GeoForAll History

Markus Neteler moved that a "Education and Curriculum Committee" be designated to create and promote educational and curriculum material. This motion was accepted at the Fifth Board Meeting. See Education Contributors page for a list of contributors.

Mission

The project aims at creating and promoting educational and curriculum material that supports the goals of the Foundation. The intent is to provide appropriately licensed 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 FOSS4G 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 FOSS4G and free geospatial data projects. The committee also seeks cooperation with academic research projects.

• The Education Working Groups page lists focus areas for the committee.
  • The Educational Resources page will list and describe materials for educators.
  • The OSGeo in Research page discusses the research outreach.
  • The Core Curriculum Project page contains the initial brainstorming data.

Meetings

• Meeting dates are available via iCal-compatible calendar. You can access it using any iCal-compatible client (Apple iCal on Mac OSX, or Sunbird/Lightning/Mozilla calendar extension on any platform, or any other suitable client) by subscribing to the iCal URL.
• Minutes of previous meetings
• Sep 9
• FOSS4G2006 minutes

Work program

This section is intended as the main starting point for all edu commmittee activities. The work program is divided into work on developing data packages; development of OSGeo educational materials; work on certification of external educational materials, courses and curricula; and on other matters.

Data

• Develop free educational geospatial datasets. Work with Geodata Packaging Working Group.
• First project: Edu Data Package North Carolina
• Produce a data package for common use in tutorials: Edu Data Package

Education

Books and tutorials

• Work on OSGeo Edu Book1: Using Open Source GIS.
• Work on OSGeo Edu Book2: Developing Geospatial Solutions using Open Source.
• Work on OSGeo Edu Book3: Developing Web Mapping Solutions Using Open Source.
• Produce and maintain the Free GIS Book started by EOGEO: Free GIS Book

Courseware

• Develop an Intro to open source GIS course that could be offered as a distance-learning class.
• Collect links to free educational materials that advance the goals of OSGeo.
• Create installation packages for class-room teaching and distance learning courses. Work with Distribution Special Interest Groups
• Develop teaching materials (labs, tutorials, datasets, self-learning packages) that are aligned with existing curricula and courses.
• Develop HOWTO's for educators and students, e.g., "This task can be performed with GRASS this way, this one with mapserver this way", etc.
• Develop pre-prepared curricula utilizing open coursework and tools that could be used by teachers in their own classes.
• Compile a FAQ with answers for educators.
• Develop phased coursework (short, medium, and long term). Note the work done by, e.g. Geo-Consortium and GDF Hannover

Outreach

• Promote the free and open source alternatives in education. Communicate educational needs to other OSGeo groups, such as Public Geospatial Data Committee and Promotion and Visibility Committee.
• Develop the appropriate pages in Wikipedia.

Certification

• Teaching Material Evaluation Criteria
• Develop required know-how for an OSGeo-CE (OSGeo Certified Engineer). Note the work being done by The GIS Certification Institute. Work with Certification_Committee

Research

• Prepare and coordinate preparation of research papers about FOSS4G
• Link to research projects using and developing GFOSS
• Support researchers in their usage of GFOSS
• Start and support research projects that develop GFOSS
• Start and support research projects that help GFOSS developers

Other matters

• Get involved in existing initiatives to make sure that they fairly consider open source solutions.

Existing materials

• The NCGIA Core Curriculum in GIScience
• GITTA - Geographic Information Technology Training Alliance with material under Creative Commons license
• Wikipedia