Skip to content
Education & Academia

Teach GIS in a browser tab

Teaching GIS and spatial thinking means getting thirty students mapping real data on day one, not waiting two weeks for a lab to license and install a desktop seat. Smart Site Plan runs in the browser on whatever laptop, Chromebook, or phone a student already owns, so the whole class opens the same map, queries real public datasets, and turns in spatial deliverables without IT ever touching a machine.

Start free Talk to sales
GIS / geography instructorLab teaching assistantUndergraduate studentField course leader
Asheville, NC
A campus tree inventory: tagged trees, survey plots, and walking transects collected by student teams, in the Layers panel

Real Education work over Asheville, NC, captured in the product

The old way

The course stalls in week one while the lab images workstations, chases license seats, and triages installs on student laptops that will not run a heavyweight desktop package. Students who miss the lab session lose access to their work, group projects live in emailed files that drift out of sync, and a field course means renting handheld units nobody knows how to operate.

With Smart Site Plan

Teach spatial thinking with zero install, on any laptop

The data, already on the map

Drawn from 20 million open datasets, one click each. No agency portal hunting, no format wrangling.

Census TIGER boundaries and demographics U.S. Census Bureau Land use and land cover USGS / MRLC NHD hydrography USGS NFHL flood zones FEMA NWI wetlands US Fish & Wildlife Soils survey (SSURGO) USDA NRCS Aerial imagery USDA NAIP

Workflows

How Education work gets done

End to end, in the browser, on one map.

1

Week-one intro lab: mapping your county

  1. 1. Open Data

    Each student adds Census TIGER boundaries, land cover, and NHD hydrography for their assigned county scoped to the view.

  2. 2. Smart Query

    Filter census tracts above a population-density threshold with no-code attribute rules and unit-aware area math.

  3. 3. Style

    Apply a data-driven color ramp and labels to turn the query result into a clear thematic map.

  4. 4. Export

    Export the finished map as an HD PDF sheet (Personal and up) to submit as the lab deliverable.

2

Field methods course: watershed survey

  1. 1. Forms

    Build a custom observation form for the class so every student records site type, condition, and notes the same way.

  2. 2. GPS

    Students track their route and drop observation points on a phone while walking the watershed offline.

  3. 3. Photos

    Pin geotagged photos of each sample site to its exact coordinate for the field record.

  4. 4. Collaborate

    Back in the lab, the whole class sees every student's points on one shared map.

  5. 5. Share

    Send a live share link so the field data is open in the next class session.

3

Group GIS project to final presentation

  1. 1. Import

    A group imports a Shapefile or CSV dataset for their project topic, reprojected to a common frame on import.

  2. 2. Smart Query

    Advanced students go deeper in Smart Query, stacking AND and OR groups to filter, combine conditions, and summarize the project data by attribute.

  3. 3. Collaborate

    Group members, invited to the project on Team, edit the same map together with live sync.

  4. 4. Share

    Present the live, interactive map to the class through a share link.

What you can do

Start the whole class on real data in the first lab

Students open a browser, search 20M+ public datasets, and add Census TIGER demographics, land cover, or FEMA flood zones to the map scoped to the study area for the assignment, no install and no per-seat license to open a map. The first lab is mapping a real watershed or census tract instead of fighting an installer, so the course teaches geography, not software setup.

Teach analysis from simple filters to layered Smart Query logic

Beginners build a single attribute filter with no-code Smart Query and unit-aware area math to answer questions like which census tracts exceed a density threshold, then advanced students go deeper in the same builder, stacking AND and OR groups with several constraints at once and unit-aware area thresholds to summarize by attribute. One platform carries a class from an intro spatial-thinking exercise to a query-driven analysis assignment without a second tool to learn.

Run field courses on the phones students already carry

A field methods course collects observations on any phone with live GPS tracks, custom data-collection forms filled offline in a forest or floodplain, and geotagged photos pinned to exact coordinates. Drafts submit on reconnect, so a class can fan out across a watershed with no signal and no rented hardware, then see every student's points on one shared map back in the lab.

Grade and showcase student deliverables

Each student or group exports the finished map for the turn-in: Personal exports GeoJSON and HD PDF sheets, and Pro writes GeoJSON, CSV, KML, Shapefile, GPX, DXF, SVG and GeoPackage plus GeoTIFF. A share link lets a student present a live, interactive map to the class or a poster session, with nothing for viewers to install.

The capabilities Education teams lean on

Real datasets, day one

Census TIGER, land cover, FEMA flood zones, and NHD hydrography drop onto the map, so students learn on real public data, not a sanitized textbook sample.

Smart Query, beginner to advanced

Smart Query teaches analysis with no syntax, and the same builder goes deeper for advanced students with stacked AND and OR groups and multiple constraints at once, scaling one tool across a whole curriculum.

Field courses on any phone

GPS, offline forms, and geotagged photos turn every student's own phone into the field-collection device, so a methods course needs no rented handheld units.

Group work on one map

Live sync lets a group build one map together, and a share link puts the result in front of the class. Inviting project members is on Team.

In practice

An urban-heat lab without a single install

An instructor teaching an undergraduate intro GIS course in Tucson opens a lab on urban heat and land cover with thirty students on mixed laptops and Chromebooks, none of them installing a thing. Each student adds NLCD land cover and Census demographics for an assigned Pima County, Arizona, tract scoped to the view, runs a Smart Query to find which block groups pair the least tree canopy with the lowest median income, and styles a thematic map. By the end of the session every student has exported an HD PDF map sheet and posted a live share link.

What changes

  • The class starts mapping real data in week one instead of waiting on installs and license seats
  • Every student works from their own laptop, Chromebook, or phone with nothing to install
  • Field courses run on students' own phones, with no rented handheld units
  • Analysis assignments scale from a first Smart Query filter to layered AND and OR logic without a second tool
  • Students present and submit live, interactive maps anyone can open in a browser

Education, answered

No. The platform runs entirely in the browser, so students open a map on any laptop, Chromebook, or phone with no install, and there is no per-seat tax just to view and explore a map. The lab does not need to image workstations or chase license activations.

More in Public & knowledge

Government & Municipal Public Safety & Emergency Management Research & Science

Bring Education work onto one map

Start free and see your own Education data on it in minutes: pull the datasets, run the workflow, and ship the deliverable, all in the browser.

Start free Try it, no account

Or skip the tour. Type any address.

Opens the live map at that exact spot. No account, no install.