[OSGeo-Edu] Summary of edu BOF discussion at FOSS4G

[Charlie Schweik]

Hi all (I sent this last week from a different email address and realize 
now it didn't go through...)

Here’s a quick summary of our Birds of a Feather discussion we had in 
Denver.

First, Suchith at the University of Nottingham gave a short summary of 
their activities. He provided a set of slides (Suchith, is there a way 
your slides can be posted for others not present to read?)
Second, Phil Davis gave a summary of their GeoTech Center’s activities. 
They are focusing much of their attention toward developing an open 
source GIS curriculum for 2-year higher education schools (community 
colleges) in the US.
Both of these groups are making substantial progress in the OS GIS 
education space and are bringing some new ideas and energy to our 
collective efforts.

Two concrete next steps came out of our open discussion::

1) To develop an educational version of the live DVD with a focus on 
educational needs that would be ready for next year’s FOSS4G conference. 
This would mean we should coordinate with the Live DVD folks and it 
provides us with something really tangible to work on as a group. A key 
issue will be identifying one or two people who would act like Cameron 
Shorter does in the coordination of the LiveDVD.

2) To work toward building a network of OS GIS labs in universities. 
(This idea was actually something Suchith suggested to me in an email, 
and I think it is a great goal.) I’d like to hear from people interested 
in trying to develop this. This is similar (or maybe overlaps) with the 
local OSGeo groups perhaps – I wonder how many of those are actually 
organized by people affiliated with educational institutions.

The group concluded with the idea that we would try to convene a meeting 
once a month meeting using a “virtual room.” Phil said he would help us 
get that established. Be on the look out for an email from me on that.

Finally two further thoughts:

1) I encourage people who have content to share them through the new 
University of Nottingham’s inventory system [1].

2) Is there any other way to make it easier for us to share information 
on what we are accomplishing individually? Ideas:

- - We could try and resurrect our group’s blog. I tried that before but 
didn’t get much information sent to me.

- - Might we try establishing a OSGeo edu group social networking page? 
Facebook? Or Linkedin?

If people have ideas let me know, or if there is someone who can act as 
an OSGeo edu “information broker” for us – that would be great.
Thanks to all who attended the BOF and to Helena for reporting for us at 
the conference. More will follow on our first "virtual room" meeting -- 
sometime in October.

Cheers

Charlie

[1] http://elogeo.nottingham.ac.uk/xmlui/
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