IMAGE OF THE WEEK
Scenes from AAG annual meeting in 2018, highlighting poster sessions, the alumni and friends reception, and advisers meeting their online students in person.
GOOD NEWS
Welcome to Jack Chang, a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the ChoroPhronesis lab, starting in spring 2019.
Welcome to Pejman Sajjadi, a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the ChoroPhronesis lab, starting in spring 2019.
Guido Cervone has been selected to receive the 2019 UCGIS Carolyn Merry Mentoring Award. The award presentation will take place at the 2019 UCGIS Symposium in June in Washington, D.C.
Kelsey Brain, Eden Kinkaid, and Nari Senanayake had an article accepted for publication in the Geographical Review Special Issue on Challenging Research Methods in 21st Century Geography. The paper is titled: “The podcast-as-method?: Critical reflections on using podcasts to produce geographic knowledge.”
Saumya Vaishnava received the AAG-Energy and Environment Specialty Group data and field work award for this summer.
Michelle Ritchie was awarded the Global Safety Office’s Wilderness First Aid Training Grant for her upcoming travel to Iceland.
“Research Framework for Immersive Virtual Field Trips” by Alex Klippel, Jiayan Zhao, Danielle Oprean, and Jack Chang was awarded best paper at the KELVAR workshop.
Alex Klippel’s course proposal for GEOG 170N Immersive Technologies: Transforming Society Through Digital Innovation was approved by the Faculty Senate.
Joshua Inwood was interviewed on The Debate program on the France 24 English news channel about white supremacy in the wake of the attack in Christchurch, New Zealand.
Weiming Hu’s entry was chosen as the third place winner of the Physical Sciences & Mathematics category in the 34th annual Penn State Graduate Exhibition.
COFFEE HOUR
No Coffee Hour this week. The final Coffee Hour for the spring 2019 semester will be April 12. The speakers will be the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Connection (UROC) students presenting their projects. An induction ceremony for the Gamma Theta Upsilon (GTU) geography honor society will also take place.
NEWS
Penn State Geographers at AAG
Nearly 100 current Penn Staters, including graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and staff are participating in the AAG annual meeting, April 3–7, in Washington, D.C.
Among the highlights:
- Several online geospatial program MGIS students will be giving their capstone presentations during the meeting.
- The Penn State Geography Alumni and Friends reception is planned for Friday, April 5, at 7:00 p.m. at Lillies.
- Spreadsheet on Box with all Penn Staters and their sessions
- More AAG program information
- Newcomer Resources at the 2019 Annual Meeting
Save the date for the Recognition Reception
The annual Department of Geography Recognition Reception will be held on Friday, April 26, 2019, third floor of the Walker Building. Come for refreshments and socializing, the graduate student poster session, and a program in which awards and accomplishments are recognized and celebrated. For more information and to RSVP go to: https://www.geog.psu.edu/event/recognition-reception-2019
RECENTLY PUBLISHED
Research Framework for Immersive Virtual Field Trips
Klippel, A., Zhao, J., Oprean, D., Wallgrün, J. O., & Jack Shen-Kuen Chang
KELVAR: The Fourth IEEE VR Workshop on K-12+ Embodied Learning through Virtual and Augmented Reality
Virtual field trips have been thought of and implemented for several decades. For the most part, these field trips were delivered through desktop computers and often as interactive but strictly two-dimensional experiences. The advent of immersive technologies for both creating content and experiencing places in three dimensions provides ample opportunities to move beyond the restrictions of two dimensional media. We propose here a framework we developed to assess immersive learning experiences, specifically immersive virtual field trips (iVFTs). We detail the foundations and provide insights into associated empirical evaluations.
Care
Lorraine Dowler, Dana Cuomo, A. M. Ranjbar, Nicole Laliberte, Jenna Christian
Keywords in Radical Geography: Antipode at 50, First Edition
Edited by the Antipode Editorial Collective.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/9781119558071.ch6