[Ica-osgeo-labs] Use of open source material for school children- regarding

[Suchith Anand]

Dear Aparna,

Thank you for your email and it is great to know your activities in capacity building programmes in GIS for Geography teachers at the National Level in India and that you are developing E-Learning material in GIS for schools using open software. I am really pleased to hear this and will be pleased to support this.

I have now added you to our Geo for All mailing list, so you get updated on all activities and i am ccing  our colleagues and introducing you to them, so that they will also share their expertise and good practices with you.   

As Geo for All  http://www.geoforall.org   is a global initiative, we have excellent examples in school education from our global colleagues that you can use to start planning your ideas.  For example, Ela and colleagues in Poland's work on GIS at Schools http://www.edugis.pl/en/images/stories/guide/gis-at-school.pdf , Sergio and colleagues work on gvSIG Batovi in Uruguay can all give ideas and collaborations.

As a first step, I suggest that you also look into existing successful  initiatives in Open Principles in Education in India for building and scaling up this . For example,   IT at School  project in the State of Kerala (which is one of the largest simultaneous deployment of Free and Open Source Software based ICT education in over 12,000 schools benefiting 200,000 teachers and 6 million students ) has transformed access to quality education to even students from the poorest backgrounds.  This is a good example of scalability of  education opportunities with very little resources. Details at https://www.itschool.gov.in/glance.php

So could i suggest the following steps, so we can work with you on this.

1. Please inform about our mail list at http://lists.osgeo.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ica-osgeo-labs  (it is an open list, so anyone interested are welcome to join) to other educators and school teachers so they can also join. They can also search the past archives to get updated on previous discussions.

2. We are in the process of creating new thematic group on teacher training at Geo for All. You can join that and contribute your idea
Look at examples of curriculum from other counties like UK (National Curriculum, GCSE and A-Level content directives  links which are below.

UK National Curriculum -
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/210969/NC_framework_document_-_FINAL.pdf

UK GCSE -
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/301253/GCSE_geography.pdf

UK A-Level -
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/388857/GCE_AS_and_A_level_subject_content_for_geography.pdf

3. You can contact  the Heads of the two ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS labs established in India Dr K.S. Rajan (IIIT Hyderabad) and Dr Anjana Vyas (CEPT University)  to get more info. on the various training programs they have carried out and get their expertise inputted to your program. 

We look forward to work with you for expanding education opportunities for students across South Asia.

Best wishes,

Suchith 

PS:  For our global colleagues, you can get details of NCERT at http://www.ncert.nic.in/index.html
________________________________________
From: aparna pandey [aparnancert at gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2015 10:04 AM
To: Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk
Subject: Use of open source material for school children- regarding

Dear Mr. Anand,
                 Greetings!

                     I am working in the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) , New Delhi . You might be knowing that NCERT is a an apex organisation under the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt. of India, responsible for the qualitative improvement of school education of   the country. My work is related to development of Curriculum, syllabus , textbooks and teaching -learning materials in Geography from Classes VI to XII. I have been conducting capacity building programmes in GIS for Geography teachers at the National Level. Presently we are developing E-Learning material in GIS for schools using open software. In South Asia there is a need to develop a lot of material for children as well as for  teachers to remove their initial fear from the technology. In my opinion  it can be achieved only by encouraging them to   use   Open free software . I would love to do work in this area for South Asia.

With regards,

Aparna Pandey

Dr. Aparna Pandey
Associate Professor of Geography
Department of Education in Social Sciences
National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT)
New Delhi-110016
Email: aparnancert at gmail.com<mailto:aparnancert at gmail.com>



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