[OSGeo-Edu] RE: OSGeo Live DVD - ELOGeo

[Suchith Anand]

Hi Cameron,

We have setup a separate section for OSGeo-Live at ELOGeo http://elogeo.nottingham.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/url/99

We wish to start uploading the osgeolive docs from the latest release for this and will point to the http://live.osgeo.org  in the metadata. Please let me know if this is fine.

I will also put this in agenda for the Edu BOF meeting we are having later today on how we can add synergy with the OSGeo LiveDVD efforts and educational materials creation efforts.

Best wishes,

Suchith


From: Cameron Shorter [mailto:cameron.shorter at gmail.com]
Sent: 08 August 2011 01:05
To: Suchith Anand
Cc: Amir Pourabdollah; live-demo at lists.osgeo.org; edu_discuss at lists.osgeo.org
Subject: Re: OSGeo Live DVD - ELOGeo

On 05/08/11 01:46, Suchith Anand wrote:
Hi Cameron,

As you know, the e-learning platform for the Open Geospatial community (ELOGeo) is now ready. It will be really good if the quick start guides, tutorials etc in  OSGeo LiveDVD are put in the repository. We can create separate section for LiveDVD articles in the repository. We greatly welcome your suggestions and inputs for this.

Best wishes,

Suchith

Suchith,
CCing osgeo-live and education lists, with your permission.

I agree that it would be valuable to align OSGeo-Live and ELOGeo efforts. What I think is important is that we define what we would like our documentation repository to look like in 3 to 5 years time, beyond the initial project kickoff, and then focus on putting processes in place for maintaining the documentation repository in order to get to our goals.

You see, documentation becomes dated, and needs to be maintained if it is to remain current. Documentation is developed to different target audiences, is written to different depths of completeness, and to varying levels of quality.
The challenges that ELOGeo can help solve is:

1. Make it easier to publish and find related documentation about open source geospatial topics.

2. Help keep existing documentation up to date, by matching maintainers with source authors, and providing processes and tools for updating documents.

3. Remove, hide, or make less important, dated documentation, so that it is easier to find the relevant documents.

4. Increase consistency, quality and inter-relatedness of documentation. In particular, ensure that created documents connect with each other. Ie, all document authors shouldn't need to write a history of GIS. That could be handled once, then everyone else can reference the one document.

>From what I've seen so far, it seems that ELOGeo is currently only tackling item 1: building a register of documents, something like http://freshmeat.net. This is valuable in that it helps build an audit of what is available, but there is still a lot more work required before it will be very valuable. And by very valuable, I mean that I'd like to see the majority of lecturers and educators around the world use the ELOGeo repository as a primary source of teaching material, and to maintain existing material as part of their day to day work, because doing so is easier than not!

I'm convinced that this goal is possible, because in a small way, we have done something similar for OSGeo-Live. But what I believe is required is:

1. A vision of what a full set of course material will look like, along with a definition of end users and links back to training goals (like the Body of Knowledge and University training courses).

2. Writing templates and guidelines, and supporting tools.

3. Associated processes and workflows for document creation.

4. A dedicated editor/technical writer charged with providing the technical review.

5. A project coordinator / champion who will help attract authors, and help authors write funding proposals for their external organizations.

-----------------------

That said, I think you were just asking about the short term goal of how to get OSGeo-Live listed in the existing ELOGeo repository.
My suggestion is that it just becomes part of the OSGeo-Live release process. We should keep such registration simple, so that it continues to be maintained in future.
So I suggest just one entry for all of OSGeo-Live, rather than writing an entry for all 50 odd projects.
I also feel that it is important for the point of truth for latest material should point back to the source, in this case, http://live.osgeo.org.
I'll have more time to look at the details after the upcoming release of OSGeo-Live. (Feel free to remind me if I forget).



--

Cameron Shorter

Geospatial Director

Tel: +61 (0)2 8570 5050

Mob: +61 (0)419 142 254



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