[Ica-osgeo-labs] Using Collective Knowledge for the Common Good

Tue Mar 10 03:41:05 PDT 2015

As some say in the USA -- "awww... shucks." Thanks Suchith.

Moving forward on my end:

1) As we speak, I'm working on this letter of inquiry to US NSF on
establishing a GeoForAll Research Coordination Network. I'm making
progress, but am going to need help highlighting some key state-of-the-art,
research needs around Urban Science/City Analytics that we would work on as
a network. This is not my area. If someone can help me write a short
section for this letter on that topic, that would be very helpful.

2) New Development - 'Outernet'?

I had a great phone conversation the other day with the Chief Operating
Officer, Thane Richard, of the emerging "Outernet" [1].

Outernet is a private sector effort to stream *open access* data to the
world using satellites, similar to the way GPS works, using (open source)
receivers called "lanterns". An interesting question is what to stream and
how it gets chosen, given limited bandwidth. Their goal is not to replace
the Internet but to reach the 2/3s of the world that has no Internet access
and it will be 1-way streaming, like radio.
They already have coverage in North America, Europe and many parts of
Africa.

This is early in this development of this satellite system, and the data
they can stream currently is limited. But this is an opportunity to
potentially be on the ground-floor of something, I think, could be very
important. I mentioned GeoForAll and there is a possibility of adding some
selected GeoForAll material to their signal. Not sure yet.  One possibility
could be overview information on the LiveDVD and how to write to get DVDs
sent to them.

Thane says he'd be willing to provide a letter of support in a grant
proposal related to GeoForAll. So the Research Coordination Network could
include trying to send GeoForAll urban or local government geospatial to
towns that do not have Internet access. This is all new and may not be
possible for bandwidth currently is very small... but could be an
interesting development and this could change in future years as they gain
momentum.

I'm hoping to alpha test their newest receiver and wifi broadcaster called
a "Pillar" in the next month or two and try their service out to see how it
works.

Cheers all,

Charlie Schweik

[1] https://www.outernet.is/en/

On Tue, Mar 10, 2015 at 11:14 AM, Suchith Anand <
Suchith.Anand at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:

> Colleagues,
>
> Let me also take this opportunity to also thank Charlie and the whole
> GeoForAll - Global Educator of the Year Award 2015 committee for their help
> and inputs for this initiative which will have long term positive impacts
> in education efforts globally.
>
> I would like to also congratulate Charlie ( i just saw this today!) on his
> winning the international award honouring the late political economist
> Elinor Ostrom, the only woman to date to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in
> Economic Sciences.
>
> I am really grateful to Charlie's strong support for all our Open Geo
> Education efforts from the very start.  On behalf of "Geo for All'
> community, we are really proud and happy that Charlie has been recognised
> as one of the top 50 innovators in education for his cutting-edge use of
> open-source software in the classroom and as a research tool.
>
> Details at http://www.umass.edu/researchnext/feature/open-source
>
> "Open Education Week" is a great opportunity for all of us to reflect on
> the bigger purpose and join forces in using our collective knowledge to
> help open education opportunities to all to enable a better future for all.
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Suchith
> ________________________________________
> From: Anand Suchith
> Sent: Monday, March 09, 2015 7:27 AM
> To: ica-osgeo-labs at lists.osgeo.org; discuss at lists.osgeo.org
> Subject: GeoForAll - Global Educator of the Year Award 2015
>
> Dear colleagues,
>
> On the occasion of Open Education Week 2015
> http://www.openeducationweek.org/ , "Geo for All" community
> http://www.geoforall.org would to like to thank all educators worldwide
> who have made contributions to open education efforts and being good global
> citizens by helping spread the benefits of education to all.
>
> We are very happy to announce the nominees for the GeoForAll - Global
> Educator of the Year Award 2015. This is an opportunity for us to thank
> colleagues for their excellent contributions to Openness in Education
> principles in the Geo domain.
>
> Congratulations to the following individuals or teams who received one or
> more nominations for the 2015 GeoForAll Global Educator of the Year Award
> In no particular order, the nominees are:
>
>
> INDIVIDUALS
>
> - Daniel Baldwin, Costa Rica International Academy, Costa Rica, for his
> course on “Mapping the Mangroves” [1]
> - Phil Davis, DelMar College, Texas, USA for his ongoing leadership and
> tireless efforts leading the creation of the GeoAcademy [2]
> - Genovevea Laurente, Consultora Calixto, Uruguay and gvSIG Batovi for the
> course “Sistemas de Información Geográfica con uso de datos abiertos
> orientado a la educación,” or in English, “Geographic Information Systems
> for Education using Open Data” [3]
> - Kurt Menke, Bird’s Eye View GIS, Alburquerque, NM, USA, for his
> Introduction to Open Source and Web Mapping course he developed for Central
> New Mexico Community College [4]
> - Sterling Quinn, Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, USA, for
> his course on “Open Web Mapping” [5]
> - Giorgio Zamboni, Politecnico di Milano, Como campus, Italy for his
> “PoliCrowd: A Social Network App with NASA World Wind. [6]
>
>
> TEAMS
>
> - Environmental Information Centre GRID-Warsaw; UNEP/GRID Warsaw for their
> EduGIS Academy [7]
> - Open Source Geospatial Laboratory team at ETH Zurich, Switzerland for
> their Interactive Web Maps course [8]
> - Shashi Shekhar and Brent Hecht, Computer Science, University of
> Minnesota, USA for their Massive Open Online Course “From GPS and Google
> Maps to Spatial Computing” [9]
> - Lluis Vicens (SIGTE,Spain), Toni Hernandez (SIGTE, Spain), Jeremy Morley
> (University of Nottingham,UK), Alberto Romeu (Prodevelop) and Jorge Sanz
> (Prodevelop) for their GIS Open Source Summer School at the University of
> Girona in Spain [10]
> - Ricardo Olivira, Raphael Moreno - FOSS4G lab, University of Colorado,
> Denver USA for their PostgreSQL/PostGIS course materials [11]
> - Raquel Sosa, Rosario Casanova and Jorge Franco, for their gvSIG
> Educa/Batovi effort in Uruguay [12]
> - Kurt Menke - Brids Eye View, Nate Jennings Urbandale Spatial, Jon Van
> Hoesen Green Mtn College, Rick Smith Texas A&M, and Phil Davis, Delmar
> College (all in USA) for their GeoAcademy development efforts [13]
>
> All of these individuals and teams should be celebrated for their efforts.
> Just being nominated is an honour.
>
> The award committee now has the very difficult task of selecting the
> GeoForAll Educator of the Year [14] out of this well deserving list of
> nominees. This year’s selections (possibly an individual and a team award)
> will be announced at the FOSS4G 2015- Europe "Open Innovation for Europe"
> conference at Como, Italy in July . Details at
> http://europe.foss4g.org/2015/
>
> Congratulations again to all the nominees and we encourage you to list
> this nomination honour in your CVs.
>
> Happy Open Education Week 2015 everyone.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Prof. Charlie Schweik,  on behalf of the GeoForAll Educator Award
> Selection Committee:
>
> Prof. Georg Gartner (President, ICA)
> Jeff McKenna (President, OSGeo)
> Chen Jun (President, ISPRS)
> Prof. Maria Antonia Brovelli (Italy)
> Dr. Xinyue Ye (USA)
> Dr. Luciene Delazari (Brazil)
> Dr. Tuong-Thuy Vu (Malaysia)
> Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan (Japan/India)
> Prof. Ivana Ivánová (Brazil)
> Jeroen Ticheler (The Netherlands)
> Dr. Serena Coetzee (South Africa)
> Prof. Helena Mitasova (USA)
> Anne Ghisla (Germany)
> Patrick Hogan (USA)
> Dr Suchith Anand (UK/India)
>
>
>
> REFERENCES
>
> [1]
> https://arabic.oercommons.org/EN/authoring/4247-mapping-the-mangroves-mwl/view
> [2] https://foss4geo.wordpress.com/
> [3] http://ipesvirtual.dfpd.edu.uy/course/category.php?id=81
> [4] http://catalog.cnm.edu/
> [5] https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog585/
> [6] http://geomobile.como.polimi.it/policrowd/
> [7] http://edugis.pl/en/for-teachers/guide
> [8] http://osgl.ethz.ch/osgl/Webmaps.html
> [9] https://www.coursera.org/course/spatialcomputing
> [10] http://www.sigte.udg.edu/summerschool2014/
> [11] http://geospatial.ucdenver.edu/foss4g/training/tutorials
> [12]
> https://www.fig.net/pub/monthly_articles/January_2013/gvsig_batovi_an_educational_gis.pdf
> [13] https://foss4geo.wordpress.com
> [14]
> http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/GeoForAll_Global_Educator_of_the_Year_Award_2015
>
>
>
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-- 
Charlie Schweik

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Dept of Environmental Conservation and Center for Public Policy and
Administration

Personal website: http://people.umass.edu/cschweik
Publications: http://works.bepress.com/charles_schweik/

Author, Internet Success: A Study of Open Source Software (MIT Press, 2012)
- see http://tinyurl.com/d3e4545

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