[OSGeo-Edu] Some thoughts on the production of educational
material about FOSS Geospatial Tools
Kim Tucker
kctucker at gmail.com
Mon Aug 9 21:34:30 EDT 2010
Goodday Simon and all,
Reminders:
For producing the learning materials consider MediaWiki hosted on
WikiEducator or Wikiversity with their book creation feature in mind:
http://wikieducator.org/Help:Books
and
http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Help:Books
Your web browser probably has spell checking built-in. MediaWiki has
simple markup, includes the history of pages and you can check, roll
back to or revisit previous versions. You also have the benefit of
MediaWiki's collaborative authoring features - e.g. 'watch' pages and
be e-mailed whenever anyone makes changes, a discussion tab for each
page, etc.
Templates may be designed for consistent presentation of elements of
learning resources. Some examples:
http://wikieducator.org/Quickstart_guide/pedagogical_templates
Both sites (WikiEducator and Wikiversity) use CC-BY-SA for most of
their content.
A custom book may be prepared for various CDs (etc.) that you (or
anyone) may wish to distribute.
For the software, try a web search for 'own distro'. The following
came up when I tried which look quite comprehensive/ promising:
http://www.linuxformat.com/wiki/index.php/Build_your_own_distro
http://www.cyvoc.net/novoweb/index.html
The following might also be of interest:
TeX/LaTeX:
TexMaker: http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/
Kile: http://kile.sourceforge.net/
Document management:
Alfresco: http://wiki.alfresco.com/wiki/Document_Management
Learning how to do wiki education:
http://wikieducator.org/Learning4Content
An alternative approach:
http://en.flossmanuals.net/
----
On 8 August 2010 07:52, Simon Cropper
<scropper at botanicusaustralia.com.au> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have been reviewing my personal needs relating to the production of
> educational material about FOSS Geospatial Tools.
>
> To help conceptualise the variety of aspects relating to the creation,
> acceptance, dissemination and acceptance of educational material I created the
> following diagram.
>
> In my mind, this superficial analysis identified some interesting points for me
> relating to how I expect to prepare and distribute my tutorials. I thought you
> may be interested and have listed some thought below.
>
> 1. My personal emphasis will be on workflow tutorials rather than manual
> creation. Similar to some of the GIS Desktop Handbooks/Cookbooks touted by
> others at various stages.
>
> 2. Three main tasks have been identified: create, maintain and disseminate. The
> question is whether any solution to the preparation of educational material
> should meet all these needs or just address them.
>
> 3. Creation of material, in my experience, is problematic. Most packages are
> difficult to use or require teaching yourself mark-up languages. This latter
> issue can put off newcomers getting involved. Focus should be on the rapid
> acquisition of content rather than getting bogged down with formatting.
> - OpenOffice Writer is easy to use, familiar and can create PDFs, DocBook XML
> and a variety of other formats readily.
> - Lots of HTML editors exist, although variously compliant to W3C
> specifications
> - Latex (e.g. Lyx) is promising as it can create multiple output formats
> readily
> - XML Editors like Serna FOSS XML Editor also look promising for the same
> reason
> - lots of templates and an easy to use program is essential.
>
> 4. Once written, maintenance is a big issue as some formats are problematic to
> read (XML, HTML, RST) or harder to translate than others (PDF, RST).
> Formats/Languages where the text/paragraph format is intermingled with content
> have problems when edited.
> - Latex/XML Structured Documents separate the issue of format and content.
> Once templates have been created all future contributors need do nothing
> except input content. This option also makes for a consistent output - as all
> people are required to use the same templates.
> - Templates in OO are not the same as in Latex/XML editors. The latter create
> structured documents, whereas OO Writer allows unstructured documents --
> something that facilitates diversity/innovation but also creates problems with
> ongoing maintenance. So templates in OO is really about ensuring all the
> appropriate data is supplied rather than formatting and standard looking
> output.
> - Free XML Structured Document Editors are not common and only a few have
> suitable features to make content creation easy. The only program I would be
> happy using is a free version of a commercial product - it is always unclear
> whether these packages will remain freely available into the future.
> - LATEX looks promising but templates creation is not intuitive and Lyx, the
> most promising option, is very math/formula oriented. The GUI interface an be
> a bit off putting.
>
> 5. Dissemination is dependant on the format created.
> - If OO is used to create PDFs then these can just be dumped to a repository
> similar to what already exists on OsGeo. OO can also save in HTML and DocBook
> XML. The latter could be a useful storage medium for maintenance and
> derivatives.
> - Ideally though the repository should aim to categorise documents into
> workflows and provide all relevant information (e.g. PDF, OpenDocumentText file,
> data) for the various packages out there. The OSGeo repository is limited in
> this extent, although it can be filtered.
> - if Latex/XML/OO is used to create HTML, this can be inserted into a CMS or
> website for traditional presentation. PDF/ODT/Text as required for inclusion
> onto CD and online document repositories. All these packages allow for output
> in various formats. OO is probably the most widely used and familiar product.
>
> 6. Of course there are traditional CMS or Blogging Software (e.g. Wordpress or
> Joomla). Despite being relatively easy to create documents, content stuck in
> online databases like MySQL is difficult to review, export, disseminate,
> maintain, etc. This analysis excludes these systems as suitable solutions to
> my needs.
>
> Whatever the system used, it needs to be easy to create, maintain and
> disseminate the material, and have acceptance of both the FOSS GIS developers
> and users alike.
>
> The options I am toying with at present are using Open Office Writer or Lyx/XML
> Editor to create content and posting the content (PDF, source, data) directly
> to a webpage. I have not been able to locate a suitable web-based FOS Document
> Management System (DMS) that provides public access, manages PDFs, source files
> and data as related items and can present the data in various taxonomies.
>
>
> Anyone have any other issues that you think I should consider please let me
> know.
>
> Anyone with experience in using Serna [1] or Lyx [2], or have a suitable
> template/s I can try I would be very interested in hearing from you.
>
> Anyone know of a good DMS I would be very interested to hear about it.
>
> [1] http://www.syntext.com/downloads/serna-free/
> [2] http://www.lyx.org/Home
>
>
> (C) Simon Cropper 2010. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Australia
> --
> Cheers Simon
>
> Simon Cropper
> Botanicus Australia Pty Ltd
> PO Box 160 Sunshine 3020
> P: 03 9311 5822. M: 041 830 3437
> W: http://www.botanicusaustralia.com.au
>
>
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