Open Principles in Education – Building Bridges, Empowering Communities

Suchith AnandUniversity of Nottingham

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Some reflections

Serendipity

First my thank you to the global Geo for All community that made this possible

Open Geospatial Labs are being established worldwide to scale up research and teaching globally as part of the ICA-OSGeo MoU

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Why is Openness Important?

Making Geospatial education and opportunities

accessible to all

“Geo for All”

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Education + Empowerment = Geo4All

There are many dimensions to “Open”

• Open source software.

• Open data.

• Open standards.

• Open access to research publications.

• Open education resources

But fundamentally it is based on Open Principles

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Education + Empowerment = Geo4All

Acknowledgements: Silvana Comboim and colleagues at ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies

An example of the impact of Openness - GODAN

Impact is the positive changes to the lives of people

HungerPovertyInnovation

www.godan.info

Hunger

• For the first time in human history, the knowledge to end hunger exists on Earth  

• 800 million people struggle with debilitating hunger and malnutrition

• We need to find solutions beyond MORE food. Nutritionally sensitive agriculture is essential for global public health and wellbeing

• We are convinced that the solution to closing this unacceptable hunger gap lies within harnessing and opening agriculture and nutrition data

• “location” relevant data plays an important role

  

Openness – Increasing quality through peer review

Open Source Software

◊ Source code remains in the public domain

free for all to use, change and (re)distribute

◊ Development done in public usually by a community (distributed, informal team of developers)

◊GLOBAL URBAN PROBLEMS: access to GLOBAL URBAN PROBLEMS: access to water, sanitation, traffic congestions, water, sanitation, traffic congestions, economic sustainability, citizenseconomic sustainability, citizens’’ health, health, impact on environment …impact on environment …

◊Mapping is a critical component to help understand and develop solutions for urban growth problems

◊Proprietary software tools are very expensive (hence unavailable) for economically poor countries and communities worldwide

Why is Geoeducation important?

Kibera , Kenya

Dharavi, Mumbaihttp://www.flickr.com/photos/56685562@N00/2340042701

http://www.flickr.com/photos/8485582@N07/7365580810

GIS tools play a key role in helping find solutions to global societal challenges

June 2010

“Geo for All” started from very humble beginnings

Aim – Build research and teaching infrastructure worldwide

Problem – No initial funding!

Biggest Strength – amazing support from colleagues and students

Open Source Geospatial Lab founding meeting at UoN

Why - Social ResponsibilityMaking resources including software and

data openly available offers an opportunity for knowledge to be shared widely so as to

increase learning opportunities. Example – Collaborating with educational initiatives like gvSIG Batoví

For details contact:Sergio Acosta y Larasacosta@dntopografia.gub.uy Alvaro Anguixaanguix@gvsig.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orwN9K07XPo

 Thanks to Elżbieta Wołoszyńska-Wiśniewska and colleagues at UNEP-GRID), Warsaw

Open softwareOpen data

Open Educational ResourcesOpen standard

Providing to an open geospatial ecosystem for education, research and business

Education + Empowerment = Geo4All

Access to quality education and opportunities is key for getting rid of extreme poverty and enable broadly shared prosperity for all.

Open Geospatial Education & Research

Geospatial Standards (for ex. OGC spec.)

Maturity of open source software (for

ex. OSGeo stack)

Open Data

Ability for showing the operation of general laws

is fundamental for scientific research

“Geo for All” Team

ICA-OSGeo MoU in Sep 2011

Over 100 labs established worldwide as of today

North America – over 20 labsEurope – over 40 labsSouth America – 9 labsAfrica – 4 labsAsia – 15 labsAustralia - 2 labWill be establishing over 1000 labs in

universities and schools worldwide by 2018

Who are we?Government organisations, academia, industry, startups, NGOs , teachers, students, …

FOSS4G 2013 @Nottingham

We are Global community

It is all about learning and sharing

Open GIS Summer School in Girona

And empowering the next generation

Aim

Establishing open source GIS research and training opportunities

We are Multi disciplinary

We are all passionate about Research and Education

“Geo for All”

OpenCitySmart - The Open Platform for Smart Cities

Patrick Hogan , Brandt Melick, Maria Antonia Brovelli, Charles Schweik, Jim Miller, Sven Schade, Chris Pettit, Ant Beck, Doreen Boyd, Darren Robinson, Suchith Anand

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuMfMMPfPw

Aim – Establish a new discipline for Open Geospatial Science

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Education + Empowerment = Geo4All

Science is NOT a Black Box

Vision 2030Science should always be open

Geospatial Science should be fully build on Open PrinciplesTransparency of research is fundamental (no black boxes or proprietary barriers).

Geospatial Science = Open Geospatial Science

Open Geospatial Labs are being established worldwide to scale up research and teaching globally as part of the ICA-OSGeo MoU http://bookshop.europa.eu/en/open-innovation-open-science-open-to-the-world-pbKI0416263

Represents the individual content creator on the World

Wide Web

Why- Open Geospatial Science

helps in empowerment of staff and students capacity building developing creative and open minds in students which is critical for building open innovation contributes to building up Open Knowledge for the benefit of the whole society and for our future generations.

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Education + Empowerment = Geo4All ◊ I am confident if we keep focus, we can achieve the target to enable

digital education opportunities (tablets or low cost hardware based) in many of the poorest schools globally in just 10 years time and having this partnership with universities, governments, Industry, SMEs and NGOs is key for this. So even if till now many of these schools did not have access to any proper library or other learning resources, they will now have access to the best digital education resources available globally from wikipedia to MOOCs.

◊ Access to quality education and opportunities is key for getting rid of extreme poverty and enable broadly shared prosperity for all.

◊ We look forward to working and building collaborations with all interested on this education mission.

Thanks to all colleagues in the “Geo for All” initiative

Let us all join to eradicate extreme poverty and enable shared prosperity for all

http://www.geoforall.org

Association for Learning Technology

Registered charity number: 1063519

www.alt.ac.uk @A_L_T