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 online schools or home schools, who have not yet received a high school diploma or equivalent.
2. Entrants must reside and be in school in the State of California.
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 Junior High School students in gr.7-8 participate in the MS competition while the gr.9 participants are in the HS competition). A team of two students from different schools can submit an entry to one school only.
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), regardless of engaging in activities at more than 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. 1. Student entries must be from an ArcGIS School Bundle license’s ArcGIS Online Organization (not a “public account”, Developer license, Personal Use license, StoryMaps.com license, higher ed license, or other license). Any K12 school (public, non-public, or homeschool) or formal youth club can request for free an ArcGIS School Bundle (includes an ArcGIS Online Organization).
   2. Entries must be an ArcGIS StoryMap (must use a current template [standard or “Briefing”], not one of the “classic” templates), using an address of “storymaps.arcgis.com” (not “storymaps.com”), and be a single ArcGIS StoryMap (not a Collection, nor a story that launches other stories as integral parts of the project).
   3. Entries may focus on content within or beyond the state borders. Each entry should apply geographic thinking to tell a story, answer a question, or reflect on an issue.

III. Awards

1. 1. A panel of judges will choose as awardees up to 5 HS projects and up to 5 MS projects. Awardees will each receive a cash prize and a certificate.
   2. The top winners in each category are also invited to create and submit a video of up to 3 minutes (max of 180 seconds) for CGA to post along with the StoryMap. The videos should be in .mp4 format and 1080×720 (or higher) resolution. The videos will not be part of the judging process but will be a way for these winners to share more of their story to interested audiences across the state/country/globe. The deadline for the CGA to receive the videos (and required permission form) is June 6, 2025, 5pm Pacific Time. (See Part VI #3 for more.)
   3. The CGA will hold a webinar on Thu June 11, 2025, 5-6pm Pacific Time, celebrating the Competition. The webinar will be held live, and will be recorded. The winners at HS and MS level will be invited to participate in the webinar to talk and present live their StoryMap.
   4. Because it is impossible to foresee all circumstances, awards are subject to postponement, change, or elimination at the discretion of the CGA.
   5. This listing of awards should not be interpreted as constraining how individual teachers, schools, or states can celebrate their scholars who create entries. Indeed, there are so many positive benefits that can come from participation that we encourage such celebrations, especially for those who do not earn a state award.

IV. Design/Judging Criteria

1. Account: Entries must be from the ArcGIS Online Organization of an ArcGIS School Bundle license. This license can be 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 2025 (one year past the close of this event), ideally longer.
2. Login/Sharing: Entries must be shared with the public, 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 “current original work by the students,” conceived, created, and completed during the 2023-24 academic year by the student(s) submitting the entry. Class projects turned into an entry by one student, and teacher-directed projects, are not acceptable. Use of “generative artificial intelligence” is not permitted; basic spell-check and grammar-check tools are permitted. 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 as to source, and the integration, treatment, and presentation must be original. Entries must represent the students’ work from the current academic year, 2023-24. Incorporating data (layers or maps) from a previous year’s entry is permitted for historical reference, but the focus must be on current work that is substantively beyond the previous content, and the documentation must clarify what previously created content is being re-used; for instance, a student working on a project in Year1 might re-use some data in a somewhat similar project in Year3 but must expand substantively on the data, change the project focus, improve the analysis, and document what has been re-used.
4. Visual Supports: Because this is meant to be a “map-centric” exploration, analysis, and presentation of a geographic phenomenon, permission to use of “non-map visuals” (images and videos) is very limited. Exceeding the limits means a “progressive reduction in judged score.” The limits are:
   1. Total of no more than 60 seconds of video, which must be created by the project author (animated images count as a video; time-enabled map layers do not count as a video)
   2. Total of up to two images not created by the project author (e.g., 1 historic portrait photo plus 1 historic landscape photo)
   3. Total of up to five images created by the project author (replication of project maps as smaller/thumbnail images and items visible in popups within interactive maps do not count against these limits; icons used to help delineate organization within the entry do not count against these limits).
5. URLs: Entries must provide to the school/ state/ Esri three pieces of URL data: the URL prefix for the Org hosting the entry, and two links in “short form” (e.g. https://arcg.is/1a2b3c). ALWAYS test links in a “private/incognito” browser window before submitting. The three items needed are:
   1. The “Org URL prefix,” which is the set of characters between “https://” and “.maps.arcgis.com” distinguishing this Org from all other Orgs, for example, the “XYZ” in “https://XYZ.maps.arcgis.com.”
   2. A short URL of the StoryMap link going to the publicly visible ArcGIS StoryMap, i.e. leading to “https;//storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/{32_character_code}”. This can be generated by clicking the “Share” button at top right of the published ArcGIS StoryMap and choosing “Copy Link”.
   3. A short URL of the item details “Overview” page (metadata page) for the publicly visible storymap.
      1. User should log in and ensure the storymap is shared publicly
      2. In the URL bar, erase all text preceding the storymap’s 32-character code.
      3. In front of the 32-character code, paste the text shown here between the quote marks: “https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=”
      4. Click “Enter.” The window should show the metadata page, with a “public URL” format.
      5. Partway down the page, below the “ID: [32-character-code]”, click the “Share” button and a “ShortURL” window appears. Copy the short URL.
      6. (For more info on the item details page, see also https://doc.arcgis.com/en/arcgis-online/share-maps/link-to-items.htm)
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 at the state and school levels: “We look for a clear focus/topic/question/story, good and appropriate data, effective analysis, good cartography, thoughtful presentation, and complete documentation. The element by element analysis in the 2020 national results, and the 2021, 2022, and 2023 national winner entries present good examples of what is sought in a project.”
7. Project Tips:
   1. 1. Look at previous national winners and honorable mention projects, and the 2020 results. This is above all a “map competition.” Entries should address an identified issue/ puzzle/ challenge, not just document what’s where, but look 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 very sparingly; links to external content generally detracts in national judging. The project must emphasize student work, though using professionally generated GIS data is encouraged and does not detract from national scores. 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 more than half.
      2. Good projects 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 from 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 too little data 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. Long lists of unformatted attributes generally detract, especially if they include data with meaning and relevance not immediately clear.
      6. Document the project thoroughly. National winners, and the 2020 awardees highlighted for documentation, show good documentation: organized and thorough.
      7. See the “Project Design” section in the Resources page.

    

V. Personally Identifiable Information (PII)

1. 1. Schools should consider issues around exposing PII. See https://esriurl.com/agoorgsforschools for strategies to minimize use of PII in ArcGIS Online. Teachers and club leaders should help students minimize exposure of their own PII and that of others, including in map, image, and text.
   2. Entries submitted to the CGA for the competition must agree in advance to expose student names along with the school names, and school city/state (homeschool students would be identified to closest city/town name). A signed permission form from the families of  awardees will be required to have the names made publicly visible.

VI. Judging Criteria

This rubric will be utilized by the state competition judges:

Criteria	Points Possible
Topic is clearly identified, focuses on content within state borders	5
Overall presentation within the story map is effective in informing about topic	10
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
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; of the 20 “total data points possible,” 5 are reserved for rewarding the creation, documentation, and inclusion of one’s own data [0=none, 1=little/weak, 2=some/modest, 3=satisfactory, 4=much/good, 5=most/excellent] (so an otherwise ideal project that contained no user-generated data could receive at most 15 points)	20
Geographic analysis (classification, filtering, geoanalysis) is evident, appropriate, and effective; the “map product” is not “simply uniform dots/lines/areas on a map” nor “simply pictures”	20
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 so 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)	25
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).