OSGeo - User contributions [en]

Talk:Core Curriculum Project

2006-03-20T03:05:12Z

Wiki-Dhastings:

''Originally posted by [[User:Nedhorning]]''

I wonder if "Core Curriculum" is what we really mean. I think of "Core Curriculum" as a set of resources to support a single topic, even if that topic is quite broad. For OSGeo I’m not sure what the “Core” is. I think we would want material to support a broad range of topics that would be difficult to bring under a single theme. Would something like the Education and Outreach Project make more sense?

Ned, I think that "Educational Outreach" might make sense. I am assuming the focus of this group would be on supporting teaching geospatial topics using open source software, right? Does this group want to address outreach to university based researchers too, or is that a different topic (I think so). --[[User:Warmerda|Warmerda]] 04:13, 20 February 2006 (CET)

''Supportive comments by [[User:David Hastings]]''

I agree with the question and response to date - is the desired goal another "Core Curriculum?" I wonder if "Educational Outreach" or "Learning Resources on GIS" might better fill gaps. I would hope that learning resources might include:
1. Physical training - with links to short courses and full diploma or degree programmes featuring open-source GIS; but also
3. Virtual training - by creating Web-based training materials.

The latter was my goal in 1994 when I adapted my somewhat popular short course to the Web, creating the CyberInstitute Short-Course in GIS (See Hastings, 1994 et seq. in the main article's reference list). I wanted to use and support open-source or low cost GIS (e.g. GRASS, Idrisi and OSU Map Analysis Package in those days - with the latter used in 1-day courses because of its extreme simplicity) for teaching scientific (as opposed to "merely" cartographic) GIS. I had developed a textbook for my short courses, but wanted to use Web-based approaches first, using my textbook as filler when I could not find adequate materials elsewhere on the Web. The approach generally worked, though there are still many fundamentals on GIS that are in my textbook (and the textbooks of others) that I cannot find on the Web. Nevertheless, the CyberInstute probably helped to "train" about 100K "students" until NOAA significantly reorganized that part of its Website 3 years after my move to the UN in Bangkok. (Please note that when I ported materials from my (copyright) textbook to the Web, I contributed those materials to the non-copyright public domain, so the archived short course could be put up on this site - after updating links, etc. - as a sacrificial first draft virtual GIS short course - if so desired here.)

A current virtual course might include a virtual textbook, with integrated practical exercises (teaching GIS principles, practices and applications while emphasizing open-source software). Of course, now such a course can be stronger on Web mapping and Web GIS. It can include text and tutorial materials posted elsewhere on the Web, supplemented by self-hosted materials. It could include tests - and perhaps have the tests include awareness-increasing materials on relative benefits/costs of open-source vs. proprietary or high-priced software licensing/support.

I am not sure that another "core curriculum" is needed so much as the implementation of some form of curriculum. With that implementation might come suggestions for modifying existing "core curricula" in which case an argument could then be made that a new "core curriculum" might be appropriate for an open-source group to work on.

One of the beauties of the Open-Source community is the ability to get virtually instant support - and not have to wait for an answer from a corporate call centre. When I installed Linux for the first time, I found that I could search the comp.os.linux discussion group archives, and EVERY TIME discover (surprise!) that someone had already asked my question, and that someone else had already answered it in detail. I believe that this should be one objective of an Open-Source geomatics community - to provide on-line knowledge helping newcomers to learn (1) geomatics and (2) the particular software packages that they want to learn. To me, it's very desirable for people to do this virtually as well as in person at physical training institutes/courses - which hopefully will also be featured on an "Educational Outreach" site. Ideally, this will also help instructors in brick-and-mortar learning institutions to adapt such materials for their own classroom and laboratory use.
--[[User:DHastings|David Hastings]] 13:55, 17 March 2006 (Thai Time => GMT +7 hours)

''More comments by [[User:AJolma]] 23:50, 17 March 2006 Finnish Time''

I also like the support in OS community. As David says, it is often in the
discussion archives, which often can be searched with general search tools
but sometimes not. How to make that resource more accessible? First thing to do
would be to put direct links to the archives. Other things would be to
make FAQ's or indexes?

''Added by [[User:David Hastings]] 10:00, 20 March 2006 (Thai Time => GMT +7 hours)

Good idea for links and a FAQ. The FAQ could perhaps be supported by a sequence of illustrative archive searches.

Core Curriculum Project

2006-03-20T03:00:16Z

Wiki-Dhastings: Moved the CyberInstitute Short Course from "books" (as it is a virtual book) to "existing work" - arguably a more appropriate location, comparing it with the current entries in those two fields.

''This project might be renamed to "Educational & Curriculum" or "Educational Outreach" or "Learning Resources on GIS".''

== Mission ==

The project aims at creating and promoting curriculum material that supports the goals of the Foundation. The intent is to provide material that is accessible by a broad audience including academia, professionals, and the general public. Material supported through this project should directly or indirectly build and strengthen the open source geospatial user and developer communities. This can be accomplished by integrating the use of OSGeo endorsed tools in curricula that teach geospatial concepts and applications as well as the creating curricula to teach skills necessary for people to actively participate in supported OSGeo software and data projects.

=== Comment on Wiki Communication Format ===
[[User:Arnulf Christl | I]] am very happy that this discussion did not yet dissolve into a mailing list. I strongly believe that we should try to keep it in Wiki-style as long as possible. It is a lot easier to get an overview of what is going on this way. For more specific and short term notices one(!) mailing list will be good for sure, but especailly for longer term development this Wiki will be more valuable.

== Approach ==

The Core Curriculum Project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation is currently in the "definition phase". ([[some comments]])

'''Likely scenario'''
* Information gathering
* Develop list of potential participants
* Invite people/organizations to express interest
* Discuss potential charter and project name.
* Present charter to OSGeo Board for approval.
** Charter should probably have "Terms of Reference" - i.e. what the group will do
** Charter should probably have an initial list of participants/organizations (no need for membership)
** Charter should name a Chair, and optionally a Vice-Chair or co-Chair and some initial members.
* Assuming project is approved, or even before it is - Get to work!

== Comments ==

* Ned Horning's comments [[Some_comments|are here]].

* From Helena Mitasova
I read Ned comments - if you look at NCGIA Core Curriculum, it is very broad, so I suggest to keep at least the word Curriculum there (drop Core)--if we want to stress education in general, how about calling it Education and Curriculum Project. It would be great if we could build a curriculum that people who teach at universities and colleges could use to build OSGEO courses and programs (NCGIA curriculum linked in
the docuemnt is a good example). For example, if I had to teach geospatial analysis using GRASS, I am OK, but if I wanted to include a section about Mapserver a curriculum section prepared by somebody who has a lot of experience with it would be a great help.

* From Charlie Schweik
Since I am new to this group and have been introduced via my email address, for the group's information let me give you a short status on what I am up to. I am a faculty at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the Department of Natural Resources Conservation. Right now I have two part-time students helping me develop some tutorials on Q-GIS. I have been teaching an Intro to GIS course for some time but am
relatively new to OS GIS products, so I'll be learning. I am planning on offering in April-May sessions to my students an overview to Q-GIS, and then some tutorials on fundamentals like georeferencing a scanned map, online digitizing, getting GPS data overlaid, etc. I see this as an entry point toward the use of GRASS. My ultimate goal over the next 6-8 months is to have some kind of distance learning material developed for use in an "Intro to OS GIS" online course offered out of my institution next Spring 2007. Having done research in Nepal for several years, part of my motivation for doing this was to help my colleagues there who desperately need GIS but face serious budgetary problems. I am not exactly sure how this will work under the context of my University's distance learning program. But I am a great proponent of open access and hope to use some kind of open content license (e.g., creativecommons.org) and see great value in helping move this project forward by contributing the material here to this broader educational effort. I need to see what kinds of requirements my university has related to material and an "official" online course that might get in the way of this vision. I had always envisioned making my material available somehow (e.g., MIT Open Courseware, FreeGIS.org, etc.) so the establishment of this OSGeo Curriculum and Education project is exciting to me. In short, I hope I can figure out how to use what I am doing to help this project and perhaps through this effort whatever we develop can be improved by the community here.

* From Ari Jolma
Gary Watry from FSU has prepared a 65 page Quantum GIS tutorial, which could be useful, at least duplicate work should be avoided. I got it from him directly, as far as I know it is not yet on the web.

Concerning the curriculum and education project in general. I think we don't want to do something similar as NCGIA website, which, by the way, is not linked to any specific software as far as I see.

I try to be inpartial in my teaching, which is often difficult in this field and may lead to confusion on the students part sometimes on software issues. I also try to teach theory as opposed to practical use of software. So I have problems trying to figure out what is it that we should produce. I think tutorials like Gary's are good. Another good idea could be complete worked out examples, which the students can re-do, perhaps on their own time (distance learning) or without too much tutoring in a computer classroom. I've done a few like that (for example non-point source modeling and travel time analysis) but they still need quite a lot of tutoring. One problem I have is that as the software develops so fast (and I've used mostly my own..) the procedure changes slightly from year to year.

Using free tools in distance learning is really good because students can freely install their own copies of the software. On the other hand, for example my software is currently Linux-only, so it is not practical with many people. => There's a common interest with the OSGeo project creating installation packages.

I'd like to have some sort of timetable and agreed ways of working: mostly email or mostly wiki?

* From Helena Mitasova (in response to Charlie)
My idea in that respect was to use it to outline what to teach in different units (that is what NCGIA does) and then link to it a material that shows how to do it in a specific software using selected data. So for example we can have a unit on DEMs and topographic analysis
- the Curriculum will outline what is included under that unit and that can then be linked to several materials:
- general theory including equations and algorithms (this can be just a link to a relevant chapter in FreeGISBook)
- teaching material for use with GRASS
- teaching material for use with SAGA
- whatever else will people contribute to support this unit.

In this way we can minimize redundancy, cover number of different software packages and it will have an additional benefit that you can compare and see what would be the best for the class - e.g. topoanalysis in one package maybe more suited for natural resources students a different one would be better for computer science.

* From Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan
I think Curriculum, Education and Capacity Building initiatives
related to OSGEO could be broken down to three (or more) phases

;Phase 1 Short term (six months)
:a) Assimilation of existing tutorial, lecture notes, training documents, presentations that are available or could be made available under Open Document or Creative Commons License.

:b) Discuss how Curriculum can be structured with existing resources. Identify gaps for developing new material.

;Phase 2 Medium term (one year)
:a) Setup a e-learning portal (www.moodle.org) to manage existing course material and obtain user feedback. Have been experimenting with Moodle recently and we are trying to put together a online training course based on some of the material that we developed earlier. Could help with hosting a Moodle site if necessary (http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/elearn/)

:b) Develop multi-media contents (animations, screen casting), data set for tutorial etc to facilitate self-learning.

;Phase 3 Long term (two three years)

:a) Develop standardized mechanism for testing (question banks, quiz, assignments etc). Moodle is quite good for this purpose

:b) Translation to local language and collection of datasets for geographic locations some language locales. Working with datasets that the candidate is familiar with can make learning easier.

:c) Initial review and improvement of contents and possible establishment of OSGEO Virtual University to cater to education, testing and certification of OSGEO Engineer.

* From Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan
We had discussed issues about Accredited Professional training before, I reproduce some of the thoughts below.
An OSGEO-CE (OSGEO- Certified Engineer), something in the lines of, PostgreSQL-CE, RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). Having a OSGEO with tie-ups to some Universities,Academic societies, Industry, that could

a) design and market courseware and educational material
b) assure quality
c) provide accreditation to institutions that will start the course and also training to instructors at such institutes.
d) Evolve standardized mechanism for testing and certificate of candidates
c) Issue acrredited certification to successful candidates and provide placement counseling.

I think there is a market for such packaged educational and career solutions at least in Asia. I know of at least a few institutes in Aiaa that have been set-up during the last two years and have successfully (at least in term of candidate intake, the course content leaves a lot to be desired) implemented similar business model for proprietary Geoinfomrtics solutions.

Among numerous benefits that such a initiative would bring about, the one most important would be that it would help generate a pool of qualified professionals and developer who could in turn enrich the OSGEO Community.

Some additional thoughts and info about Professional Certification for OSGEO

a) A Japanese company started a Professional certification for PostgreSQL since 1st March 2005.
Details about the Certification are available at http://osb.sra.co.jp/postgresqlce/about_en.html
The testing is managed by Pearson VUE(http://www.vue.com/).
Details are available at http://www.vue.com/sra/ As per http://osb.sra.co.jp/postgresql-ce/news_en.html#20050224

b)Linux Professional Certification (http://www.lpi.org/en/home.html) offers accredited training and conducts training thru LPI approved training center the worldover. Candidates can register to take LPI exams at Pearson VUE testing centres worldwide(http://www.vue.com/) and Thomson Prometric (http://securereg3.prometric.com/Welcome.aspx) "LPI holds special exam labs at major Linux and IT tradeshows and conferences around the world, often offering LPI certification exams for substantially reduced pricing or in some cases free of cost."

c) Bradford Learning (http://www.bradfordlearning.com/en/start_page.php)
also offers LPI certification apart from various others including
apache, samba, mysql etc.

d) Some other listed as LPI sponsors (http://www.lpi.org/en/sponsors.html) also offer/manage Professional certification

* From David Hastings

I wonder if existing core curricula could be considered as relatively adequate (unless a further assessment determines otherwise). On the other hand, educational/training support for OSS has generally received bad press - and this group could help make considerable progress on that front.

I don't fully agree with the bad press about OSS support. Indeed, I seem to remember that Info World gave Red Hat Linux an award several years back for its support services - partly to counter that bad press. I personally found extensive support when I first used GRASS (in 1987), first became a GRASS system manager (in 1988), first installed Linux and put GRASS on my first dual-boot PC (in 1994), first stumbled across file-level interoperability between two GISs (1995, between GRASS and Idrisi byte data files), etc. Much support has been virtual, through searches of discussion group archives.

Nevertheless, training support for OSS GIS could be stronger. I think this could be the greatest challenge, and opportunity, in the educational arena for an Open-Source Geospatial Foundation.

My attempt to answer this during 1994-2002 was the CyberInstitute Short-Course in GIS, which ran additionally until sometime last year, 3 years after I departed Boulder for Bangkok and the UN. I think that such a general approach, strengthened by the ideas and circumstances of this Foundation, could be a useful piece in the puzzle of OSS educational/training support.

Implementation of something like the CyberInstitute Short-Course could be part of Venka's outline item 1b in his discussion on implementation phases (2 discussions above this one). I'd suggest that the name (CyberInstitute Short-Course) be considered for continuation, as it gained a bit of respect over the decade-plus that it ran on the NOAA/NGDC Website.

Please see my additional comments on the discussion page.

* From Venkatesh Raghavan

a) What are the objectives of the Core Curriculum?

The main focus would be on providing a solid foundation on Geoinformatics technology using OSGEO tools as a means of education and self-learning.

b) Who will be the actual customer to adopt the core curriculum would it be the institution or organisation which would ultimately employ our graduates?

We can think of regular and corporate sponsored training. Also focus on tailor-made courses. Direct marketing to potential clients would require lot of efforts. Maybe we need to think of providing packaged educational solutions (franchising) to institutions and universities.

c) Which kind of institutions/companies would employ OSGEO Prodessionals?

Geoinformatics industry, Government Institutions, NPO, NGO, Self-employed, Geo-contents service providers etc.

d) What would be the entry strategy? Will it be with high end courses or low end courses – i.e. in terms of pricing, content, etc?

We have to see what is presently available and at what cost. Most of info available from Google Search are summarized at http://www.institute.redlands.edu/kemp/certificates.html#Related. Details of two institutions presently offering courses in India are http://www.gisinstitute.net/upcoming.asp?id=27 http://www.mapmiddleeast.org/2006/conference/training.htm and http://www.symbiosis.ac.in/sig/course.htm. One example from Thailand is available at http://www.gac.ait.ac.th/training/catalog.php. Pricing info at these sites could be serve as reference in the Asian context. The course contents have to be decided after more discussions. I think the course should be modular introduced in a phased manner 6-8 weeks

Level 1: Introduction to GIS and Web Mapping Technologies: Basically how to install, use, producing maps using OSGEO tools. Completion of this level could result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Application User”

Level 2: Geo-spatial Database Development: Open data standards, GML, Remote Sensing, GPS, mobile GIS, RDBMS. Completion of this level could result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Spatial Database Manager”

Level 3: Advanced Module for Application Developers: Spatial data analysis using GRASS, Web GIS application development,using Mapserver Script languages, PHP, Javascript, Python. Completion of this level could result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Application Developer”

Level 4: Advanced Module for Software Developers Developing Geoinformatics software and cross-platform GIS solutions e.g. GRASS Programing & Libraries, Data Exchange Libraries, C programming, Qt, Python, Plug-in development for QGIS. Software packaging (RPM etc.) Completion of this level will result in certification as “XXXYYY Certified Geoinfromatics Engineer”

Option to get a Master degree after completion for 4 Levels and conducting project research (in 16 to 18 weeks) could also be considered at a later stage.

* From [[User:Arnulf Christl | Arnulf Christl]
Seems like there is not much input from commercial organisations yet, so I might just add some thoughts. We have founded the [http://www.geo-consortium.de Geo-Consortium] several years ago and built a curriculum for the Open Source SOA OGC standarized SDI Stack that most of our customers (WebGIS and SDI) need. This is a highly compressed approach, we hammer the required information into the brains within a very short time for a very high amount of money). So this differs highly from the universitarian long term learning curve model. Is this kind of ad hoc learning/training relevant in the context of this Core Curriculum / Educational approach? If yes we are willing to contribute with presentations and learning material which is designed to take a software stack and get going asap.

I will need to talk to the document contributors who until now have managed to efficiently prevent me from putting everything under GNU FDL for reasons of market leadership - the idea/fear being that freely available material will lessen the need of people to actually pay (lots) for courses which is the main revenue generated by the Geo-Consortium. It is my opinion the leraning material itself without a trainer is not enough to get things done in as short a time as one week, also regarding that you need a running hardware infrastructure, etc. So it would not harm to make the material available for secondary use in universitarian courses. But I must explain this to my contributors, not you... :-)

== Potential Members ==
''If you add people/orgs to this list, please indicate whether you're adding yourself/your organization or whether you are "nominating" the person/organization as a potential member.''

=== Individuals ===
* Scott Emmons (added by Tyler): University of Northern British Columbia - emmons at unbc.ca.
* Ned Horning (added by self): American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation horning@amnh.org [http://www.geospatial.amnh.org www.geospatial.amnh.org]
* Ari Jolma (added by self): Helsinki University of Technology, Finland ari.jolma at tkk.fi
* Puneet Kishor (added by self): punkish at eidesis dot org; GeoAnalytics, Inc., soon to join [http://www.wisc.edu Univ of Wisconsin - Madison]
* Tyler Mitchell (added by markusN): Author of Web Mapping Illustrated [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping]. Seminars at local schools: University of Northern British Columbia, Canada [http://gis.unbc.ca] and College of New Caledonia, Canada [http://cnc.bc.ca]. Email tylermitchell at shaw.ca.
* Helena Mitasova (added by self): North Carolina State University, hmitaso@unity.ncsu.edu [http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/]
* Pericles Nacionales (added by self): University of Minnesota, naci0002 at umn dot edu
* Matthew Perry (added by self): University of California, Santa Barbara, perrygeo at gmail dot com
* Charlie Schweik (added by self): University of Massachusetts, Amherst, cschweik at pubpol dot umass dot edu [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik people.umass.edu/cschweik]
* Ian Turton (added by self): Penn State Uni, State College, developed Open Web Mapping course at Uni of Leeds, UK [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/] now modifying it for PennState. ianturton at gmail com [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work] [http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
* Venkatesh Raghavan (added by self): Osaka City University, Japan raghavan at .media.osaka-cu.ac.jp
* Aaron Racicot (added by self): Ecotrust, Portland Oregon USA - aaronr at ecotrust.org
* David Hastings (added by self): United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, email hastingsd at un.org
* Arnulf Christl (added by self): Geo-Consortium Training Services

=== Organizations ===

...

== Existing Work ==

* [http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/ The NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience]
* [http://www.r-s-c-c.org/ Remote Sensing Core Curriculum]
* [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik/research.html C. Schweik: 2005-2010. NSF CAREER Grant. “The Open Source/Content Commons as a New Paradigm for Collaborative Scientific Research: A Research and Teaching Agenda.”] - MN had some personal conversation at OSG'05
* [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/ Open Web Mapping course] - Ian Turton, this is under the creative commons despite living on a University web site, I just haven't got a good new home for it yet.
* D. Hastings, 1994 et seq., The CyberInstitute Short-Course on Geographic Information Systems. Formerly hosted at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov. Now archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20040221110141/www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/tools/gis/referenc.shtml

== GFOSS Books ==

* S. Erle, R. Gibson, and J. Walsh, 2005, Mapping Hacks. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 564 pages, ISBN 0596007035, http://mappinghacks.com

* S. Erle and R. Gibson, 2006, Google Maps Hacks. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 366 pages, ISBN: 0-596-10161-9, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/googlemapshks/

* B. Kropla, 2005, Beginning MapServer: Open Source GIS Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source). Apress, 448 pages, ISBN 1590594908, http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=443

* T. Mitchell, 2005, Web Mapping Illustrated: Using Open Source GIS Toolkits. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 367 pages, ISBN 0596008651, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping/

* M. Neteler and H. Mitasova, 2004, Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach. 2nd Ed. Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer, Boston. 424 pages, ISBN 1402080646, http://mpa.itc.it/grasstutor/index.phtml

All Members

2006-03-17T09:03:21Z

Wiki-Dhastings:

{| border="1" class="wikitable" style="margin: 1em 1em 1em 0; background: #f9f9f9; border: 1px #aaaaaa solid; border-collapse: collapse;"
! style="background:#efefef;" | Name
! style="background:#ffdead;" | Affiliations
! style="background:#efefef;" | OSGeo Projects
! style="background:#ffdead;" | (Lat,Lon)
! style="background:#efefef;" | About
|-
| Chris Holmes
| [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project], [http://geoserver.org GeoServer]
| [http://incubator.osgeo.org Incubator], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| (40.72,-74.00)
| I come from the Java side of the OSGeo fence, getting my start in GeoServer, where I was lead developer for a couple years, and GeoTools, where I still serve on the PMC. My time is made possible by [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project (TOPP)], a great non-profit in New York that has been the lead supporter of GeoServer for years now. I spent the last year in Zambia on a Fulbright Scholarship, looking at the potential for open source software to help implement spatial data infrastructures in developing countries. It was a bit of a failure, but I learned a ton, and I see a lot of potential for open source in developing countries, towards truly open spatial data infrastructures. I'm back at TOPP, in a new role as VP of Strategic Development, helping to grow the organization, and figuring out how to make our geospatial stuff self sustaining. Once that's rolling, I hope to reinvest extra revenue in to figuring out and building a truly open geospatial web. And just like apache and linux are the bedrock that the World Wide Web rests on, so too do I believe that the geospatial web necessarily must be built on a foundation of OS Geo software. My continuing thoughts on all of this can be found at http://cholmes.wordpress.com
|-
| Michael P. Gerlek
| [http://www.lizardtech.com LizardTech]
| [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee]
| (47.673166,-122.530143)
| Engineer at LizardTech, doing MrSID and JPEG 2000 stuff and playing with with the next generation of technologies for supporting raster data GIS workflows. Yes, we're a closed-software shop -- but we support and use open source and open standards. I think there is room in the world for both the open and closed development models, and I have a strong interest in helping "closed" companies understand the value of, and contribute to, the open software world. [[User:mpg]]
|-
| Frank Warmerdam
| Independent
| [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR], [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu MapServer], [http://incubator.osgeo.org Incubator], [http://board.osgeo.org Board]
| (45.45,-77.25)
| Lead developer of GDAL/OGR and freelance geospatial software developer.
|-
| Jason Birch
| [http://www.nanaimo.ca/ City of Nanaimo]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site], [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion & Visibility]
| (49.155, -124.005)
| I am a long-time GIS/IT/'Net junkie, and am currently working for the City of Nanaimo's IT department as a Sr. Applications Analyst (GIS Specialist). I am excited about what I see happening in the open source geospatial world, with OSGeo as a catalyst. [[User:Jasonbirch]]
|-
|Howard Butler
| [http://www.hobu.biz/ Hobu, Inc]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee],
| (42.00, -93.00)
| MapServer hacker, MTSC member. GDAL hacker. ESRI ArcSDE hack. Purveyor of Windows binary builds [[User:hobu]]
|-
| Markus Neteler
| [http://mpa.itc.it ITC-irst], [http://www.cealp.it CEA], [http://www.gdf-hannover.de GDF Hannover]
| [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion & Visibility]
| (46.06714, 11.15113)
| Developer of GRASS GIS, researcher at ITC-irst + CEA, Trento, Italy and co-founder of GDF Hannover [[User:neteler]]
|-
| R. Paul Warriner
| [http://www.orchardparkny.org/ Town of Orchard Park]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee]
| (43.17, -78.69)
| Network Coordinator, old oil field hand (really, I do know what a frac job is), started with remote data comm. from well sites in '84 as a truckdriver, turned computer jockey by Linux in '93, found ArcView 1.0 the same year (I think), and the rest is ..... (oh yeah, I did some of that Calculus, Organic Chemistry, and Thermo thingy stuff along the way). [[User:RPaulW]]
|-
|Bart van den Eijnden
| [http://www.osgis.nl/ OSGIS]
| [http://chameleon.maptools.org Chameleon],
| (52.0768396070808, 5.12454)
| Freelancer working with several open source GIS tools, mainly Chameleon, Mapserver and Geoserver.
[[User:bartvde]]
|-
| Helena Mitasova
| [http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/ North Carolina State University]
| [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
| (35.77, -78.69)
| Researcher at NCSU (geospatial technology, environmental modeling, sustainable development), Developer of GRASS GIS. [[User:Helena]]
|-
| Daniel Morissette
| [http://www.mapgears.com/ Mapgears]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR]
| (48.42, -71.04)
| Involved in MapServer, GDAL/OGR and most [http://maptools.org/ MapTools.org] projects, mostly around webmapping and data access and distribution. [[User:dmorissette]]
|-
| Ari Jolma
| [http://users.tkk.fi/~jolma/index.html TKK]
| [http://www.gdal.org GDAL/OGR], [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
| (60° 16' , 24° 47' 4'')
| Professor at TKK, Finland (geoinformatics, environmental information systems, water resources systems), [http://map.hut.fi/PerlForGeoinformatics/ just another Perl hacker] [[User:ajolma]]
|-
| Jeff McKenna
| [http://www.dmsolutions.ca DM Solutions Group]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer]
| (45.401397610, -75.725861625)
| MapServer documentation, [http://www.maptools/ms4w MS4W] maintainer, [http://www.maptools.org maptools] co-maintainer. [[User:jmckenna]]
|-
| Ian Turton
| [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work][http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
| [http://www.geotools.org GeoTools]
| (40.7932, -77.847)
| [http://www.geotools.org GeoTools] founder and developer, [http://www.geovistastudio.psu.edu GeoVistaStudio] benevolent dictator, [http://geoserver.org GeoServer] user. [[User:ianturton]]
|-
| David Blasby
| [http://topp.openplans.org The Open Planning Project], [http://geoserver.org GeoServer], [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| [http://geotools.org GeoTools]
| (varies)
| Currently, I'm the Project Lead for Geoserver and am on the GeoTools Project Management Committee. I'm just starting a GeoWiki (Public Participation GIS) (please contact me if you're interested). I was the orginal creator of PostGIS, and have contributed to several OS GIS projects, including JTS, JUMP, and Mapserver.
|-
| Andrey Kiselev
| "Radar" R&D Centre (Russia)
| GDAL/OGR
| (60.04,30.33)
| Freelance developer and contributor to GDAL/OGR project.
|-
| Helton Uchoa
| [http://www.geolivre.org.br Geolivre Community], [http://www.open3dgis.org Open 3D GIS Project]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee] and [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project Public Geospatial Data Project]
| (-22.96, -43.11)
| I'm a Geomatics Enginner and I work at [http://www.opengeo.com.br OpenGEO Company] as a GIS Specialist. I'm responsible for many GIS projects using FOSS and the OpenGIS Specifications in Brazil and I have some relevant papers and scientific articles presented in Brazilian and Latin-American conferences and published in scientific magazines. In last year, I have helped, as a teacher, introduce the GNU/FSF philosophy at the Transportation Engineering Department of IME ([http://www.ime.eb.br Military Institute of Engineering - IME], Brazil). I have worked in Geolivre Rio 2004 and 2005 as member of organization commitee. Now I'm working in [http://www.geolivre.org Geolivre Conference 2007]. [[User:Uchoa]]
|-
| Toru Mori
| [http://www.orkney.co.jp/english Orkney, Inc.]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://grass.itc.it GRASS GIS]
| (35.448, 139.642)
| President of Orkney, Inc. Advocate of Open Geospatial tools in Japan and Asia. Promote open geospatial data. [[User:moritoru]]
|-
| Allan Doyle
| [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO],[http://museum.mit.edu/cmp MIT Museum],[http://spg.gsfc.nasa.gov/ NASA Earth Science Data Systems Standards Process Group]
| [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Public_Geospatial_Data_Project Public Geospatial Data Project]
| (42.28, -71.24)
| President of [http://www.eogeo.org EOGEO] and [http://www.intl-interfaces.com International Interfaces], long-time geo-interoperability interests, opensourced (is that a verb?) [http://openmap.bbn.com OpenMap], originator of OGC testbed idea, Web Mapping Testbed, WMS spec editor, worked on WMS Context, [http://www.georss.org GeoRSS]. [http://www.eogeo.org/Members/adoyle more details]. [http://think.random-stuff.org Blog][[User:adoyle]]
|-
| Ned Horning
| [http://cbc.amnh.org/ Center for Biodiversity and Conservation], [http://www.amnh.org/ American Museum of Natural History]
| [http://wiki.osgeo.org/index.php/Core_Curriculum_Project Curriculum project]
|(43.9933, -73.0407)
|Program manager for [http://geospatial.amnh.org/ remote sensing/GIS]. Promoter of open source geospatial tools in the global conservation community.
|-
| Paul Spencer
| [http://www.dmsolutions.ca DM Solutions Group]
| [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/ MapServer], [http://chameleon.maptools.org Chameleon], [http://ka-map.maptools.org kaMap], [http://maptools.org/maplab/index.phtml MapLab], [http://maptools.org/ms4w/index.phtml MS4W], [http://openev.sourceforge.net/ OpenEV]
| (45.401397610, -75.725861625)
| CTO of DM Solutions Group, designer/developer/contributor to many open source packages, especially based on MapServer. Recent interest/focus is on AJAX clients for mapping applications. [[User:pagameba]]
|-
| Mark Lucas
| remotesensing.org
| [http://www.remotesensing.org remotesensing.org] and [http://www.ossim.org ossim]
| (27.9690219N, 080.5590534W altitude sea level + 5m)
| CTO, original founder of ImageLinks and remotesensing.org. Board of Directors [http://www.oss-institute.org/ Open Source Software Institute] and the [http://www.ncospr.org/ National Center for Open Source Policy and Research]. Member of Open Technology Development Tiger team for the Department of Defense (USA). Lead a team of talented developers on the OSSIM and [http://www.ossim.org/tiki-read_article.php?articleId=3 osgPlanet] projects. Previously spent 22 years in the United States Air Force and [http://www.nro.gov/ National Reconnaissance Office] and the [http://www.fas.org/irp/nro/hall3.htm Secretary of the Air Force Special Projects] organization working with various classified programs. Prior to Radiant Blue Technologies, was a Lead Scientist for Intelligence Data Systems, Titan Corporation, and L3-Communciations. [http://web.mac.com/mlucas17/iWeb/Site/Welcome.html Personal Web site]. [[User:mlucas17]]
|-
| Jo Walsh
| [http://okfn.org/geo/ Open Knowledge Foundation],[http://mappinghacks.com/ Mapping Hacks], [http://publicgeodata.org Public Geodata]
| Open Geodata committee
| (42.368297,-71.108696)
| Came to geospatial software through collaborative mapping on the semantic web work. Organising events to get geospatial hackers together with data-creating people and promote public access to state collected geodata. If you are in Europe please see [http://publicgeodata.org Public Geodata] and consider writing to an MEP about public domain data and "intellectual property rights" issues. If you collect GPS tracks, please consider uploading them to [http://openstreetmap.org/ OpenStreetmap] - my only real contribution to this project is to talk about it a lot. I co-wrote "Mapping Hacks" with Schuyler Erle and Rich Gibson, with a lot of contributions from OSGeo type of people. Last year wrote a lot of software using OSM and [http://openguides.org/ OpenGuides] with [[Mapserver]] to provide a basis for collaborative local "portal" type services on community wireless networks. Now more interested in doing collaborative writing and research projects. [[User:JoWalsh]]
|-
| Dave McIlhagga
| [http://www.dmsolutions.ca DM Solutions Group]
| [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee]
| (45.401397610, -75.725861625)
| President & CEO of DM Solutions Group. Active promoter of open source geospatial technologies. Led DM Solutions Group to become a major contributor and advocate of MapServer and development of key open source MapServer utilities including [http://chameleon.maptools.org Chameleon], [http://ka-map.maptools.org kaMap], [http://maptools.org/maplab/index.phtml MapLab], [http://maptools.org/ms4w/index.phtml MS4W]. Provided financial and resource support for setup of a key home for open source geospatial projects at [http://www.maptools.org MapTools]. Led the organizing committee for [http://www.omsug.ca/osgis2004/index.html OSGIS], the first Open Source Geospatial conference in North America which coincided with the second MapServer User Meeting. Spearheaded the integration of the two major open source geospatial conferences from North America and Europe/Asia, as the [http://www.foss4g2006.org/ Free and Open Source Software for Geoinformations] single international event to be held in Lausanne Switzerland. [[User:davemac]]
|-
| Pericles (Perry) Nacionales
| [http://land.umn.edu University of Minnesota]
| [http://webcommittee.osgeo.org Web Site Committee]
| (44.9873167, -93.1851500)
| Promoter of open source geospatial technologies specially in the field of natural resources management and conservation, advocate of open and interoperability standards, MTSC member, author of [http://mapserver.gis.umn.edu/docs/tutorial/tutorial/tutorial MapServer Tutorial].
|-
| Norman Vine
| Independent
|
| (41:31:38N, 70:39:43W)
| Independent software developer [[User:Nhv]]
|-
| Mike Adair
| [http://www.geoconnections.org/CGDI.cfm Natural Resources Canada/GeoConnections]
| [http://communitymapbuilder.org MapBuilder]
| (45.27, -75.75)
| Contributor and member of MapBuilder PMC. Interested primarily in AJAX client technology for mapping, but also in the whole SDI stack. [[User:madair]]
|-
| Stefan F. Keller
| University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR), [http://www.ifs.hsr.ch Institute for Software]
| [http://webgis.hsr.ch/javawps JavaWPS]
| (47.2240, 8.8181)
| Promotor of open source and commercial technologies specially in the field of information retrieval, databases, GIS and visualization. Advocate of open and interoperability standards, member of national GIS standardization (e-geo, SNV) and umbrella (SOGI) organizations. Creator of [http://wwww.geometa.info geometa.info], one of the first search engines for geospatial services (WMS), metadata and online maps (Lucene-based); contributor of geo-webservices for german Wikipedia. [[User:Sfkeller]]
|-
| [[User:Arnulf Christl | Arnulf Christl]]
| [http://www.ccgis.de CCGIS], [http://www.geo-consortium.de Geo-Consortium]
| [http://www.mapbender.org Mapbender], [http://www.umn-mapserver.de UMN MapServer (Germany)], [http://board.osgeo.org Board], [http://visibilitycommittee.osgeo.org Promotion and Visibility Committee]
| (7.0707, 50.7342)
| Mapbender PSC, Promoter of [http://www.gnu.org Free Software] and [http://www.osi.org Open Source] :-) Business (...and Open Source Software!)
|-
|V.RaviKumar
|Geologist
|OSGEO member
| 17° N 79° E
| A Geologist from India who is interested in FOSS software. GRASS in particular. Conducted a FOSS workshop at Hyderabad, India in May 2005. The workshop boosted our spirits with a large participation and good articles on various FOSS software. An entire session was for GRASS, Qgis software. Presently lecturing in various forums on the capability of GRASS and allied FOSS GIS. With the help of Free Software Foundation India, trying to spread awareness of GRASS GIS, GNU-Linux and FOSS. Countries like India have a lot to gain with the spread of FOSS.
|-
|David Hastings
|UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, Bangkok
|Member of original Grass Interagency Steering Committee, etc.
| 13.75°N 100.5°E
| A physicist/geophysicist/geological engineer who has used GRASS since 1987, and on the GRASS Interagency Steering Committee for the original public-domain package. I wrote the Linux Mini-HOWTO on GRASS-GIS (which is now woefully out of date); and taught short courses in scientific (as opposed to cartographic) GIS since 1980. In 1994 I moved my teaching to the Web, developing the CyberInstitute Short-Course on GIS. Currently, I'm at UN ESCAP. Open-Source is a great capacity- building environment for software communities worldwide. In developing countries, rather than being stuck merely teaching people to cut and paste stuff within a proprietary office suite, you can be part of the full development team, customizing the software to your community's needs, helping your country to have its own software development community - and hopefully making a satisfying living in the process.
|-
| Add yourself
| Everyone is welcome
| Just edit the wiki (login/join in upper right corner)
| Input lat/long here
| Copy and paste this entry, put it last, and change the one above to your information
|}

Core Curriculum Project

2006-03-17T08:25:44Z

Wiki-Dhastings:

== Mission ==

The project aims at creating and promoting curriculum material that supports the goals of the Foundation. The intent is to provide material that is accessible by a broad audience including academia, professionals, and the general public. Material supported through this project should directly or indirectly build and strengthen the open source geospatial user and developer communities. This can be accomplished by integrating the use of OSGeo endorsed tools in curricula that teach geospatial concepts and applications as well as the creating curricula to teach skills necessary for people to actively participate in supported OSGeo software and data projects.

== Approach ==

The Core Curriculum Project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation is currently in the "definition phase". ([[some comments]])

'''Likely scenario'''
* Information gathering
* Develop list of potential participants
* Invite people/organizations to express interest
* Discuss potential charter and project name.
* Present charter to OSGeo Board for approval.
** Charter should probably have "Terms of Reference" - i.e. what the group will do
** Charter should probably have an initial list of participants/organizations (no need for membership)
** Charter should name a Chair, and optionally a Vice-Chair or co-Chair and some initial members.
* Assuming project is approved, or even before it is - Get to work!

'''Other Ideas'''
* Ned Horning's comments [[Some_comments|are here]].

* From Helena Mitasova
I read Ned comments - if you look at NCGIA Core Curriculum, it is very broad, so I suggest to keep at least the word Curriculum there (drop Core)--if we want to stress education in general, how about calling it Education and Curriculum Project. It would be great if we could build a curriculum that people who teach at universities and colleges could use to build OSGEO courses and programs (NCGIA curriculum linked in
the docuemnt is a good example). For example, if I had to teach geospatial analysis using GRASS, I am OK, but if I wanted to include a section about Mapserver a curriculum section prepared by somebody who has a lot of experience with it would be a great help.

* From Charlie Schweik
Since I am new to this group and have been introduced via my email address, for the group's information let me give you a short status on what I am up to. I am a faculty at University of Massachusetts, Amherst in the Department of Natural Resources Conservation. Right now I have two part-time students helping me develop some tutorials on Q-GIS. I have been teaching an Intro to GIS course for some time but am
relatively new to OS GIS products, so I'll be learning. I am planning on offering in April-May sessions to my students an overview to Q-GIS, and then some tutorials on fundamentals like georeferencing a scanned map, online digitizing, getting GPS data overlaid, etc. I see this as an entry point toward the use of GRASS. My ultimate goal over the next 6-8 months is to have some kind of distance learning material developed for use in an "Intro to OS GIS" online course offered out of my institution next Spring 2007. Having done research in Nepal for several years, part of my motivation for doing this was to help my colleagues there who desperately need GIS but face serious budgetary problems. I am not exactly sure how this will work under the context of my University's distance learning program. But I am a great proponent of open access and hope to use some kind of open content license (e.g., creativecommons.org) and see great value in helping move this project forward by contributing the material here to this broader educational effort. I need to see what kinds of requirements my university has related to material and an "official" online course that might get in the way of this vision. I had always envisioned making my material available somehow (e.g., MIT Open Courseware, FreeGIS.org, etc.) so the establishment of this OSGeo Curriculum and Education project is exciting to me. In short, I hope I can figure out how to use what I am doing to help this project and perhaps through this effort whatever we develop can be improved by the community here.

* From Ari Jolma
Gary Watry from FSU has prepared a 65 page Quantum GIS tutorial, which could be useful, at least duplicate work should be avoided. I got it from him directly, as far as I know it is not yet on the web.

Concerning the curriculum and education project in general. I think we don't want to do something similar as NCGIA website, which, by the way, is not linked to any specific software as far as I see.

I try to be inpartial in my teaching, which is often difficult in this field and may lead to confusion on the students part sometimes on software issues. I also try to teach theory as opposed to practical use of software. So I have problems trying to figure out what is it that we should produce. I think tutorials like Gary's are good. Another good idea could be complete worked out examples, which the students can re-do, perhaps on their own time (distance learning) or without too much tutoring in a computer classroom. I've done a few like that (for example non-point source modeling and travel time analysis) but they still need quite a lot of tutoring. One problem I have is that as the software develops so fast (and I've used mostly my own..) the procedure changes slightly from year to year.

Using free tools in distance learning is really good because students can freely install their own copies of the software. On the other hand, for example my software is currently Linux-only, so it is not practical with many people. => There's a common interest with the OSGeo project creating installation packages.

I'd like to have some sort of timetable and agreed ways of working: mostly email or mostly wiki?

* From Helena Mitasova (in response to Charlie)
My idea in that respect was to use it to outline what to teach in different units (that is what NCGIA does) and then link to it a material that shows how to do it in a specific software using selected data. So for example we can have a unit on DEMs and topographic analysis
- the Curriculum will outline what is included under that unit and that can then be linked to several materials:
- general theory including equations and algorithms (this can be just a link to a relevant chapter in FreeGISBook)
- teaching material for use with GRASS
- teaching material for use with SAGA
- whatever else will people contribute to support this unit.

In this way we can minimize redundancy, cover number of different software packages and it will have an additional benefit that you can compare and see what would be the best for the class - e.g. topoanalysis in one package maybe more suited for natural resources students a different one would be better for computer science.

* From Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan
I think Curriculum, Education and Capacity Building initiatives
related to OSGEO could be broken down to three (or more) phases

;Phase 1 Short term (six months)
:a) Assimilation of existing tutorial, lecture notes, training documents, presentations that are available or could be made available under Open Document or Creative Commons License.

:b) Discuss how Curriculum can be structured with existing resources. Identify gaps for developing new material.

;Phase 2 Medium term (one year)
:a) Setup a e-learning portal (www.moodle.org) to manage existing course material and obtain user feedback. Have been experimenting with Moodle recently and we are trying to put together a online training course based on some of the material that we developed earlier. Could help with hosting a Moodle site if necessary (http://wgrass.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/elearn/)

:b) Develop multi-media contents (animations, screen casting), data set for tutorial etc to facilitate self-learning.

;Phase 3 Long term (two three years)

:a) Develop standardized mechanism for testing (question banks, quiz, assignments etc). Moodle is quite good for this purpose

:b) Translation to local language and collection of datasets for geographic locations some language locales. Working with datasets that the candidate is familiar with can make learning easier.

:c) Initial review and improvement of contents and possible establishment of OSGEO Virtual University to cater to education, testing and certification of OSGEO Engineer.

* From Prof. Venkatesh Raghavan
We had discussed issues about Accredited Professional training before, I reproduce some of the thoughts below.
An OSGEO-CE (OSGEO- Certified Engineer), something in the lines of, PostgreSQL-CE, RHCE (Red Hat Certified Engineer). Having a OSGEO with tie-ups to some Universities,Academic societies, Industry, that could

a) design and market courseware and educational material
b) assure quality
c) provide accreditation to institutions that will start the course and also training to instructors at such institutes.
d) Evolve standardized mechanism for testing and certificate of candidates
c) Issue acrredited certification to successful candidates and provide placement counseling.

I think there is a market for such packaged educational and career solutions at least in Asia. I know of at least a few institutes in Aiaa that have been set-up during the last two years and have successfully (at least in term of candidate intake, the course content leaves a lot to be desired) implemented similar business model for proprietary Geoinfomrtics solutions.

Among numerous benefits that such a initiative would bring about, the one most important would be that it would help generate a pool of qualified professionals and developer who could in turn enrich the OSGEO Community.

Some additional thoughts and info about Professional Certification for OSGEO

a) A Japanese company started a Professional certification for PostgreSQL since 1st March 2005.
Details about the Certification are available at http://osb.sra.co.jp/postgresqlce/about_en.html
The testing is managed by Pearson VUE(http://www.vue.com/).
Details are available at http://www.vue.com/sra/ As per http://osb.sra.co.jp/postgresql-ce/news_en.html#20050224 "Fujitsu Inc. is promoting 400 employees to take PostgreSQL CE"

b)Linux Professional Certification (http://www.lpi.org/en/home.html) offers accredited training and conducts training thru LPI approved training center the worldover. Candidates can register to take LPI exams at Pearson VUE testing centres worldwide(http://www.vue.com/) and Thomson Prometric (http://securereg3.prometric.com/Welcome.aspx) "LPI holds special exam labs at major Linux and IT tradeshows and conferences around the world, often offering LPI certification exams for substantially reduced pricing or in some cases free of cost."

c) Bradford Learning (http://www.bradfordlearning.com/en/start_page.php)
also offers LPI certification apart from various others including
apache, samba, mysql etc.

d) Some other listed as LPI sponsors (http://www.lpi.org/en/sponsors.html) also offer/manage Professional certification

* From David Hastings

I wonder if existing core curricula could be considered as relatively adequate (unless a further assessment determines otherwise). On the other hand, educational/training support for OSS has generally received bad press - and this group could help make considerable progress on that front.

I don't fully agree with the bad press about OSS support. Indeed, I seem to remember that Info World gave Red Hat Linux an award several years back for its support services - partly to counter that bad press. I personally found extensive support when I first used GRASS (in 1987), first became a GRASS system manager (in 1988), first installed Linux and put GRASS on my first dual-boot PC (in 1994), first stumbled across file-level interoperability between two GISs (1995, between GRASS and Idrisi byte data files), etc. Much support has been virtual, through searches of discussion group archives.

Nevertheless, training support for OSS GIS could be stronger. I think this could be the greatest challenge, and opportunity, in the educational arena for an Open-Source Geospatial Foundation.

My attempt to answer this during 1994-2002 was the CyberInstitute Short-Course in GIS, which ran additionally until sometime last year, 3 years after I departed Boulder for Bangkok and the UN. I think that such a general approach, strengthened by the ideas and circumstances of this Foundation, could be a useful piece in the puzzle of OSS educational/training support.

Implementation of something like the CyberInstitute Short-Course could be part of Venka's outline item 1b in his discussion on implementation phases (2 discussions above this one). I'd suggest that the name (CyberInstitute Short-Course) be considered for continuation, as it gained a bit of respect over the decade-plus that it ran on the NOAA/NGDC Website.

Please see my additional comments on the discussion page.

== Potential Members ==
''If you add people/orgs to this list, please indicate whether you're adding yourself/your organization or whether you are "nominating" the person/organization as a potential member.''

=== Individuals ===
* Scott Emmons (added by Tyler): University of Northern British Columbia - emmons at unbc.ca.
* Ned Horning (added by self): American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation horning@amnh.org [http://www.geospatial.amnh.org www.geospatial.amnh.org]
* Ari Jolma (added by self): Helsinki University of Technology, Finland ari.jolma at tkk.fi
* Puneet Kishor (added by self): punkish at eidesis dot org; GeoAnalytics, Inc., soon to join [http://www.wisc.edu Univ of Wisconsin - Madison]
* Tyler Mitchell (added by markusN): Author of Web Mapping Illustrated [http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping]. Seminars at local schools: University of Northern British Columbia, Canada [http://gis.unbc.ca] and College of New Caledonia, Canada [http://cnc.bc.ca]. Email tylermitchell at shaw.ca.
* Helena Mitasova (added by self): North Carolina State University, hmitaso@unity.ncsu.edu [http://skagit.meas.ncsu.edu/~helena/]
* Pericles Nacionales (added by self): University of Minnesota, naci0002 at umn dot edu
* Matthew Perry (added by self): University of California, Santa Barbara, perrygeo at gmail dot com
* Charlie Schweik (added by self): University of Massachusetts, Amherst, cschweik at pubpol dot umass dot edu [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik people.umass.edu/cschweik]
* Ian Turton (added by self): Penn State Uni, State College, developed Open Web Mapping course at Uni of Leeds, UK [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/] now modifying it for PennState. ianturton at gmail com [http://www.geovista.psu.edu/members/turton/index.html work] [http://pennspace.blogspot.com/ blog]
* Venkatesh Raghavan (added by self): Osaka City University, Japan raghavan at .media.osaka-cu.ac.jp
* Aaron Racicot (added by self): Ecotrust, Portland Oregon USA - aaronr at ecotrust.org
* David Hastings (added by self): United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific, email hastingsd at un.org

=== Organizations ===

...

== Existing Work ==

* [http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/ The NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience]
* [http://www.r-s-c-c.org/ Remote Sensing Core Curriculum]
* [http://people.umass.edu/cschweik/research.html C. Schweik: 2005-2010. NSF CAREER Grant. “The Open Source/Content Commons as a New Paradigm for Collaborative Scientific Research: A Research and Teaching Agenda.”] - MN had some personal conversation at OSG'05
* [http://www.geog.leeds.ac.uk/courses/postgrad/geog5780/ Open Web Mapping course] - Ian Turton, this is under the creative commons despite living on a University web site, I just haven't got a good new home for it yet.

== GFOSS Books ==

* S. Erle, R. Gibson, and J. Walsh, 2005, Mapping Hacks. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 564 pages, ISBN 0596007035, http://mappinghacks.com

* S. Erle and R. Gibson, 2006, Google Maps Hacks. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 366 pages, ISBN: 0-596-10161-9, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/googlemapshks/

* D. Hastings, 1994 et seq., The CyberInstitute Short-Course on Geographic Information Systems. Formerly hosted at http://www.ngdc.noaa.gov. Now archived at http://web.archive.org/web/20040221110141/www.ngdc.noaa.gov/seg/tools/gis/referenc.shtml

* B. Kropla, 2005, Beginning MapServer: Open Source GIS Development (Expert's Voice in Open Source). Apress, 448 pages, ISBN 1590594908, http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=443

* T. Mitchell, 2005, Web Mapping Illustrated: Using Open Source GIS Toolkits. O'Reilly Media, Inc., 367 pages, ISBN 0596008651, http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/webmapping/

* M. Neteler and H. Mitasova, 2004, Open Source GIS: A GRASS GIS Approach. 2nd Ed. Kluwer Academic Publishers/Springer, Boston. 424 pages, ISBN 1402080646, http://mpa.itc.it/grasstutor/index.phtml

Core Curriculum Project

2006-03-17T08:25:01Z

Wiki-Dhastings:

Talk:Core Curriculum Project

2006-03-17T07:29:19Z

Wiki-Dhastings:

Talk:Core Curriculum Project

2006-03-17T07:15:27Z

Wiki-Dhastings:

''Originally posted by [[User:Nedhorning]]''

I wonder if "Core Curriculum" is what we really mean. I think of "Core Curriculum" as a set of resources to support a single topic, even if that topic is quite broad. For OSGeo I’m not sure what the “Core” is. I think we would want material to support a broad range of topics that would be difficult to bring under a single theme. Would something like the Education and Outreach Project make more sense?

Ned, I think that "Educational Outreach" might make sense. I am assuming the focus of this group would be on supporting teaching geospatial topics using open source software, right? Does this group want to address outreach to university based researchers too, or is that a different topic (I think so). --[[User:Warmerda|Warmerda]] 04:13, 20 February 2006 (CET)

''Supportive comments by [[User:David Hastings]]''

I agree with the question and response to date - is the desired goal another "Core Curriculum?" I wonder if "Educational Outreach" or "Learning Resources on GIS" might better fill gaps. I would hope that learning resources might include:
1. Physical training - with links to short courses and full diploma or degree programmes featuring open-source GIS; but also
3. Virtual training - by creating Web-based training materials.

The latter was my goal in 1994 when I adapted my somewhat popular short course to the Web, creating the CyberInstitute Short-Course in GIS (See Hastings, 1994 et seq. in the main article's reference list). I wanted to use and support open-source or low cost GIS (e.g. GRASS, Idrisi and OSU Map Analysis Package in those days - with the latter used in 1-day courses because of its extreme simplicity) for teaching scientific (as opposed to "merely" cartographic) GIS. I had developed a textbook for my short courses, but wanted to use Web-based approaches first, using my textbook as filler when I could not find adequate materials elsewhere on the Web. The approach generally worked, though there are still many fundamentals on GIS that are in my textbook (and the textbooks of others) that I cannot find on the Web. Nevertheless, the CyberInstute probably helped to "train" about 100K "students" until NOAA took the site down after my move to the UN in Bangkok. (Please note that when I ported materials from my (copyright) textbook to the Web, I contributed those materials to the non-copyright public domain, so the archived short course could be put up on this site - after updating links, etc. - as a sacrificial first draft virtual GIS short course - if so desired here.)

A current virtual course might include a virtual textbook, with integrated practical exercises (teaching GIS principles, practices and applications while emphasizing open-source software). Of course, now such a course can be stronger on Web mapping and Web GIS. It can include text and tutorial materials posted elsewhere on the Web, supplemented by self-hosted materials. It could include tests - and perhaps have the tests include awareness-increasing materials on relative benefits/costs of open-source vs. proprietary or high-priced software licensing/support.

I am not sure that another "core curriculum" is needed so much as the implementation of some form of curriculum. With that implementation might come suggestions for modifying existing "core curricula" in which case an argument could then be made that a new "core curriculum" might be appropriate for an open-source group to work on.

One of the beauties of the Open-Source community is the ability to get virtually instant support - and not have to wait for an answer from a corporate call centre. When I installed Linux for the first time, I found that I could search the comp.os.linux discussion group archives, and EVERY TIME discover (surprise!) that someone had already asked my question, and that someone else had already answered it in detail. I believe that this should be one objective of an Open-Source geomatics community - to provide on-line knowledge helping newcomers to learn (1) geomatics and (2) the particular software packages that they want to learn. To me, it's very desirable for people to do this virtually as well as in person at physical training institutes/courses - which hopefully will also be featured on an "Educational Outreach" site. Ideally, this will also help instructors in brick-and-mortar learning institutions to adapt such materials for their own classroom and laboratory use.
--[[User:DHastings|David Hastings]] 13:55, 17 March 2006 (Thai Time => GMT +7 hours)

Core Curriculum Project

2006-03-17T04:55:46Z

Wiki-Dhastings: