[Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program -- and planning for FOSS4G Global in Boston, August 2017

Mon Oct 31 08:11:11 PDT 2016

Many thanks Charlie for taking the lead on this. FOSS4G Boston is a great opportunity for planning  GeoForAll meetings.

Best wishes,

Suchith

________________________________________
From: GeoForAll <geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Charlie Schweik <cschweik at pubpol.umass.edu>
Sent: 30 October 2016 11:52 AM
To: OsGeo, GeoForAll
Subject: Re: [Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program -- and planning for FOSS4G Global in Boston, August 2017

Hi all,

Can we start a thread on planning GeoForAll meeting(s) co-located at FOSS4G Boston?  Has anyone considered offering some kind of GeoForAll-related educational workshop? If so, what subject? Can we plan another "Grant-sprint" like we did in FOSS4G Europe in Como? Does anyone have any grants they are looking to go after, that we could work together on? Or should we set aside a day before or after the conference to work on the all ellusive collaborative system for sharing educational content?

I've created a GeoForAll planning wiki page for this upcoming conference. Add your names and ideas on what we do there at:

https://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll/FOSS4GBoston

Cheers,

Charlie

On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 7:12 AM, Bridget Fleming <bridget at afrispatial.co.za<mailto:bridget at afrispatial.co.za>> wrote:
To add my bit from South Africa. Online GIS software is not a solution as internet access for us is expensive and most of our schools do not have connectivity. I’ve written a short paper on my GIS experiences in our local Journal for SA Geography Teachers: http://sagta.org.za/JoGESA-V2.php

QGIS ‘power lessons’ work best where GIS practioners come in and give short courses directly to the students. Even the most IT-savvy teachers are too fearful to give GIS classes. We have started a GIS Olympiad which is being rolled out nationally. My colleague will be presenting a paper at the upcoming AAG conference in Boston and I’ll do similar at the FOSS4G conference, also in Boston in August next year. I’m looking forward to meeting like-minded geographers in education as we need to pool our ideas. Gavin Fleming, my long-suffering husband has helped build a tangible landscape using GRASS GIS. My kids/ grade 8 to 12 love it. GIS has taken geography to another level. Keeping it simple works and Open Source does the trick!

Kind regards
Bridget Fleming

On 2016/10/29, 8:58 AM, "GeoForAll on behalf of Suchith Anand" <geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk<mailto:Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk>> wrote:

    Yes, we are making use of all opportunities to promote GeoForAll ideas and i don't think any properitery vendor can stop  GeoMentors from promoting GeoForAll ideas on the sidelines :-)  or stopping students from using GIS Day to promote GeoForAll [even though that was not at all  the properitery vendor's original intention].

    So we welcome all efforts from everyone in prompting geoeducation opportunities for all :-)

    Best wishes,

    Suchith

    ________________________________________
    From: GeoForAll <geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org<mailto:geoforall-bounces at lists.osgeo.org>> on behalf of Massimiliano Cannata <massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch<mailto:massimiliano.cannata at supsi.ch>>
    Sent: 29 October 2016 7:15 AM
    To: Nikos Lambrinos
    Cc: OsGeo, GeoForAll
    Subject: Re: [Geo4All] Vision for an OSGeo education program

    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<mailto:labrinos at eled.auth.gr><mailto:labrinos at eled.auth.gr<mailto: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

    --
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    ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    Dr. Nikos Lambrinos
    Associate Professor
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    School of Primary Education
    Dept. of Science and New Technologies
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