[OSGeo-Discuss] [OSGeo-Edu] Maps and the Geospatial Revolution from Jul 17th 2013 at Coursera

Sun Sep 8 12:16:51 PDT 2013

Sorry Anthony, OSGeo edu folks - my bad. That email from Suchith was held
up in the Mailman system and it was posted last week. I just approved the
post without noticing that it was mentioning the telemeeting that took
place a few days ago.

In short, there IS NOT a telemeeting tomorrow.

Charlie Schweik

On Wed, Sep 4, 2013 at 6:18 AM, Suchith Anand <
Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi Anthony,****
>
> ** **
>
> It was good to meet you briefly at ICC 2013 in Dresden last week  and i
> hope i was able to provide basic information on ELOGeo and ICA-OSGeo Lab
> education initiatives. ****
>
> ** **
>
> It will be very helpful, if you can share your ideas and experiences to
> OSGeo Edu community so we can think of ideas for MOOC program entirely
> using OSGeo Software for the future. We also have an rapidly expanding
> ICA-OSGeo Lab Network. Details at
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Edu_current_initiatives     (we are now
> working to setup a new portal)  and we hope you join the lab network.****
>
> ** **
>
> We have monthly telemeetings which are open to all interested and  you are
> welcome to join. For example, our next telemeeting is tomorrow at 18:00
> UTC. Agenda at
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/ICA_OSGeo_Lab_Network_2013-09-05  ****
>
> ** **
>
> We look forward to work with you on the education initiatives.****
>
> ** **
>
> Best wishes,****
>
> ** **
>
> Suchith****
>
> ** **
>
> ** **
>
> *From:* discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:
> discuss-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] *On Behalf Of *Cameron Shorter
> *Sent:* 29 June 2013 23:23
> *To:* Anthony C Robinson
> *Cc:* 'OSGeo Discussions'; edu_discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> *Subject:* Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Maps and the Geospatial Revolution from
> Jul 17th 2013 at Coursera****
>
> ** **
>
> Hello Anthony and others in the OSGeo Education space.
>
> Anthony,
> It seems your email is not getting through to our email lists, which is
> probably because you are not subscribed. I suggest doing so here:
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/edu_discuss
>
> All,
> See Anthony's response below.
> This email thread was started on the OSGeo Discuss list, but please
> continue on the edu-discuss list. In responding to this email, please drop
> the discuss at lists.osgeo.org in response (and subscribe to the edu-discuss
> if you wish to follow along).
>
> Anthony,
> There have been quite a bit of discussion on our edu-discuss list about
> MOOCs, and so your course and what you have learned so far is very relevant
> to all of us.
>
> The part of MOOC development which personally interests me (extending from
> my involvement in OSGeo-Live) is how to develop a process for maintaining
> and extending MOOC courses. In particular, from within the 30,000 students
> attending your course, there is likely to be many with excellent ideas for
> improvements. How do you capture such ideas, and at the same time retain
> the single focus and simplicity core to good educational material? How do
> you ensure that your material is updated whenever software is updated? How
> can your training material be retasked for a different audience (eg for
> primary school students)? Then once you have multiple courses all based
> upon the same core material, how do you ensure they all get updated
> together?
>
> These are questions we have working on when generating documentation for
> OSGeo-Live, which I've described here:
>
> http://cameronshorter.blogspot.com.au/2011/06/memoirs-of-cat-herder-coordinating.html
>
> With regards to some of your other points, I'll be interested to hear
> responses from the Educators within the OSGeo community. (I'm better
> described as a Software Developer, Technical Writer and Coordinator).
>
> On 30/06/13 03:20, ANTHONY C ROBINSON wrote:****
>
> Hi Cameron,****
>
>  ****
>
> I really appreciate you touching base with me about this and sharing your
> discussions on my MOOC. ****
>
>  ****
>
> I hadn’t yet seen the OSGeo-Live site or packages – this is great to know
> about and I will change my instructions in the class to point to these
> resources instead of the piece-by-piece approach I’d been taking with
> respect to highlighting various open source geo-efforts. While students in
> the class will use ArcGIS Online for 4 of the 5 lab assignments, for the
> final lab assignment I have created a tiered-approach with multiple options
> to hopefully encourage some of the most eager/tech savvy students to try
> out platforms like QGIS, GRASS, etc… ****
>
>  ****
>
> I’m aware of some OS community angst about my selection of AGOL for doing
> most of the labs in the course. I’ve worked for 10 years in the GeoVISTA
> Center, a GIScience research center that has been very active in developing
> open source systems for geovisualization and geocomputation. In addition, I
> lead Online Geospatial Education programs at Penn State, which to my
> knowledge represent the only Geography programs that provide Open
> Educational Resources for nearly all of its online courses (
> open.ems.psu.edu). So the clear value and innovation associated with all
> things open is not lost on me, and I recognize that there are some
> important considerations to be had with having MOOC students use a
> commercial platform. I won’t answer all of them here ( and I would never
> claim to be an infallible decision maker), but it may be helpful to
> understand some of the motivation for this course and its design:****
>
>  ****
>
> **·         **The class is designed for people who may use maps but have
> never made their own. It is not designed to teach GIS pros/academics
> something new. It’s designed to encourage new geospatial people to emerge;
> to rethink maps and what they can do.****
>
> **·         **It is not designed to train people to use GIS software. The
> focus is on understanding the most basic things about Geography and
> Mapping. It functions much like a 1 credit zero-level class that we might
> teach here on campus.****
>
> **·         **A MOOC on Coursera typically reaches at least 30,000 people
> in its first run (mine will be no exception) and includes 60-75% of its
> students from outside the United States.****
>
> **·         **I chose a mapping platform that my Grandpa could
> realistically use (he’s signed up for the class) in the first week of the
> class, and that would not require anything to be downloaded.****
>
> **·         **Esri is providing technical support in the course forums to
> ensure that nothing blows up and that problems are very quickly remedied.
> No money is associated at all with this relationship, and I approached them
> first because my former boss, David DiBiase, directs their education team
> and I knew he would understand what I did and did not want in terms of a
> partnership. I know they get a bad rap quite often (frequently for good
> reason) but I have to say that every part of this cooperation has been on
> my terms and excellent.****
>
>  ****
>
> There are absolutely great ways to re-imagine this type of course with
> purely open source stuff driving lab assignments. Nothing would make me
> happier than to see the OsGeo community develop a second version of this
> class with different ways to complete the labs. I think that would be
> awesome. If I can be useful toward that end, please let me know.****
>
>  ****
>
> I’m very interested in any advice folks can give me about the best ways to
> share the content I’ve developed for this course. Coursera doesn’t make it
> easy for me to export the whole thing into a reusable package. We use
> Drupal here in our PSU programs to provide content, so my thought is to try
> and convert everything to that CMS and provide it in that manner. Others
> have suggested using GitHub, but I want to avoid simply uploading a pile of
> PDFs and Videos and assuming that that would be “good enough.” Everything
> in the class will be offered under a CC non-commercial license at any rate
> – like our other open courseware at PSU.****
>
>  ****
>
> I also can’t imagine that there would only ever be one MOOC on Mapping.
> That’s crazy. There ought to be just as many as we see now for various
> CompSci and Engineering topics. I’m very excited to share everything I
> learn from this experience, comparing it to how we develop other online
> courses (we offer ~25 here and I have 5 years of teaching geospatial stuff
> online), and considering the meaning of “open” when it comes to such
> things. I would agree with many critics that MOOCs themselves are not
> necessarily as “open” as they perhaps should be. Most of the big platforms
> (Coursera included) are trying to figure out a revenue stream from this
> stuff, for example, and as I’ve mentioned they definitely don’t make it
> easy to repurpose things elsewhere.****
>
>  ****
>
> The class is 99% ready to go and opens on July 17th. I would be very
> happy to hear any and all feedback (including, if you think its warranted,
> that I am a colossal idiot) once it’s launched. Each week for five weeks a
> new lesson will roll out, with video lectures, lots of written/graphical
> content, lab assignments, and discussions on things like geospatial
> privacy, the impact of social media on mapping, etc… At the bare minimum it
> is very exciting to imagine what tens of thousands of people will do when
> they make their first maps.****
>
>  ****
>
> TL:DR – I’ll definitely point to the live.osgeo resources and making a
> MOOC is complicated but I am very eager to share what I learn. :)****
>
>  ****
>
> Cheers,****
>
>  ****
>
> -Anthony****
>
>  ****
>
>  ****
>
> Anthony C. Robinson, PhD****
>
> Lead Faculty for Online Geospatial Education, John A. Dutton e-Education
> Institute****
>
> Assistant Director, GeoVISTA Center****
>
> Department of Geography****
>
> The Pennsylvania State University****
>
> www.personal.psu.edu/acr181/****
>
>  ****
>
>  ****
>
> *From:* Cameron Shorter [mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com<cameron.shorter at gmail.com>]
>
> *Sent:* Friday, June 28, 2013 4:18 PM
> *To:* Anthony Robinson
> *Cc:* Rick Smith; Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas; OSGeo Discussions;
> edu_discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> *Subject:* Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] Maps and the Geospatial Revolution from
> Jul 17th 2013 at Coursera****
>
>  ****
>
> Hi Anthony,
> As per emails below, you can see that people have been talking about your
> "Maps and the Geospatial Revolution" course within the Open Source
> Geospatial communities.
>
> Are you aware of the OSGeo-Live USB/DVD/Virtual Machine?
> http://live.osgeo.org
> OSGeo-Live provides a distribution of 50 of the best Geospatial Open
> Source applications all preinstalled and configured with sample data, ready
> for use in courses such as yours. It also includes Project Overviews and
> Quickstarts for all these applications:
> http://live.osgeo.org/en/overview/overview.html
>
> I'm CCing the OSGeo Education email list, which are also doing great
> things. In particular, they have been building up a network of Open Source
> Geospatial Labs within Universities around the world.
>
> On 28/06/2013 10:50 PM, Rick Smith wrote:****
>
> Myself and two colleagues are currently running a (mini)MOOC on geospatial
> technology.  We are using QGIS for two of the labs and indiemapper for two
> of the labs  We chose QGIS because we wanted to keep the 'Open' in MOOC
> truly open.  indiemapper is not open source, but it is free to use and
> there is no push for signing up for accounts or paying for services, so we
> think maybe it is little 'o' open  :)   ****
>
>  ****
>
> Anyway, if interested, view
> http://catalyst-academy.org/course/geospatial-tech-for-stemx-learning/
>  and you can sign up for free at: *
> https://canvas.instructure.com/enroll/KK6JML<https://webmail.tamucc.edu/owa/redir.aspx?C=AC1eOI7a4kWyYoJN_gLUyI_cUUyQR9AI-WUGtL9ubS9qdamfDQFC_PqgbX6eM1v-Oy6o2IM0nd8.&URL=https%3a%2f%2fcanvas.instructure.com%2fenroll%2fKK6JML>
> *****
>
>  ****
>
> Cheers,****
>
> -Rick****
>
> http://gisc.tamucc.edu****
>
>  ****
>
> On Fri, Jun 28, 2013 at 1:25 AM, Jorge Gaspar Sanz Salinas <
> jsanz at osgeo.org> wrote:****
>
> On 28 June 2013 01:45, Mateusz Loskot <mateusz at loskot.net> wrote:
> > Folks,
> >
> > I thought there may be interest here:
> >
> > https://www.coursera.org/course/maps
> >
> > --
> > Mateusz  Loskot, http://mateusz.loskot.net****
>
> Thanks for sharing
>
> It's funny that this course relies only on a privative online mapping
> platform, with the massive amount of free software and data resources
> for learning available out there. I'd love to see a Coursera/or any
> other MOOC using OSGeo Live!!
>
> Cheers
> --
> Jorge Sanz
> http://es.osgeo.org****
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss****
>
>  ****
>
>
>
>
>
> ****
>
> _______________________________________________****
>
> Discuss mailing list****
>
> Discuss at lists.osgeo.org****
>
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss****
>
>
>
>
>
> ****
>
> -- ****
>
> Cameron Shorter****
>
> Geospatial Solutions Manager****
>
> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050****
>
> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254****
>
>  ****
>
> Think Globally, Fix Locally****
>
> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source****
>
> http://www.lisasoft.com****
>
>
>
>
> ****
>
> -- ****
>
> Cameron Shorter****
>
> Geospatial Solutions Manager****
>
> Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050****
>
> Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254****
>
> ** **
>
> Think Globally, Fix Locally****
>
> Geospatial Solutions enhanced with Open Standards and Open Source****
>
> http://www.lisasoft.com****
>
> ** **
>
>
> This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and
> may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in
> error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it.   Please do
> not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in
> any attachment.  Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this
> email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham.
>
> This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an
> attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your
> computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email
> communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as
> permitted by UK legislation.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Edu_discuss mailing list
> Edu_discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/edu_discuss
>

-- 
Charlie Schweik

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Department of Environmental Conservation - http://eco.umass.edu
Center for Public Policy and Administration - http://masspolicy.org
Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government - http://ncdg.org
Author, Internet Success: A Study of Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2012)
- see http://tinyurl.com/d3e4545
Outsmart Invasive Species project: http://masswoods.net/outsmart
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20130908/489c9d00/attachment-0002.html>