[OSGeo-Edu] Educational resources page created

[Ari Jolma]

Tyler Mitchell kirjoitti:
>> I created http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Educational_Resources 
> Ari,
> Great!  I see you've done a good description of the content sections, but is there a way you'd like to see links to content added to the page?  Could you maybe put up one entry as a template for us to follow?
>   

ok, I added two entries, how about them? I.e. a simple list entry of format:

<type of material>: link <short description>; <who added entry>

the description and who added are not needed if the link is to a page in 
the wiki.

Frank Warmerdam kirjoitti:
>
> I am very hopeful that this group will produce one or more fairly
> complete "course kits" suitable for undergraduate courses taught using
> open source geospatial software.  I think the place to start is something
> along the lines of "Introduction to GIS", and add others as manpower and
> need dictates.
>
> I think these "kits" should include pretty much everything a course 
> instructor
> would need.  That means:
>  o A course outline.
>  o Detailed topics for each lecture (perhaps in the form of something 
> like a
>    powerpoint stack).
>  o A set of lab assignments with detailed instructions to the students.
>  o Pre-prepared datasets.
>  o Pre-prepared software binaries for either Windows or Linux (or both),
>    hopefully derived from some existing packaging effort (like MS4W,
>    GRASS binaries, FGS, etc).  You might need to provide some prodding an
>    support to one of these efforts.
>  o Ideally one or more "open source" textbooks would be available, though
>    I'm not sure how practical this would be.  Is there a freely 
> downloadable
>    version of the GRASS textbook?

I expanded the scope of the resources page along these lines, but 
immediately got into a trouble with how to say what we want. Because if 
we broaden the subject to courses, whose subject is specifically not 
free software or data, then we are in the terrain of generic education 
in geosciences. And that terrain is very large. The wording on the page 
is now "mostly interested" (in free software..). Maybe this is just 
academic hair-splitting.

That said, I like the idea of writing down course outlines and linking 
lecture slides and assignments, which use free software and hopefully 
free data.

I have a problem with "GIS" courses (which must be funny considering my 
current job), because, although geospatial software is fun to develop 
and play with, it should be in the focus only in software development 
courses. In an introduction to GIS course, I would teach principles of 
databases, computer graphics and information technology architectures in 
general; basic cartography and geodesy; some remote sensing; and 
geospatial problem solving with information systems. I'm quite skeptic 
about very stream-lined and hand-holding assignments, since I think that 
the first thing people should learn about computers and software is that 
you *always* have to explore and try and solve unstructured problems 
etc. Maybe I'm just wrong.


>
> I think that support use of, and work on open source geospatial 
> software in
> academic research is also a very worthy goal of this group, but I'll 
> let Ari
> do some of the pushing on what would be needed for that.

Perhaps I'm trying to avoid work, but I'm just thinking that we'll 
collect lists and links to relevant research projects and push our own 
work. :)

Ari

ps: I started a page for the intro course: 
http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Introduction_to_GIS

-- 
Prof. Ari Jolma
Kartografia ja Geoinformatiikka / Cartography and Geoinformatics
Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
POBox 1200, 02015 TKK, Finland
Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://www.tkk.fi/~jolma