[Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program
Bridget Fleming
bridget at afrispatial.co.za
Mon Oct 31 00:50:44 PDT 2016
So true. I left the teaching profession three years back, had time to upskill in GIS and now I am back in the classroom.
Teachers desperately need support. A panel discussion (FOSS4G Boston) to map a way forward will be great.
SAGTA (SA Geography Teachers’ Association) and FOSS4G – S Africa (Gavin Fleming) will be hosting a conference at my new place of work, St John’s College (Johannesburg) 26 to 30 June 2017.
Good work is being done and know that we have teachers using QGIS in very under resources school. Sadly, few know about these pockets of excellence.
Bridget Fleming
bridget.fleming at stjohnschool.co.za
+27827757072
Skype: GeoBridget
On 2016/10/29, 7:50 PM, "GeoForAll on behalf of Hogan, Patrick (ARC-PX)" <geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org on behalf of patrick.hogan at nasa.gov> wrote:
So true, teachers, are our most important profession and the measure of our future. Yet, they are underpaid and overworked. They are in desperate need of help, the fully fledged kind of help that comes ready to go. All the ideas being suggested here are the right ones, but it will be no small effort to build 'OTS' packages for the different grade levels.
And I am not even sure that trying to approach 'mainstream' education is the way to go. We really need to tap into super achievers, inspire and equip them so that they can 'implement' spatial data activities that will help inspire other students in this endeavor to make all of us more aware of the world around us.
So, building packages, maybe curriculum elements, that are exercises with specific spatial data goals in mind, seems necessary. With the idea that competence with these software tools will allow them to go much further.
Please realize this is an uphill battle all the way, so finding a teacher or few to work directly with to build these things interactively with actual students, is one thought. In the US, we are happy to spend $30k-%50k per prisoner (private prisons no less) and yet only $10k per K-12 child. And about half those prisoners are there just because they wanted to get high (drugs). Better education will certainly impact the prison population in a positive way.
The point is, trying to help education which dearly needs it, will be quite difficult due to how overwhelmed teachers already are. 30 years ago I was a High School teacher and conditions have not gotten any better, understated I'm sure.
I would suggest working at a personal level locally with a teacher and their students, finding what works and then try to scale that. Let actual students' success be our guiding light. They can teach us!
-Patrick
(650) 269-2788 (cell)
-----Original Message-----
From: GeoForAll [mailto:geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] On Behalf Of labrinos at eled.auth.gr
Sent: Saturday, October 29, 2016 9:08 AM
To: Massimiliano Cannata
Cc: OsGeo, GeoForAll
Subject: Re: [Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program
Maxi, I think that the teachers don't care. Most of them don't know what to do with an open source software.
Nikos
Περιορίζοντας Massimiliano Cannata <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>:
> Thanks Nicos for the arguments you put in the table.
> A provocative question... Why a teacher using a web application to
> teach and produce a map should care if the server use open source or not?
>
> More, esri pushing geospatial need and industry is working also for us
> ;-)
>
> Maxi
>
> Il 29 ott 2016 12:28 AM, <labrinos at eled.auth.gr> ha scritto:
>
>
> 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
>
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--
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
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