[GRASS-user] Re: [Qgis-user] Basic GIS course ideas

[Otto Dassau]

Hi, 

I also like the idea of creating a standard set of beginner exercises for GRASS
and QGIS and I have also made the experience that QGIS is easier to teach in 
beginner courses. There already exist a lot of documentation and other
material on several pages offering plenty of manuals, books and
tutorials/courses:

GRASS Documentation Project
 ->  http://grass.itc.it/gdp/index.php
GRASS 6 Tutorial
 -> http://grass.gdf-hannover.de/wiki/Documents

QGIS User and Installation Guide
 -> http://qgis.org/releases/userguide.pdf
 -> http://qgis.org/releases/install.pdf

+ QGIS and GRASS Data, Howtos, Wiki ...

So what do you think is useful? Ready to go exercises and examples with
data for standardized training courses with standard certificates? This was
already discussed some time ago and is still important and interesting.

Maybe it would make sense to add further topics to existing material?

If we assume, that QGIS is prefered by most newcomers, we could start from 
the QGIS side and include GRASS exercises partly via GRASS-Plugin?
There already exists an official user guide in latex within svn. So it can be
easily translated and converted into several formats (PDF, HTML, ...). We could
add a couple of new chapters with exercises for beginners. 

For GRASS it seems to be more difficult. There is a lot more documentation and
material but mostly without relation to each other. We would probably have to
find a basis first and definde is as a standard. 

what do you think?

best wishes,
  Otto


On Fri, 06 Oct 2006 09:56:30 +0200
Paolo Cavallini <cavallini at faunalia.it> wrote:

> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
> 
> We are finding QGIS by far the best tool for introductory courses. The
> GRASS plugin allows a smooth progress from simple coloured maps up into
> the heaven of complex raster and vector analyses. The native compilation
> on xp makes things even easier for novices.
> The only serios problem now is the instability of qgis 0.8; I think we
> need a good deal of effort to have a really stable and bugfree release.
> I like the idea of a standard set of exercises. A wiki could be a good
> starting point?
> All the best.
> pc
> 
> maning sambale ha scritto:
> > Hi FOSS GIS users,
> > 
> > I am a part-time instructor in a college teaching introductory gis
> > course.  I have been advocating for the use FOSS GIS (particularly
> > GRASS and QGIS ) in our schools for the lab sessions.
> > This is the second term I am doing this and have been reflecting on
> > how did it go the first time.
> > 
> > The objective of the course is for students to understand basic gis
> > principles as well as practical applications in site planning, land
> > use, ecology and business.
> > 
> > Judging by the previous experience, it is a little bit difficult
> > introducing the student FOSS GIS especially the linux way of doing
> > things (CLI).  We are using XP machines and most students probably
> > know computers as MS windows only.
> > 
> > Some are more interested in creating cool maps and not on the
> > underlying spatial analysis techniques (i.e. r.mapcalc) that were
> > used.
> > 
> > I wrote the list to ask GRASS instructors on any ideas in making the
> > course better.  If you have any approaches/techniques/exercises you
> > might want to share please do.  I firmly believe using FOSS GIS
> > especially in our country is very important.  As a compromise though,
> > a suggestion from this list was to also introduce them to propriety
> > GIS package.  We have a few arcview 3.2 in the lab so I might give a 1
> > or 2 sessions about it.
> > 
> > Any ideas would be appreciated.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > 
> > Maning
> > 
> 
> - --
> Paolo Cavallini
> email+jabber: cavallini at faunalia.it
> www.faunalia.it
> Piazza Garibaldi 5 - 56025 Pontedera (PI), Italy   Tel: (+39)348-3801953
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
> Version: GnuPG v1.4.5 (GNU/Linux)
> Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
> 
> iD4DBQFFJgwu/NedwLUzIr4RAjmaAJYq1gvsu1ZNGWnRo0mVbdQOvnuIAJ0QN6VQ
> f7cv1+MOGsl30oANgzKylA==
> =ysHL
> -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-user mailing list
> Qgis-user at lists.qgis.org
> http://lists.qgis.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user
> 


--