Edu current initiatives

OSGeo Education and Curriculum Current Initiatives
The official website is online at http://www.geoforall.org - locations: Geo for All Map

1) Continue to build up our educational material federated content databases

 * OSGeo edu's educational content metadatabase -- a place for metadata and links to external material we are posting on our own websites


 * Webinar Series

2) Continue to expand the "Geo for All" initiative
This initiative is led by Suchith Anand.

In September 2011, the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo) and the International Cartographic Association (ICA) signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the aim of developing on a global basis collaboration opportunities for academia, industry and government organizations in open source GIS software and data. The MoU aims to provide expertise and support for the establishment of Open Source Geospatial Laboratories across the world for supporting development of open-source geospatial software, open data, open standards training and expertise. ISPRS joined this initiative in 2014. The motto of Geo for All Lab initiative is "Geo For All".Central to "Geo for All" mission is the belief that knowledge is a public good and Open Principles in Education will provide great opportunities for everyone. Details at MOU_ICA.

All interested organisations must be committed to contribute to the vision outlined in the Geo for All 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.

Current members of the Geo for All Labs Network
Feel free to join the mailing list http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/geoforall to follow the discussions among the participants of this initiative.

There are two tables, the first one for university/education/schools members ; second table for Industry ,Government and NGO partners of "Geo for All" mission, please select one accordingly.All interested organisations joining as "labs" or "partners"must be committed to contribute to the vision outlined in the Geo for All 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.

To add a new member copy an existing table entry (uses Mediawiki syntax) and input your information. The coordinates are WGS84 decimal coordinates in format longitude, latitude; if you don't add the coordinates following this rule your institution will not show on the Geo for All Map. The script to generate the map is available here http://www.geoforall.org/locations/update_geojson.py

Interested in joining or supporting the "Geo for All" initiative?
As the lab network is expanding fast, we have also setup nodal contacts for each regions:
 * 1) North America - Helena Mitasova (USA), Charles Schweik (USA), Phillip Davis (USA)
 * 2) South America - Sergio Acosta y Lara (Uruguay) and Silvana Camboim (Brazil)
 * 3) Europe -  Maria Brovelli (Italy) and Peter Mooney (Ireland)
 * 4) Asia (including Australia)- Tuong Thuy Vu (Malaysia/Vietnam) and Venkatesh Raghavan (Japan/India)
 * 5) Africa -  Rania Elsayed Ibrahim (Egypt), Serena Coetzee (South Africa) and Bridget Fleming (South Africa)

Email the regonial mailing lists and contact the region chairs to start the conversation and they will be happy to discuss details and guide you through the process. The full criteria at http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Geoforall_criteria

Key requirements for joining the "Geo for All Labs" initiative
(A) Your local organisation MUST BE COMMITTED TO CONTRIBUTE to the vision outlined in the Geo for All MoU [1]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 benefit and betterment of humanity as the key guiding principle and work towards the vision of the UN Millennium Development Goals [2] http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/ for building a better world.

(B) At least one person at your institution or organization should have strong knowledge in geospatial information science and vision to lead this activity and to build a team of people, locally. This person should act as a liaison officer to the initiative.

(C) There should be a website established for your Open Source Geospatial Laboratory listing current research, people, and training information. This web presence will allow other nodes in the network and the general public to understand and promote your local efforts around research and teaching of open source geospatial technologies and approaches. The website should be established within a year of the lab announcement and has to be maintained at least annually.

(D) GEO4ALL MAKES A COMMITMENT TO promote the initiative widely through OSGeo, ICA and ISPRS channels to help build up collaboration opportunities for the future. We will also do a joint press release to announce the initiative and start building collaborations. A primary collaborative initiative continues to be the creation and maintenance of shared open access educational resources and/or active participation in the open source software and data development. We will also add the information of all labs in the Open Geospatial Lab network node site within OSGeo website so that all participating labs urls are added and linked.

Open Education is the simple and powerful idea that the world’s knowledge is a public good and that technology in general and the Worldwide Web in particular provide an extraordinary opportunity for everyone to share, use, and reuse knowledge. Open educational resources (OERs) are free and openly licensed educational materials that can be used for teaching and learning. Open educational resources include full courses, course materials, modules, textbooks, streaming videos, tests, software, and any other tools, materials, or techniques used to support access to knowledge. We especially welcome applications from universities, educational institutes, government organisations in developing countries to help develop capacity building in geospatial education by establishing Open Source Geo Labs and support Open Education initiatives worldwide.

Meetings

 * Next meeting:


 * Past Meetings:
 * FOSS4G EU Como 2015 Preconference meeting
 * ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-09-05 18.00 UTC
 * ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-07-29 14.00 UTC
 * ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-05-02 14.00 UTC
 * ICA OSGeo Lab Network 2013-06-06 14.00 UTC

Geo for All Lab Network Research and Teaching Areas
ICA_OSGeo_Lab_Research_areas ICA_OSGeo_Lab_Teaching_areas