[Ica-osgeo-labs] Opportunity for Schools to join as ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS labs and Industry, Government, NGO's as partners for "Geo for All"

[Suchith Anand]

Colleagues,

As we grow and expand, it is also time to put in ideas for our expansion plans.

Our Advisory Board have been discussing ideas for this and also considering the inputs from the discussions and feedbacks from Portland meetings and the wider Geo for All community (Helena has been leading this and also in charge of update of the labs lists currently undergoing. Thanks Helena for your efforts), we will be  separating the industry, government organisations and NGOs based on  Portland discussions and adding them as a new category "Geo for All  partners". All other criteria [1] will be the same ONLY  universities/educational institutes/schools will have be able to use ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS labs title.  The applications from those interested to join will have to be through the various regional chairs as before.

All interested organisations must be committed to contribute to the vision outlined in the ICA-OSGeo MoU http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/MOU_ICA to develop collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organisations in free and open source GIS software , FOSS, open data , open access (publications) and contribute to open education in the future. All participants should contribute to Education, Research and Service for the betterment of humanity as the key guiding principle and work towards the vision of the UN Millennium Development Goals  http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ for building a better world.

So the following  four organisations (and all future industry, government and NGOs) who support our principles [1] will be members of   "Geo for All" partners category. We will be setting up a new table for this in the wiki site

* French Space Agency CNES  - Government

* Environmental Science for Social Change (ESSC) - NGO

* IGN- France - Government

* Birds Eye View GIS     USA - Industry

Our focus till now had been on University/HE  but with the huge interest from school teachers on this, it is our mission to empower them and make sure geoeducation opportunities are available to our future generations. So will also now actively offer opportunities for schools to join as ICA-OSGeo-ISPRS labs as that is key for future expansion and empowerment .With our Teacher Training & School Education thematic now in place and many developments already in place from gvSIG Batovi [2] to GIS at Schools [3] to the Integration of geospatial OSS in educational notebooks  [4]that Massimo Di Stefano and others are doing , we are in a very good position to expand geoeducation opportunities and empowerment to thousands of schools globally.

We will discuss more ideas at Como, so please do join the "Geo for All" meetings at FOSS4G Como or email your ideas to Charlie or Helena.

Best wishes,

Suchith

[1] http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoforall_criteria
[2] http://www.ceibal.edu.uy/art%C3%ADculo/noticias/estudiantes/Especificaciones-tecnicas
[3]  http://www.edugis.pl/en/images/stories/guide/gis-at-school.pdf
[4]  http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_GSoC_2015




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