[OSGeo-Edu] Some thoughts on the production of educational material about FOSS Geospatial Tools

Tue Aug 10 08:20:28 EDT 2010

Hi,
as I mentioned in the meeting also

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

could be looked at.

Maxi

On 08/10/2010 03:34 AM, Kim Tucker wrote:
> 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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>>
>>
>>      
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-- 

Dr. Eng. Massimiliano Cannata
Responsabile Area Geomatica
Istituto Scienze della Terra
Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana
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