[OSGeo Africa] FOSS GIS

[Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)]

On 6-Sep-07, at 12:58 PM, Frank Sokolic wrote:

> Here at the University of KwaZulu-Natal our students get a solid  
> grounding in commercial GIS and Remote Sensing software (e.g.  
> ArcGIS, Idrisi, Erdas) but I think that giving them some exposure  
> to open-source packages will be to their benefit. I think that many  
> of them aren't even aware of other GIS packages outside of those  
> they work with.

Hi Frank,
I believe it is important to show students products that are good  
replacements for the proprietary packages they are learning, but they  
only need one or two.  We all know there are dozens of great projects  
out there, but I would suggest sticking with some simple, basic,  
stuff that they can take home and get running.

Here are the ones I teach in student labs, when I have the  
opportunity, and that I wrote about in my book (Web Mapping  
Illustrated):
* GDAL/OGR command line tools (easy to get started using FWTools from  
maptools.org)
	* if students have learned ArcInfo workstation, then they should be  
comfortable learning some of these tools for data conversion,  
reprojection, analysis, reporting, etc.  These are irreplaceable for  
GIS users who need their own tools.
* MapServer
	* I start by teaching them the shp2img command line tool so they can  
just simply create a graphic image from a mapserver configuration  
file, while pointing to some simple shape file layers.  Use data from  
other projects they learned in their proprietary courses... and  
they'll see how much faster mapserver is at creating maps :)
	* shp2img is also included in fwtools
	* Then slowly introduce the web interface side by creating VERY  
simple CGI application.  Install MS4W from maptools.org for this  
one.  This gets them up and running with apache, without even  
thinking about it.
	* Teach them to then take their simple layer and serve it as WMS.   
If you want to teach web mapping *at all* I seriously believe you  
must not miss teaching WMS.  In many cases their proprietary packages  
will even be able to use it and these standards are just as important  
as open licensing in many cases.
* Some web mapping client
	* Once they have a WMS up and running, then give them Mapbender or  
MapBuilder or OpenLayers, etc. and hook up to it.  They can get some  
public WMS to give them great satellite imagery, but also put their  
own layer in there.  It will be exciting for them.
* PostGIS
	* I personally believe GIS folks need to learn Web concepts, but  
also databases in order to be the best they can be.   Import some  
data into PostGIS (again using ogr2ogr command line), add as layer to  
mapserver, run some simple analysis (i.e. SELECT buffer()...) to show  
some new layers in mapserver or a WMS layer.

* GRASS GIS or similar else...
	* The other programs above can be taught quickly, you'll need more  
time for GRASS GIS, but it will be the most equivalent program versus  
their other training.
* ossimPlanet
	* Bring in your WMS layer into the 3D globe and everyone will love  
it :)
* etc, etc, ...

It's still early in the morning for me, so forgive me for the  
braindump ;)   This is the general outline that I think is really  
useful.  It's also my opinion that teaching too many tools in a brief  
overview will only complicate things.  I suggest focusing on your  
favourites or the easiest to use so that they leave with the  
knowledge of something that will at least work.  If they don't like  
it or hit limitations they can find an alternate.

Best wishes on your teaching,
Tyler