[OSGeo-Edu] Edu report at AGM

[Charlie Schweik]

On Wed, 2007-09-19 at 21:06 -0700, Tyler Mitchell (OSGeo) wrote:
> On 19-Sep-07, at 7:41 PM, cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu wrote:
> 
> >Go for it!  I've been barely a lurking on this list, but interacting  
> with others at a slightly different level.  
Ok - others feel free to send me thoughts for this short presentation on
our group.

> I can say that the  
> interest and enthusiasm behind the EduCom concept is alive and well.
Great to hear.
> 
> It would also be particularly interesting to drag in some of the  
> Spanish local chapter guys and see what they've been doing in their  
> Free GIS book in Espanol, perhaps we can invite some to come to the  
> BoF if they are available.  (cc'ing Lorenzo here to see what he thinks)
Lorenzo - not much time in the OSGeo meeting but let me know if you want
to say something. Also would be great to meet you at the BOF meeting on
Tuesday. 

All: I'd appreciate if someone else could assist me in the Bird of the
Feather for our meeting. For instance, I'd like someone to act as a
note-taker. I'd also like to meet with someone on Monday to discuss how
to make that meeting the most productive possible. Also, we might want
to use the Wed BOF time too -- and consider this a "OSGeo Edu sprint".
One idea would be to look at the current wiki pages and come up with a
new refreshed version that is easier to navigate through. 

> I will be around on the Friday for the code sprint, but don't have  
> any real plans.  If others are around and want to mess around with  
> Moodle or other application-level tasks, I'd be game!

One issue I intend to raise in my talk is the wiki platform as a content
manager. I'll try and make my slides available for others who aren't at
the conference (and I have a paper written on my spring online
experience). 

Moodle I think is a useful platform for course management, but I'm not
sure it is what we want for content management and version control.
While the wiki can be a possible option (we've been messing around this
week trying to design something that we think might work), it has
limitations. What we want, I think, is a CVS- or subversion-like
facility that is database driven and searchable. 

One I think that has real potential is Rice University's Connextions
(http://cnx.org/) platform. I spent most of my day yesterday trying to
figure out the procedure to convert my mediawiki tutorial to something
that could easily import... so I'm trying to investigate this and hope
to spend 5 minutes in my talk about the comparison between the wiki and
this possibility. I also looked at MIT's Open Courseware but it is not
designed to handle modules, but rather courses. I think we want to make
our method of managing and distributing educational content as modular
as we can.

Cheers
Charlie

> 
> Tyler
-- 
Associate Professor 
- Department of Natural Resources Conservation (www.umass.edu/nrc) 
- Center for Public Policy and Administration (www.masspolicy.org),
- Associate Director, National Center for Digital Government (www.ncdg.org)
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA 01003
Phone: (413) 545-1824
Website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik