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Happy Holidays from the Education and Research Group

With 2014 coming to an end, we've compiled the latest ArcGIS updates for you, as well as a few festive Web apps to get you ready for the holidays. We hope you will continue following us in 2015.

2014 is almost over and we want to take this opportunity to thank our followers for their support and encouragement. We’ve been happily blogging for a year and three months now! December brings us updates and new releases for ArcGIS. Find out what's new.

ArcGIS Online

ArcGIS Online’s updates include some exciting new features and enhancements. This update includes a new scene viewer (in beta), new analysis capabilities, new Web app templates, a new basemap and more. Below are some highlights from the ArcGIS Online updates for December 2014.

  • Scene Viewer (in beta)
    ArcGIS Online introduces a 3D scene viewer that lets you view and explore 3D scenes. The scene viewer provides a variety of tools for orientation, navigation, search and toggling between basemaps and layers. The scene viewer works in desktop Web browsers including Chrome and Firefox.

  • Calculate a Field
    You can now validate an expression when calculating a field.

  • Story Maps
    Story Map Series (in beta) is a new configurable Web app template that incorporates several different layout options; tabbed side accordion and bulleted. View this tutorial to learn how to use these new story map templates.

  • New Basemap
    A new dark grey canvas basemap has been added to the basemap gallery. The basemap's dim, subdued background is useful for emphasizing content in maps and apps.

For the full list of what's new in ArcGIS Online, check out this blog post.

ArcGIS 10.3

Discover what's new with the recent major release of ArcGIS and the systems requirements required to run the latest software.

In the New Year, we look forward to sharing more GIS in the Classroom and Scholarship Recipient stories with our readers to inspire educators to use GIS in their teaching. We’ll continue creating curriculum-focused resources for ArcGIS and sharing important dates about our outreach events.

The Education and Research Group from left to right: Krista Amolins, Cameron Plouffe, Ashleigh Harris, Angela Alexander, Jean Tong, Dr. Brent Hall, Caroline Tiegs and Iain Greensmith.

For the upcoming holidays, we have listed some festive Web applications on ArcGIS Online. We hope they’ll get you into a celebratory mood and maybe they’ll even motivate you to create your own story map.

Happy Holidays from the Education and Research Group.

About the Author

Angela Alexander is a K-12 Education Specialist in the Esri Canada Education and Research group. She has over 15 years of experience working with educators across Canada. Angela focuses on producing geographic information system (GIS) and curriculum-specific resources, and conducting and creating custom workshops for educators. She manages the GIS Ambassador Program and is the Technical Chair for the annual Skills Ontario GIS competition. Angela also writes monthly posts for the Esri Canada Education and Research blog, highlighting K-12 educators and partners, new ArcGIS resources and GIS-related events.

Profile Photo of Angela Alexander