KS ArcGIS Competition

ESRI ArcGIS Online School Competition

for US High School and Middle School Students

The Kansas Geographic Alliance is proud to be the state leadership team in Kansas for the 2019 ESRI ArcGIS Online Competition.

Esri's 2019 ArcGIS US School Competition is open to high school and middle school students in the US who can analyze, interpret, and present data via an ArcGIS web app or story map. ESRI sponsors each approved state competition with 10 $100 prizes for the five best High School and five best Middle School projects in the state. The winning entries from Kansas projects will be forwarded to ESRI for national judging with the final prize being a trip to the 2019 ESRI Education Conference in San Diego, CA.

For general information on the Mapping competition and resources available visit the Esri Mapping competition general information page https://www.esri.com/en-us/landing-page/lp/school-competition-2019. Then return to this page for additional information on the Kansas State competition guidelines outlined below.

A sample diagram of the competition process, provided by Esri

2018-2019 General Contest Details - Kansas

Entries - Deadline May 1st, 2019

1. Final entries are due no later than midnight, May 1st, 2019.
2. Entries must be from an ArcGIS  Organization account (not a "public account"). Any K12 school (public, non-public, or homeschool) or formal youth club can request for free an ArcGIS School/Club Bundle (includes an ArcGIS  Organization account).
3. Entries must be an ArcGIS  "web app" or "story map".
4. The geographic scope of entries must focus on content within the state borders of Kansas. The project may reference data outside the state "for context," but may not extend the focus of the study beyond the state borders. For example, broader patterns of environmental characteristics or demographic movements may be referenced for context, but the focus must be on phenomena within the state. 

Eligibility

1. Entrants must be pre-collegiate students registered in grades 4-12, from public schools or non-public schools including home schools, under age 19, who have not yet received a high school diploma or equivalent
2. Entrants must reside and be in school in the state of Kansas, US to be eligible to for judging.
3. Students can work singly or in a team of two, but individual students can participate in only one submitted entry. Teams with one student in middle school (gr.4-8) and one in high school (gr.9-12) must be entered as a high school team.
4. Entrants may work on the challenge through school, via a club, or independently, but entries must be submitted to the state competition from a recognized school or homeschool.
5. Any school or home school program can submit  a maximum of five (5) entries total.

Awards

1. Kansas will submit the top 5 High School and top 5 Middle School projects to Esri for final judging late May 2019. Only one High School and Middle School project from Kansas will be selected as finalists for the national competition. Note: In order to be selected for nomination for final judging by Esri, participants must be willing and able to attend the Esri Education Summit if selected as a finalist.
2. Kansas top projects will each receive a prize up to $100.00 (5 High School & 5 Middle School) funded by Esri.
3. Esri will announce finalists from each state by 5 pm Pacific Time Monday, June 3, 2019. Esri will provide a travel grant to one High School team and one Middle School team, each team consisting of the student(s) and at least one parent/guardian (could be teacher/rep). Awardee teams must agree to attend the Esri Education Summit ("EdUC"), arriving by 10amPT Sat July 6, and staying through at least 4pmPT Tue July 9, 2019. Awardees will be responsible for handling any tax implications, be personally identified including name and photograph, and post a graphic in the Esri User Conference ("UC") Map Gallery on Mon. Awardees will be recognized at EdUC and UC Map Gallery on Monday and may have additional attention.

Kansas Competition Registration

Kansas does not require a pre-registration for participation in the competition. If you have questions please email kga@fhsu.edu with the subject line ArcGIS Competition. The following information will be helpful to include with your inquiry: School Name/Organization, grade(s), and teacher/coach/sponsor contact information including email.

Design Criteria

1. Entries must be from an ArcGIS Organization account, not a "public account." This can be an Org operated by, e.g., the student's school or club, the district, the state GIS Education Team, or similar group.
2. Entries must be visible without requiring a login. Entries engaging "premium data" (login required, such as Living Atlas) must set the display to permit access without needing a login. See helpful note.
3. Entries must be "original work by students," but may use data generated by outside persons or institutions, within guidelines of "fair use." (Students are encouraged to use appropriate professionally generated data, but the integration, treatment, and presentation must be original.)
4. Entries must provide two links in "short URL" format, e.g. "http://arcg.is/1A2b3xyz"
   1. one link goes to the "display" page (the app or story map)
   2. one link goes to the "item details" page (the metadata page for the app or story map). A link to this page will require a login if the Org does not "permit anonymous access" and the link uses the form "[my_org].maps.arcgis.com/etc"; to get around this, change the link to the form "www.arcgis.com/etc" when creating the short URL.
   3. Users can create a short URL in "arcg.is" format within the ArcGIS  interface, or at http://bitly.com (where any URL string formatted as "[anything].arcgis.com/[anything]" will be turned into a short URL formatted as "arcg.is/[shortlink]".)
5. Kansas Scoring Rubric - The Kansas scoring rubric is based on the National Scoring rubric (see #6). The same rubric will be used for High School and Middle School entries. 
   
6. National scoring rubric - The national competition will use this rubric (100 points):
   
   1. (5) the topic is clearly identified, meets [nation's/state's] criteria, focuses on content within state borders
   2. (10) overall presentation within the app or story map is effective in informing about the topic
   3. (20) cartography is effective -- the composition, visualization, and interplay of layers (display scale, transparency, classification, symbolization, popups, charts, tables, labels, filtering, legend appearance) facilitates the viewer's grasp of individual elements of the topic and story
   4. (20) data used is appropriate -- engages an adequate volume and array of clearly significant elements, does not exclude clearly significant elements, does not include irrelevant elements; of the 20 "total data points possible," 5 are reserved for rewarding the creation, documentation, and inclusion of one's own data [0=none, 1=little/weak, 2=some/modest, 3=satisfactory, 4=much/good, 5=most/excellent] (so an otherwise ideal project that contained no user-generated data could receive at most 15 points)
   5. (20) geographic analysis (classification, filtering, geoanalysis) is evident, appropriate, and effective; the "map product" is not "essentially uniform dots/lines/areas on a map" nor "primarily pictures"
   6. (25) documentation in the item details page is clear and complete; all non-original contents (including images) in the presentation/ web app/ story map are appropriately referenced and/or linked to their sources are clear, and original contents are described and/or linked; documentation identifies processes used to analyze the content, plus any persons who assisted in project (including specifying if no one did)

FAQ and Other Helpful Information

• Getting Started: ArcGIS Online Account, Creating an ArcGIS Online Map, Kansas Resources
• Choosing a Topic: For the 2019 Kansas Competition there are no limits to topics. Your project topic should be something that can be easier to understand or explain utilizing a map.  When considering a topic think about how a map could identify or clarify a geographic pattern. Hint: Check out previous years entries to get ideas of the topics and focus selected.
• Create and Share Story Maps
• The ___is in the details: Don't forget the Item Details page!
• GeoInquiries
• Review previous year winners - this is the first year for Kansas to participate in the competition. To see other state's previous year winners visit the ESRI School Competition page 

Submit Project for Judging - Final deadline May 1, 2019

Entries to be submitted via on-line form. Please ensure all required information is provided before submitting.

SUBMIT PROJECT

Notes and Tips

Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

1. Schools should consider issues around exposing PII. See http://esri.box.com/agoorgsforschools for strategies for minimizing PII. Teachers and club leaders should help students minimize exposure of their own PII and that of others, including in map, image, and text.
2. Entries submitted to Esri for the top national prize (i.e. 1-High School and 1-Middle School) must agree in advance to expose student names, school names, and school city/state (homeschool students would be identified to closest city/town name).
3. Esri will not seek, collect, or accept student names for any entrants other than the national prize entrants (1-High School and 1-Middle School per state). These and only these will have names exposed by Esri.
4. If you have questions about the level of PII required for your Kansas project please email kga@fhsu.edu with ArcGIS Competition PII in the subject line.

Project Tips from Esri

• Look at previous national winners and honorable mention projects. This is a "map competition." Entries should be analytical in nature, map-centric rather than photo-centric or relying on too much text. Use of videos or static images generated by anyone other than the team members must be carefully documented, and such media should be used sparingly (few times, as supplements rather than primary visual elements); such outside content generally detracts from national scores. The project should emphasize student work; professionally generated GIS data generally does not detract from national scores this way. A good way to judge project balance quickly is to identify the "number of screens" a viewer would encounter and the number of seconds a viewer would spend consuming the entire project; map-based time and attention should be at least two thirds.
• Good projects gently help even a viewer unfamiliar with the region know quickly the location of the project focus. Requiring a viewer to zoom out several times to determine the region of focus detracts from the viewing experience. (Pretend the viewer is from a different part of the country or a different country.)
• Maps should invite interactive exploration by the viewer, not be static ("images"). The presentation should hold the attention of the viewer from start to finish.
• Maps should demonstrate "the science of where" -- the importance of location, patterns, and relationships between layers. There is an art to map design; too much data may feel cluttered, but showing viewers only one layer at a time may limit the viewers' easy grasp of relationships.
• Care should be taken to make "popups" useful, limited to just the relevant information. They should add important information, and be formatted to make the most critical information be easily consumed. These popups can include formatted text, key links, images, data presented in charts, and so forth.
• Entries based on a project involving more than the entry team should note carefully the work done by the team members. For instance, if a class of 20 works together on a single project and three teams of two students each create different entries based on the 20-person project, each entry should clearly indicate what work was done by the team members. Any content prepared by the teacher/leader must be clearly identified. (For instance, "a Survey123 form (linked here) was created by our teacher, so our competition team does all the data gathering.")