Education Committee Work Program

Below are the goals we've discussed for the year between FOSS4Geo Victoria and FOSS4Geo South Africa. What I'm trying to do is keep us organized and on task. I'm listing tasks we have completed at the bottom of the page so we have a history of what we've achieved for reporting in Cape Town next year. -- Charlie

GOAL A. DEVELOP EDUCATIONAL MATERIAL INVENTORY AND MANAGEMENT SYSTEM. CURRENT TASKS:

1. Develop a suggested tutorial creation standard for group review
   1. Deadline: December 1, 2007
   2. Subcommittee members: Charlie Schweik, Ned Horning, Alexander Stepanov
   3. Current status: Looking at the possibility of using DocBook and/or Open Office as the recommended file format.
2. Implement a versioning system strategy for tutorials hosted with OSGeo
   1. Subcommittee members: Charlie Schweik, others?
   2. Current status: Awaiting completion of #1 above. Considering using the OSGeo established Wiki/Moodle strategy. I (Charlie) am thinking we'll try and implement something using the tutorials we have created.
3. Contact various software projects who have not chimed in yet to see if they have tutorials to inventory
   1. Volunteers to take this on?
4. Do we try and organize the Educational_Content_Inventory content more?
   1. Perhaps after task 2 is completed.

GOAL B. DEVELOP A FREEGIS BOOK. CURRENT TASKS:

1. Victor, what are the current tasks here?
   1. Subcommittee members: Victor Olaya (lead), Landon Blake, who else?
   2. Deadline: Ongoing

GOAL C. DEVELOP OSGEO EDU COURSES? CURRENT TASKS:

1. This was suggested by Venka, and he proposed two:
   1. Intro to OSGeo Desktop GIS Software and
   2. Introduction to OSGeo Webmapping software.
   3. Subcommittee members? Are there people who want collaborate on these?

GOAL D. DEVELOP A PACKAGED CD FOR UBUNTU TO LAUNCH AT FOSS4G2008 in Cape Town

1. This was proposed by Gavin and involves others in OSGeo not just education group.
   1. Gavin's ideas: One-click installation for Linux, Windows or Mac; Integrated software stack so teachers and learners have to launch a minimal number of applications; Simplified and customised GUIs to lower the entry threshold (for teachers to teach curriculum requirements of GIS; for teachers to use GIS to teach geography and other subjects; for learners to use for hands-on work); Free, integrated global and local data package; excellent documentation; framework for local contributors to structure and contribute exercises, lessons, etc; central website for resources; possible advanced options for network deployment, more sophisticated users, 'computer studies' learners (i.e. developers), school web map services, etc.
   2. Subcommittee members: Any takers to try and organize such an effort?

COMPLETED TASKS FOR 2007-08

1. Establish a wiki page with an initial inventory of available educational content and commitments for new material
   1. Deadline: October 31, 2007;
   2. Outcome: Completed with 16 entries listed on the Educational_Content_Inventory page.
   3. Commitments_for_New_Material_Development

1. Investigate, vote on, and recommend a content management system for educational modules
   1. Deadline: October 31, 2007.
   2. Outcome: Task deferred and focus on develop tutorial using Wiki/Moodle strategy. We had a series of discussions on various approaches toward this over the group email list, but really reached no consensus. I (Charlie Schweik) concluded that given we have an existing wiki and also a Moodle site established, we should try to move toward establishing a recommended digital format and structure for future tutorials and where possible we try to convert old tutorials to this format (I intend to do so with my tutorials). For this reason, I took this item off the current to-do list.
   3. Subcommittee members: Ben Alden; Victor Olaya; Charlie Schweik; Scott Mitchell; Venka; Maria Brovelli; Rob Braswell
   4. Edu Concent Management Platform Decision
   5. More detail: coming soon. But this task is for people to investigate various options that have been identified. These include (1) the Moodle example presented by Arnulf [1]; (2) the use of the wiki system (Tyler showed me some additional functionality after our BOF meeting); (3) Rice connexions [2]; (4) Encyclopedia of Earth; (4) lulu.com; (5) EduCommons. The group agreed that at this juncture we need to be inclusive and work with the needs of various content providers. So some material may be stored on an OSGeo platform with the capability for new derivative works, or it may just be links to external resources we are aware of. This subcommittee task is to figure out a recommended strategy within the next month (or less).