[OSGeo-Discuss] [Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program

[Suchith Anand]

Yes, we are making use of all opportunities to promote GeoForAll ideas and i don't think any properitery vendor can stop  GeoMentors from promoting GeoForAll ideas on the sidelines :-)  or stopping students from using GIS Day to promote GeoForAll [even though that was not at all  the properitery vendor's original intention].

So we welcome all efforts from everyone in prompting geoeducation opportunities for all :-)

Best wishes,

Suchith



________________________________________
From: GeoForAll <geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Massimiliano Cannata <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>
Sent: 29 October 2016 7:15 AM
To: Nikos Lambrinos
Cc: OsGeo, GeoForAll
Subject: Re: [Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program

Thanks Nicos for the arguments you put in the table.
A provocative question... Why a teacher using a web application to teach and produce a map should care if the server use open source or not?

More, esri pushing geospatial need and industry is working also for us ;-)

Maxi

Il 29 ott 2016 12:28 AM, <labrinos at eled.auth.gr<mailto:labrinos at eled.auth.gr>> ha scritto:

Dear all,

I follow your emails these days and I can see two things: a) enthusiasm and b) anger.
The first is good the second is bad. Both are reasonable. They are generated from a kind of an undeclared war between proprietary and FOS Software.
I have the feeling that many of us feel ready to declare war against proprietary software but ... don't do it. We need it. Propriery software makes us priceless. We do need something to compare with.
Someone wrote that ESRI has a lot of people working on GIS and education. So do we.
The problem lies on how we are organized. ESRI looks better organized than we are. They are focused and they know where to strike first and how. We don't.
Take a look at the emails. Each one is talking either about middle or high school and (in my turn) I would talk about primary school. Each level has its own needs.
What do we want from the teachers and from their students? It isn't enough to show them how to use GIS. We have to convince them that they need GIS. This is what ESRI is doing. In order to do so we have to show them a very simple way to use it. ESRI gives free licenses, we give free software. So, we give more.
Teachers and especially students love to show the results of their work. If they have to take many courses and 10s of teaching hours (no matter if it is webinars or f2f courses) then many of them may get disappointed or consider GIS difficult to begin with. Because they don't get quick results (for example a newly constructed map).
In my opinion, we have to begin building a real global network with schools of any level of education. This is something I had proposed few months ago but I got almost no answer. We can do that the same way that GeoForAll was built. With patience and vision.
I am almost 23 years talking about GIS in school teachers (starting back in 1994) and I think that the difference was made since the beginning of web mapping. This is because they can see their efforts go public. Everyone loves publicity. It will be easier to go from the very simple keystrokes of web mapping to more complicated procedures (teachers don't like much georeferrencing systems etc) of GIS.
Who thinks that we can start with these two thngs? a) forming a well organized global school network and b) web mapping as a starter?
We have to have system and patience.

Best wishes
Nikos




--
Δρ. Νίκος Λαμπρινός
Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής
Τμήμα Δημοτικής Εκπαίδευσης
Α.Π.Θ. 54124 Θεσσαλονίκη
Τηλ.: 2310 991201 / 991230
Email: labrinos at eled.auth.gr<mailto:labrinos at eled.auth.gr>
Web Page:       http://users.auth.gr/labrinos/
                http://www.digital-earth.edu.gr/
                https://www.auth.gr/univUnits

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Nikos Lambrinos
Associate Professor
Faculty of Education
School of Primary Education
Dept. of Science and New Technologies
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
GR-54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Tel: +30 2310 991201
Email: labrinos at eled.auth.gr<mailto:labrinos at eled.auth.gr>
Web Page:       http://users.auth.gr/labrinos/
                http://www.digital-earth.edu.gr/
                https://www.auth.gr/en/univUnits

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