[Ica-osgeo-labs] Paper about FOSS into geospatial education

Vaclav Petras wenzeslaus at gmail.com
Sun Jun 21 16:20:05 PDT 2015


On Sun, Jun 21, 2015 at 11:05 AM, Mueller, Thomas <Mueller at calu.edu> wrote:

>  Vaclav
>
> This is awesome.  Thank you for the article.  I was thinking of doing
> something similar in my GEO 100 class.  I was thinking of comparing ArcGIS
> Online vs an Open GIS product.  Does anyone know of a similar product to
> ArcGIS online?
>

Tom, the answer to what is an open alternative to ArcGIS Online is actually
harder than it might seem because first, we would have to answer what open
cloud is as well as if we expect some organization to run the service for
us or if we just run it ourselves. Anyway, I definitively have to look at
MapStory.org. (Thanks Suchith for pointing it out.)

I have to think about it more, but I now think that there might be some
educational value in teaching non-cloud software such as (current) QGIS,
GRASS GIS or gvSIG (...) together with ArcGIS Online. There is certainly a
huge value in knowing these for research, but even if you are not
interested in research but more in comparison, there is this feature that
students can just continue using the FOSS GIS packages as they leave the
school. Furthermore on desktop, there might be some additional challenges
like data import and online publication which certainly will show students
that things are done differently and the experience is quite important
(although often unpleasant in case of import). Finally, there might be
benefit of knowing both cloud (/web/client-server) and desktop way. Desktop
is not going anywhere any time soon (considering usage of LibreOffice and
MS Office), so there is no reason to avoid it. On the other hand, choosing
two too distant alternatives wouldn't be good either. Something like GDAL
in command line on Raspberry Pi would be certainly a valuable GIS
experience but teaching it as an alternative to ArcGIS Online would be
pretty bad as it would create more confusion than anything else.

Adrian, the best thing you can do now is to share your material. This will
allow others to comment on it or reuse it. Let me know if you need some
technical guidance (or just read the appendix of the paper I posted :).
Also, if you are looking at existing materials (e.g. the ours), please send
feedback.

Vaclav


PS: Adrian, please consider not using mailing list digest (and use
folders/lables in email client instead), so that you can reply to the
actual email (with right metadata and a proper subject). At least for me,
it is quite helpful for getting through all the emails. See how the threads
are now organized:

https://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/ica-osgeo-labs/2015-June/thread.html

Thanks
> Tom
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [
> ica-osgeo-labs-bounces at lists.osgeo.org] on behalf of Vaclav Petras [
> wenzeslaus at gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Saturday, June 20, 2015 10:34 PM
> *To:* ICA OSGeo Labs list
> *Subject:* [Ica-osgeo-labs] Paper about FOSS into geospatial education
>
>   Dear all,
>
> I would like to let you know about an open access paper called
> *Integrating Free and Open Source Solutions into Geospatial Science
> Education* [1] which our group [2] published recently in a special issue of
> ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (thanks Suchith and other
> for organizing it).
>
> From our experience, when teaching geospatial thinking and analysis,
> software is often or even always involved. However, students tend to mix
> the theory with software specifics. Our solution is to teach theory and
> general ideas in lectures and use two different software packages in labs.
> With this approach, students get hands-on practice while getting the idea
> what is general principle and what is specific to one or the other software
> package.
>
> Our flagship course is *Geospatial Analysis and Modeling* [3] and we use
> GRASS GIS and ArcGIS but the principle is obviously applicable to any
> course and any software. This modeling course is well-established and
> well-maintained since it runs every semester for several years already. The
> course material is licensed under CC BY-SA. You can find more information
> and more courses in the paper and on our website and I'll be happy to give
> you more details as well.
>
> In the paper, we focus on graduate education but we hope to apply similar
> principles in undergraduate education too. However, for introduction to
> geospatial sciences at earlier levels (including high schools and middle
> schools), OpenStreetMap seems to me like a very good option because
> students can do something which actually has local or humanitarian impact
> while having the opportunity to analyze the collected data later in the
> course. OpenStreetMap community has already some resources on that topic as
> well as case studies [4].
>
> Best regards,
> Vaclav
>
> [1] http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijgi4020942
> [2] http://geospatial.ncsu.edu/osgeorel
> [3] http://courses.ncsu.edu/gis582/common
> [4] http://teachosm.org
>
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