ArcGIS Storymap Competition
For Delaware High School and Middle School Students
Each year the Delaware Department of Education (DDOE) encourages students to participate in an ArcGIS StoryMap competition. Delaware’s Geospatial Education community invites all high school and middle school students (whether onsite, online, or hybrid) to create and share stories that capture some aspect of life in Delaware.
The annual ArcGIS student contest is open to high school (High School “HS”, grade 9-12) and middle school (Middle School “MS,” grade 4-8) students who have learned to analyze, interpret, and present data via an ArcGIS storymap or web app.
The top five highest scoring storymaps at the middle school level and high school level will be awarded cash prizes. Past winner projects are available below.
Congratulations to the 2024 Winners
High School Winners
Chanel Beck – First Place
Brandywine High School
“The Delaware Indians”: The First People of the First State
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Natalie Lewis – Second Place
Caesar Rodney High School
Harriet Tubman’s Underground Railroad
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Levi Levine – Third Place
3 – High School – Brandywine HS
Horseshoe Crabs: Delaware’s Most Helpful Living Fossil
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Hudson Dooley – Fourth Place
Charter School of Wilmington
Understanding State Immigration and Refugees
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Caleb Comley and Alexander Bovell – Fifth Place
Charter School of Wilmington
Educational Attainment in Wilmington
Middle School Winners
Eric Lewis – First Place
Home School
The DuPont Family in Delaware
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Katia Smith – Second Place
Christiana Honors Academy
Seaside Wonders
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Natalia Smith – Third Place
Christiana Honors Academy
The Inside Scoop: The Ice Cream Shops of Delaware
Honorable Mentions
Parker Cuff – Honorable Mention
Cab Calloway School of the Arts
Where there is a need, there is a Lion
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Elliott Warburton & Rita Nyamikah – Honorable Mention
AI Dupont High School
Evolution of AI Dupont Feeder Pattern
Previous Winners
Details and Resources
Entries
Entering the contest
All entries will be judged by GIS professionals in the State of Delaware based on the rubric below. To qualify for judging, all entries must be submitted by the posted deadline. Participants must also complete a permission form.
Entries must
- Be an original work by students that is conceived, created, and completed entirely by the student(s) submitting the entry.
- Focus on something about Delaware. Map submissions can talk about Delaware’s history, education, transportation, civics, famous people, funny stories, or more. All topics are possible.
- Be in the form of an ArcGIS StoryMap.
- Be visible without requiring a login.
- Be a “map-centric” exploration, analysis, and presentation of a geographic phenomenon. The use of “non-map visuals” (images and videos) should be limited. Exceeding the limits means a “progressive reduction in judged score”. The limits are:
- total of up to 60 seconds of video, and
- total of up to two images not created by the project author (e.g., 1 historic portrait photo plus 1 historic landscape photo), and
- total of 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 image limits).
- Provide “short URL” format (e.g. “http://arcg.is/1A2b3xyz”)
- Provide a link to the Item Details page.
Privacy considerations
Schools should consider issues around exposing Personally Identifiable Information (PII). See ArcGIS Online Organizations for Schools & Clubs 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.
Student Eligibility
- 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.
- Entrants must reside in the state of Delaware or be attending a Delaware based school.
- Students can work alone or in a team of two but can participate in only one submitted entry. Teams with one student in middle school (grades 4-8) and one in high school (grades 9-12) must be considered as a high school team. Student teams of two from different schools will be counted according to the school of the first student listed.
- 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).
Eligibility
- 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.
- Entrants must reside in the state of Delaware or be attending a Delaware based school.
- Students can work alone or in a team of two, but can participate in only one submitted entry. Teams with one student in middle school (grades 4-8) and one in high school (grades 9-12) must be considered as a high school team. Student teams of two from different schools will be counted according to the school of the first student listed.
- 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).
- Any school or home school program can submit to the state a maximum of five (5) entries total.
Prizes
The top 5 entries in each level (Middle School and High School) will be awarded a cash prize of $100.
Judging Criteria
Submissions will be judged on the clarity in which the chosen topic is presented, the use of good and appropriate data, effective analysis, good cartography, effective presentation, and complete documentation.
Rubric for state-level judging (based on the 100pt national rubric):
- The topic is clearly identified, meets [nation’s/state’s] criteria, focuses on content within state borders (5 pts)
- Overall presentation within the app or story map is effective in informing about the topic (10 pts)
- 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 (20 pts)
- 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 (25 pts)
- 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” (25 pts)
- 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) (15 pts)
Tips
Choosing a Topic: 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.
Getting Started:
Project Presentation Tips
- 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 easily consumable. These popups can include formatted text, key links, images, data presented in charts, and so forth.
- Document the project thoroughly. Previous awardees highlighted for documentation, and preceding national winners, show good documentation – organized and thorough.
Delaware State Leadership Team
Mary Schorse
Delaware Center for Geographic Education
Email Mary Schorse
Visit the GeoEducation hub site for more information and resources.
For more information or additional support, please contact maps@doe.k12.de.us