[OSGeo Africa] Introduction to GIS & Remote Sensing short courses

[Gerhardus Geldenhuis]

Hi Gretha,
I don't think anyone missed the fact that you want to move to opensource
and frankly just the fact that you are willing and considering it is a
great win. However people in general are lazy and the reality of life is
that the first software they encounter for a specific task will likely be
their frame of reference for a long time to come. Not many people will
actually actively investigate and try out alternatives. I used envi at
university because that was what my lecturer used and even though I know
that there is alternatives I have not really spend the time looking at
them.

Some of the constraints you mentioned with regards to using opensource
software would be very valuable feedback to the developers of the software
and I am sure they would give attention to a well considered email
detailing ways of improving the software to make it easier to start off
with. I believe Tim Sutton lurks on the list and he is one of the key
people at QGIS and even within driving distance for a meetup from your
campus.

Presenting a short course on different types of software could actually be
something really useful. It would be great to get an unbiased academic
opinion on the merits of various types of software and what they offer.

Regards


On 12 August 2014 07:56, Gretha <gretha_g at sun.ac.za> <gretha_g at sun.ac.za>
wrote:

>  Hi,
>
> Can I just clarify?  I’m not sure why everybody missed the first bit, but
> I did say that we want to go Open Source, or at least include some sections
> in which we use open source software :)
>
> We as a tertiary education institution focus our courses on the basic
> theoretical principles of GIS and a generic understanding of what GIS is.
> We do not aim to teach students just how to use different types of
> software. These are not vendor generated courses focusing on teaching
> software skills. We do however demonstrate what is available in terms of
> different types of software, and I agree with the general opinion that we
> should incorporate that more on a practical level, which is why we want to
> add practical exercises done with open source software.
>
> There is also the practical problem that these are short courses, and we
> have limited time in which to teach the basic theoretical principles of
> GIS.  If we introduce to many types of software students end up spending
> most of the  practical time on familiarising themselves with the software
> instead of moving  on to the demonstration of concepts such as projection,
> the different data models, spatial query etc.
>
> Maybe we should think about introducing a short course focussing on an
> introduction to the different types of software available….
>
> Regards,
>
> Gretha
>
>
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-- 
Gerhardus Geldenhuis
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