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We’re planning a webinar to help train educators to add open source GIS to their curriculum. In this post, I introduce the general idea and share some of the topics we’ll discuss.
Background
In the 90s, many schools were lucky if they had any GIS in their geography eduction. My geography program didn’t offer it, but I could learn PC Arc/Info through the Forestry department. A lot has changed since that time when PC software was just taking off.
In the decade that followed, I used HP UNIX Arc/Info before our company tried to use ArcView and finally landed on ArcMap for Windows. However, I’m sure the company today would be trying to integrate more open source GIS tools that analysts picked up on their own. The most valued professionals can learn what they need and bring that value to their work or businesses regardless of education. How, then, should institutions be helping to increase the value of their students in a similar way.
Many universities and colleges treat GIS training as a technical skill that will help them get a job. While this is certainly true, the dependency on using a single product that students will not have free access to in the future has made it difficult for some academics to feel comfortable with this approach. It’s a huge business and many marketing dollars are spent to continue this approach. Incidentally, that’s fine with us, it’s a big market and we serve a growing group of professionals that are well beyond ‘niche’ status.
Regardless, there has been a continual and increasing push for decades toward using more open software solutions, including open source GIS, in education.
Spreading the word
We started OSGeo to help spread these tools around the world, developing local user groups to support peer groups who weren’t familiar with the options they had. However, it was much more than just a marketing effort, professors and teachers needed solid training material to use in their courses. They weren’t familiar with the options either and it is extremely time consuming to make dramatic changes to an existing GIS course. We helped them find their peers and learn new tools.
This is also why we started Locate Press – to produce material to help courses and trainers teach an open source software approach. Half of our books are geared toward educational users and are designed as workbooks and guides that are used in colleges and universities.
So, if the books, software, and international support groups exist, why isn’t everyone learning, say, QGIS at university?
Because there are several other challenges that make it hard to adapt to these new approaches.
How to add open source GIS to courses
Rather than gloss over those issues in this post, we will dig into them through a webinar instead.
The 90 minute event will cover case studies from teachers who integrated open source GIS training approaches. Our roundtable of speakers will share their varied approaches to making their courses successful. We will identify the issues that remain and need to be addressed going forward. We will discuss what makes a good GIS course in general as well. Here is a rough outline of the topics we are planning to cover:
Top 5 challenges to adding open source to a GIS training program
Who is already using open source GIS in their curriculum?
Why is it difficult to adapt to today’s educational climate?
How did our panelists make the switch?
What standards/curriculums need to be addressed by any course?
What materials are hardest to find and need more focus?
How can cross-product integration help students get the best of both worlds?
How can this tie in to certification efforts, like, GISP?
How can we keep extending the reach of new teaching options?
What questions are we missing? Let us know @locatepress. Or use the Q&A channel the we will have open throughout the webinar.
We hope this will be valuable to any trainer, educator, or professor who has the challenge of leveling the playing field while providing optimal training for their students.
More information is to come. If you want to be informed about the webinar (and our other initiatives), please subscribe to our mailing list and select the “Education” interest checkbox. More information will be shared there when things are finalized.
Further Reading
Here are some of our books that are used in university courses around the world.
Need books for an event or course? Normally we limit bulk discounts to larger orders, but anyone can place an order with us directly – for at least 5 books and we will give a 20% retail discount. That’s like buying four and getting one for free.
What you do with them after is up to you – resell, giveaway, or get them autographed at an event – your call!
Larger orders may enjoy even steeper discounts. We ship globally and print in USA, UK, and Australia.
This post continues where we left off in our last post where we introduced the main QGIS books from Locate Press. The other two categories of books we have include specialized GIS titles and more general GIS titles.
Geospatial & GIS book categories
Specialized geospatial software titles cover web-based mapping, routing analysis, and general raster/vector data management.
General GIS titles covers a wide range of geospatial desktop technology as well as teaching the principles of GIS and data management for new geospatial users.
Numa’s covers all the needed pieces for starting your own web mapping project – including an understanding of raster and vector data layers.
No advanced HTML/CSS knowledge is needed as each topic is gently introduced. GEOJson mapping, layout, feature styling, and even geoprocessing with Turf.js is covered.
Databases and other more advanced topics are also included.
pgRouting is a complement to PostGIS – the open source spatial database, taking the basics of data maangement and queries to the next level.
This book introduces all the data types, functions, queries, and even QGIS integration you need for applying network navigation/routing on top of PostGIS.
Use it as a database add-on, QGIS desktop tool, or publish capabilities through web mapping clients – learn how in this book.
Gary’s second geospatial book, and the first for Locate Press, covers a wide range of mapping and GIS software.
It is also a general introduction to open source GIS applications and concepts including raster data, vector data, spatial databases, coordinate systems, etc.
It covers command line tools, desktop GIS tools, scripting examples, and more. Software covered includes GDAL/OGR, QGIS, GRASS GIS, PostGIS, GMT, and more.
In Tyler’s second geo-related book, he introduces the basics of using open source command line tools to manage your data.
Topics include converting, transforming, geoprocessing, and analyzing vector/raster datasets.
GDAL raster and OGR vector utilities are introduced along with their comprehensive command line manuals written by developers and formatted for readability.
It can be hard to know what book to buy when you are just starting to learn open source geospatial technology. This post outlines each GIS & geospatial book in our catalog to help give you the top takeaways to consider.
Geospatial & GIS book categories
Locate Press books cover a wide range of topics but they all fit into a few simple categories which we review, in-depth, after the following summaries.
QGIS book titles cover comprehensively learning the software, designing good maps with it, applying to the domain of hydrology, and writing custom applications with Python.
Specialized geospatial software titles cover web-based mapping, routing analysis, and general raster/vector data management.
General GIS titles covers a wide range of geospatial desktop technology as well as teaching the principles of GIS in a classroom-friendly way for younger students.
Scott’s book applies to QGIS 3.16 LTR edition, covering the latest stable version of QGIS.
This books introduces how QGIS works, with the user interface, handling different kinds of files, import and export.
Learn the processing toolbox, modeler, and the Python console in particular. Fundamental GIS topics such as raster/vector analysis, 3D map viewing, and map production in QGIS are covered.
Recipes for Catchment Hydrology and Water Management
by Hans van der Kwast and Kurt Menke
Hans and Kurt’s popular domain-focused text contains core knowledge for handling data in the hydrology field, including lab exercises and links to more teaching resources.
It includes map algebra, delineating streams, and land cover calculations for catchments. And QGIS basics: digitizing, importing tabular data, interpolating data into rasters, and georeferencing scanned maps.
This updated QGIS training workbook uses structured study of core geospatial concepts and GIS functions from the latest QGIS 3.x Long Term Release version.
New sections are included in this 2019 update covering advanced data visualization with layer effects, 3D maps, blending modes, and more.
A complete training course — exercises, questions, and solutions are provided.
Have you ever wanted to improve your cartography output from QGIS 3? Learn step-by-step instructions to create compelling visuals and new workflows in this second edition.
Basic QGIS knowledge is presumed as the focus is on building maps with the newest and latest functionality of QGIS – including atlases, multitudinous color tools, map label generation, printable maps, and more.
Learn the QGIS 3 Python API for writing scripts and creating plugins.
A chapter is dedicated to helping you set up your development environment and to have a productive development workflow. Each chapter includes exercises for you to put your knowledge to work.
This is an update from the earlier QGIS 2 / Python 2 edition.
Written for teachers and students, those aged 10 to 15 years old continue learning GIS by building on the lessons and concepts from Fisher’s earlier work, Open the Door to GIS.
This edition introduces more advanced topics and encourages inquiry-based learning techniques and storytelling to inspire creativity, problem solving, and building confidence as they work through various scenarios.
Introduce students (age 10 to 15 years) to analytical and graphical skill using open-source GIS technology.
Creative storytelling is used with QGIS to teach students skills for making treasure maps, creating a game, and more, alongside characters in the stories.
Creativity and reflection are encouraged as they grow throughout these weekly lessons covering a full semester.
Other categories
The above books cover all the current QGIS training books. In another post, we will introduce the specialized application books (pgRouting, Leaflet) and the more general GIS training books as well (Desktop GIS, GDAL).
