterposter

Tired of the old 3-column or 4-column for your scientific poster? Try #evenbetterposter instead!