[OSGeo Africa] FOSS GIS
Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo)
tmitchell at osgeo.org
Fri Sep 7 10:45:11 EDT 2007
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
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