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GeoMentor Program to Help Improve Geographic Literacy

July 13, 2009 by  
Filed under Education

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The GeoMentor Program is being sponsored by ESRI and the National Geographic Society.  It is a way to get GIS professionals involved in education.   A recent ArcNews article (Get Involved with Geo-Education Reform) by Daniel C. Edelson, Vice President for Education, National Geographic Society helped set the stage for the program.  He stated that there is a lack of geographic literacy.  An estimate of 18 year olds in the United States shows that approximately 50% are unready in the area of geography with about 25% geographically competent and 25% geographically proficient.  The National Geograhic Society has made it a goal to achieving a 50 percent rate of geographic fluency among 18-year-olds by 2025.  Several actions were presented to making this possible, and one of the action items was the GeoMentor Program.

The ESRI Education Community has laid out a great site for learning more about this program.  ESRI is also introducing the GeoMentor program at the 2009 ESRI International User Conference.  There are several sessions being presented as well as an easy sign up method for those attending the confernece.  I am sure there will be more information to come, but I would suggest becoming apart of this great opprtunity today and help increase the geographic literacy among our youth today!

You can be as involved as much as you desire with for basic stages:

  • “Learning” (Stage 1) means you agree to receive periodic emails about the GeoMentor program. You will be publicly visible simply as a dot on the map.
  • “Seeking” (Stage 2) means that you are interested in a partnership and agree to make some characteristics visible to people who are logged in at the “Seeking” level or higher, though they cannot directly identify you, nor directly contact you without your approval.
  • “Working” (Stage 3) means that you are participating in one or more GeoMentor partnerships.
  • “Reporting” (Stage 4) means that you have entered information about your activities in order to share that with others.

Find participants who are apart of the program through a GeoMentor Program interactive map.

Search for all the talk about the GeoMentor Program on Twitter.


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