2021 ArcGIS Competition

Esri challenges US students to conduct and share projects
about something in their home state of New Mexico. 
​
2021 ArcGIS Competition is open to U.S. students
in high school and middle school
who can analyze, interpret, and present data
​via an ArcGIS StoryMap or web app.

Eligibility - Students in public or nonpublic school (including home schools)

• Students in high school grades 9-12
• Students in middle school grades 4-8

Students working independently or in clubs submit through their schools. 
Schools may submit up to five entries total to New Mexico State Leadership Team -
​Community Learning Network.

Prizes - 
$100 for up to five best High School and five best Middle School projects in New Mexico.
New Mexico will submit to Esri up to ten awardees (up to 5 HS, up to 5 MS),
​with one project each at HS and MS tagged for a final level of competition.
Pending pandemic restrictions, one HS project and one MS project may each earn a trip to the 2021 Esri Education Conference in San Diego, CA.

New Mexico Contest Dates - 

• Deadline for School registration: Monday, March 15, 2021
• Deadline for Team Submissions: April 28, 2021
  (details will be provided after the registration deadline)
• New Mexico State Awardees will be announced the week of May 10, 2020
• New Mexico State Awards Online Event - Date to be announced
  ​

Hot Links -

• Quick Info about the Competition
• Full Details for 2021 Contest
• Explore ArcGIS Online! 
• Check out what kids have done! - Results from 2020/19/18/17
• Current info about Esri's Schools Program (including how to request software)

Agencies, Organizations, Businesses, and Professionals
Invited to Participate as Mentors, Speakers, and Sponsors
Contact us to get involved!

Does your school or community site already have ArcGIS software bundle?
Check the ArcGIS storymap to see if your school appears...​

New Mexico State Leadership Team Contact - 
For more information and/or questions email us: info@teachingwithgis.com

Please complete this 2021 ArcGIS Competition Entry Form (click here)

2021 ArcGIS Competition in New Mexico
​Sponsors and Supporters:

2020-21 Contest Details

Elements below:
I. Eligibility
II. Entries
III. Awards
IV. State Registration, Mentoring, and Judging
V. Design/Judging Criteria
VI. Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

​
I. Eligibility

1. Entrants must be pre-collegiate students, registered in grades 4-12 at the time of project submission, from public schools or non-public schools including home schools, who have not yet received a high school diploma or equivalent.
2. Entrants must reside and be in school in the United States, including districts or territories, or attending a Department of Defense Education Association school: 50 states, District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, US Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and DODEA sites. (Thus, "state" in this document means one of these 57 units.)
3. Students can work singly or in a team of two, but can participate in only one entry. Teams with one student in middle school (gr.4-8) and one in high school (gr.9-12) must be considered as high school. Entry level is determined by student's grade (MS= gr.4-8, HS= gr.9-12), not by school name (e.g Lincoln High School students in gr.7-8 participate in the MS competition). Student teams of two from different schools will be counted according to the school of the first student listed.
4. Entrants may work on the challenge through a school, a club, an "educational pod," or independently, but entries must be submitted to the state from their primary school of record (a recognized school or home school), in case of engaging in activities at more that one location.
5. Any school or home school program can submit to the state a maximum of five (5) entries total, counting the sum of middle school and high school entries.

II. Entries

1. Entry forms (student/s to school, school to state, state to Esri) will be made available to state leads in January 2021.
2. Entries must be from an ArcGIS Online 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 in the form of a ArcGIS StoryMap ("new" template), or a Classic Story Map (any of the "classic" templates), or an ArcGIS web app (via template or builder).
4. Entries must focus on content within the state borders. States may choose to refine the focus further, but the geographic scope of the project must be within the state. 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.
5. Schools must announce their own internal deadlines, in time to complete judging and provide information to the state by its deadline. States must announce their in-state deadlines, but can be no later than 5pm Pacific Time on Wed May 12, 2021. States must submit data to Esri no later than 5pm Pacific Time on Wed May 19, 2021.

III. Awards

1. Esri will announce its awards decision by 5pm Pacific Time on Tue June 1, 2021
2. If circumstances permit holding the 2021 Esri Education Summit as a physical public event, and if circumstances permit national awardees attending, Esri will provide a travel grant to one HS team and one MS 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 10, and staying through at least 4pmPT Tue July 13, 2021. 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 Mon, and may have additional attention.
3. Because only 1HS+1MS nominees from a state will be considered for the final national competition, in determining nominees for the national competition, states may consider, to the degree practical, the willingness and ability of awardees to attend in person the EdUC.
4. Because it is impossible to foresee all circumstances, awards are subject to change or elimination.

IV. State Registration, Mentoring, and Judging

1. States may determine but must announce in advance if they will require any form of "pre-registration" by schools as potential participants, and any cutoff date. Any such exclusive operation must be clearly announced and applied equitably.
2. States are encouraged to establish an "Early Mentoring" option. In this scenario, states set an "Early Mentoring" deadline, recommended as no later than Fri March 19, 2021. Entries submitted to the state leadership group by the state deadline would go to state mentors for review and comment (but not scoring), so students might benefit from learned guidance. States would be responsible for constructing and implementing their own submission/ comment/ return process, ensuring adequate opportunity for mentors to review and respond, and students to consider and revise. Any such process should require "transparency," to foster good instruction and prevent inappropriate communication; only a student's parent/ guardian/ teacher/ leader should be communicating with the student; all other communication should be between adults. In considering this model, states are encouraged to seek early commitments from many mentors.
3. States using an "Early Mentoring" process may determine but must announce clearly in advance if entries must have gone through the formal "Early Mentoring" process to be accepted for final state judging, and must apply the policy equitably.

V. Design/Judging Criteria

1. Account: Entries must be from an ArcGIS Online 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. The entry must be able to remain visible publicly without login through at least June 2022 (one year past the close of this event), ideally longer.
2. Login: Entries must be visible without requiring a login. Entries engaging "premium data" (login required, such as premium content from Living Atlas) must set the display to permit access without needing a login. See helpful note.
3. Originality: Entries must be "original work by students," conceived, created, and completed entirely by the student(s) submitting the entry. Class projects turned into an entry by one student, and teacher-directed projects, are not acceptable. Projects may use data generated by outside persons or institutions, within guidelines of "fair use." (Students are encouraged to use appropriate professionally generated GIS data, but these must be documented, and the integration, treatment, and presentation must be original.)
4. Visual Supports: Because this is meant to be a "map-centric" exploration, analysis, and presentation of a geographic phenomenon, use of "non-map visuals" (images and videos) is limited. Exceeding the limits means a "progressive reduction in judged score." The limits are:
   1. total up to 60 seconds of video, and
   2. total up to two images not created by the project author (e.g. 1 historic portrait photo plus 1 historic landscape photo), and
   3. total up to five images created by the project author (replication of project maps as smaller/thumbnail images, and items visible as popups within interactive maps, do not count against these limits).
5. Short URL: Entries must provide to the school/ state/ Esri two links in "short URL" format
   (e.g. "https;//arcg.is/1A2b3xyz"), where
   1. one link goes to the primary display page (the app or storymap), and
   2. one link goes to the item details page (the metadata page for the app or storymap). (A link to the item details page of a shared app will require a login if the Org does not permit anonymous accessand the link uses the form "<my_org>.maps.arcgis.com/etc;" to avoid this, change the link to the form "www.arcgis.com/etc" before creating a short URL. Ad hoc short URLs can be generated at http://bitly.com.)
6. Scoring: The state can vary this, and even use different systems for HS and MS, but must apply the same system to all entries in a single grade band, and the system must be clarified for the entrants at the start. The national competition will use this system, and recommends it or something similar: 
   "We look for a clear focus/topic/question/story, good and appropriate data, effective analysis, good cartography, effective presentation, and complete documentation. The element by element analysis in the 2020 national results presents good examples of what is sought in a project."
7. Project Tips:
   1. Look at previous national winners and honorable mention projects, and especially the 2020 results.This is a "map competition." Entries should address an identified issue/ puzzle/ challenge, not just documenting what's where, but looking at "why it's there, and so what." 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; outside content generally detracts in national judging. The project must 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 amount of time a viewer would spend consuming the entire project; map-based time and attention should be at least two thirds.
   2. 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.)
   3. 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.
   4. 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.
   5. 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 easily consumable. These popups can include formatted text, key links, images, data presented in charts, and so forth.
   6. Document the project thoroughly. The 2020 awardees highlighted for documentation, and preceding national winners, show good documentation: organized and thorough.

VI. Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

1. Schools should consider issues around exposing PII. See https://esriurl.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. States must help potential entrants understand the level of PII required. Entries submitted to Esri for the top national prize (i.e. 1-HS and 1-MS) 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 does not seek, collect, or accept student names for any entrants other than the national prize entrants (1-HS and 1-MS per state). These and only these will have names exposed by Esri.

For more information and/or questions: infor@teachingwithgis.com