[Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program

[labrinos at eled.auth.gr]

Dear all,

I follow your emails these days and I can see two things: a)  
enthusiasm and b) anger.
The first is good the second is bad. Both are reasonable. They are  
generated from a kind of an undeclared war between proprietary and FOS  
Software.
I have the feeling that many of us feel ready to declare war against  
proprietary software but ... don't do it. We need it. Propriery  
software makes us priceless. We do need something to compare with.
Someone wrote that ESRI has a lot of people working on GIS and  
education. So do we.
The problem lies on how we are organized. ESRI looks better organized  
than we are. They are focused and they know where to strike first and  
how. We don't.
Take a look at the emails. Each one is talking either about middle or  
high school and (in my turn) I would talk about primary school. Each  
level has its own needs.
What do we want from the teachers and from their students? It isn't  
enough to show them how to use GIS. We have to convince them that they  
need GIS. This is what ESRI is doing. In order to do so we have to  
show them a very simple way to use it. ESRI gives free licenses, we  
give free software. So, we give more.
Teachers and especially students love to show the results of their  
work. If they have to take many courses and 10s of teaching hours (no  
matter if it is webinars or f2f courses) then many of them may get  
disappointed or consider GIS difficult to begin with. Because they  
don't get quick results (for example a newly constructed map).
In my opinion, we have to begin building a real global network with  
schools of any level of education. This is something I had proposed  
few months ago but I got almost no answer. We can do that the same way  
that GeoForAll was built. With patience and vision.
I am almost 23 years talking about GIS in school teachers (starting  
back in 1994) and I think that the difference was made since the  
beginning of web mapping. This is because they can see their efforts  
go public. Everyone loves publicity. It will be easier to go from the  
very simple keystrokes of web mapping to more complicated procedures  
(teachers don't like much georeferrencing systems etc) of GIS.
Who thinks that we can start with these two thngs? a) forming a well  
organized global school network and b) web mapping as a starter?
We have to have system and patience.

Best wishes
Nikos




-- 
Δρ. Νίκος Λαμπρινός
Αναπληρωτής Καθηγητής
Τμήμα Δημοτικής Εκπαίδευσης
Α.Π.Θ. 54124 Θεσσαλονίκη
Τηλ.: 2310 991201 / 991230
Email: labrinos at eled.auth.gr
Web Page:       http://users.auth.gr/labrinos/
		http://www.digital-earth.edu.gr/
		https://www.auth.gr/univUnits

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Nikos Lambrinos
Associate Professor
Faculty of Education
School of Primary Education
Dept. of Science and New Technologies
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki
GR-54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
Tel: +30 2310 991201
Email: labrinos at eled.auth.gr
Web Page:       http://users.auth.gr/labrinos/
		http://www.digital-earth.edu.gr/
		https://www.auth.gr/en/univUnits