<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
</head><body><p>Dear Education Community,<br><br>LOC is working hard to make FOSS4G 2016 in Bonn an unforgettable event. Now the time has come to provide our input and to decide on a place of geoeducation at this event. Geoeducation at all levels - for school children and teachers, teacher trainers as well as students and professional who would like to improve their knowledge and skills. We started our discussion on that in Como in July and probably it also continued in Seoul, wasn't it (?)<br><br>There are two main options:<br><br>No. 1 – <strong>conference</strong> itself (24-26th of August)<br><br>Education will be mentioned as one of the special topics in the General track. So during the general program selection a special focus will be put on education-related presentations. The idea was not to make these presentations too much research-oriented (as in acadeic track) but really practical.<br>As Volker (chair of program committee) mentioned:"My plan is to give the slots (3 talks in a row) some kind of topic. Those would be then be “education”.<br>I really like this idea – it would help to make this topic more visible and help people who are interested to find proper time and room ;-)<br><br><br>No. 2 – <strong>pre-conference, education workshop</strong> (23rd of August )<br><br>We have a chance to organise pre-conference workshop! As Till (the chairman of FOSS2016) declared: "We also have access to two session rooms (for approx. 25 persons each) on 23rd of August (day before core conference starts) in another place, which might be used for Geo4All/Education workshops. We can get this rooms for free, so we would have to care for some coffee and a snack for midday only."<br></p><p>In Como we talked about two options: a) having workshop for German school teachers on use of FOSS4G (e.g. QGIS) in education, b) having workshop for teacher trainers to show them how they can motivate and attract teachers to open GIS. <br></p><p><br>Please let us know all your comments and ideas...</p><p>Are you satisfied with having education as a part of the General track? </p><p>Are there any volounteers who would like to lead pre-conference, education workshop - if you say "yes", please give information about the topic and target group.<br></p><p>Regards,<br></p><p>Ela<br></p><p>--------<br></p><p>Elżbieta Wołoszyńska-Wiśniewska<br>Head of Education Unit<br><br>UNEP/GRID-Warsaw Centre<br>Sobieszynska 8, 00-764 Warsaw<br>phone.: +48 22 840 6664 ext. 116<br>fax: +48 22 851 6201<br>http://www.gridw.pl<br><br>PLEASE CONSIDER THE ENVIRONMENT BEFORE PRINTING THIS EMAIL</p></body></html>