Geospatial Awareness, Skills and Knowledge - Managing our Future Josef Strobl Centre for Geoinformatics Salzburg University Austria

"Learning is the new form of labor "Learning is the new form of labor....Learning is at the heart of productive activity.” Shoshana Zuboff, 'In The Age Of The Smart Machine'

Themes Thinking Spatially No SDI without Education Awareness vs Skills vs Education eLearning / Online Learning Distance Education From Teaching … to Learning

Education – the Critical Element NOT: GIS software NOT: Data availability NOT: GIS functionality BUT: Awareness Skills Education

Thinking Spatially?? X Y Z

Education Pyramid

Geospatial Awareness Spatial Orientation Landmarks Sense of Place Close and Far Spatial Relationships N/S/E/W GPS/GNSS Map Reading Orientation Effective Distance ooLeft / Right Perspective View

CGIS-NUR Geographical Information Systems and Remote Sensing Centre of the National University of Rwanda MapAfrica 2007

CGIS-NUR and CGIS-NUR DemoCentre

CGIS-NUR Mission The CGIS-NUR promotes a spatially literate society by serving as a recognized multi-disciplinary training and research centre of excellence in GIS and RS technologies and applications through which it addresses issues of local, national and regional importance such as societal and economic transformation and sustainable development.

Introducing GIS to Secondary Education in Rwanda This presentation has been shown at the ESRI East Africa User Conference in September 2007. It is based on a paper written by the project coordinator, Martina Forster, the former director from CGIS, Michele Schilling and a senior GIS consultant, Tom McConnell. Martina Forster GIS and Remote Sensing Centre National University of Rwanda

Snowball dispersion model Start with 10 schools 2 - 3 teachers per school Teacher training in summer 2007 Start teaching with GIS in Jan 2008 Participating schools will each recruit 3 new schools Pilot teachers will teach teachers at new schools Most schools will be involved within 5 years Bringing GIS to Rwandan secondary schools thus demands a carefully reflected implementation plan. The successful incorporation of GIS into secondary education requires assimilation with the general curriculum, the teacher education, the job market and higher education at university. The accomplishment of sustainable teacher trainings, assistance throughout the first years at lowest possible cost and the implementation of the appropriate technical solution against all bottlenecks indicated above make it a challenging project. The following is the plan of implementation.

Selection of Pilot Schools Public, private, religious schools Technical/vocational vs. scientific schools Criteria Electricity Availability of computers Teachers using IT French and English instruction Enthusiasm

Teacher Training in 2007 3 days in June 2 days in August GIS concepts Mapping and Query Edit spatial data Digitizing 2 days in August GPS data collection School lessons Refresher in November? Experience with the adoption of GIS in other countries has proven the critical nature of thorough training for teachers. Therefore teacher training was split into two constitutive courses of three respectively two days with a pause of about one month in between. For most effective results there’ll be only six teachers attending a class.

GIS Day www.gisday.com

Skills - Training Software Training Data Acquisition Digitizing GPS Mapping Cartography Quality Control Data Delivery Systems Operation Surveying Formatting Documentation

Short Courses offered Introduction to GIS Introduction to Remote Sensing SDI (SDI-Suite / Portal Toolkit) Geodatabase / ArcSDE Mobile GIS / GPS / DGPS GIS Publishing Threat to Biodiversity Soil Erosion mapping Urban and regional planning management Land use/cover change analysis

Earthquakes in Greece and Turkey; Disasters during the last Decade Floods in Germany, Austria,Czech Republik, Poland, England, France, Italy, UK; Earthquakes in Greece and Turkey; Storms in France, Germany, Austria, Northern Europe; Forest Fires in the Mediterranean region; Marine oil tanker accidents (e.g. Erika, Prestige); Technological disasters (e.g. explosions in Enschede and Toulouse, Danube pollution with Cyanid, Fires in tunnels, Train accidents …)

Space-based Solutions for Disaster Management … Satellite communications help warn people who are at risk, especially in remote areas They help connect a disaster zone to the outside world Images from earth observing satellites help assess the damage caused by disasters like earthquakes, volcano eruptions, oil spills and floods. Global navigation satellite systems enable us to obtain positional information on events that have to be mapped

UN SPIDER - Outreach Activities in 2007 Support participants from developing countries to attend relevant workshops and conferences. Organise international and regional workshops/expert meetings: - Bonn, Germany - October 2007 - Bangkok, Thailand – November 2007 - Shenzhen, China – December 2007 - Khartoum, Sudan – December 2007 - Salzburg, Austria – February 2008 Check out the UNOOSA website for upcoming activities and get involved http://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/unspider/index.html

GIScience Education Thinking Spatially Spatial Concepts SOA Application Design SDI Conceptual Modeling Metadata Location Based Services Database Design _Spatial Statistics Catalog Services Indexing Hypotheses Testing Process Modeling SpatialAnalysis Interpolation Segmentation

Second Life

„Body of Knowledge“

UNIGIS Distance Learning MSc or PG Certificate in „Geographical Information Science and Systems“ Global Network of Universities collaborating in postgraduate / professional GIS Distance Learning „Educating GIS Professionals Worldwide“ www.unigis.net

UNIGIS Modular Learning 1 3 4 5 6 2 7 9 8 Collab. Project E1 SS MSc Thesis E3 E2 7/9 Modules plus Electives Final Project / Thesis 1 yr – PG Certificate 2 yr – MSc Cegree www.unigis.net

A W I eLearning Anytime Anywhere Access From Wired to Wireless University W Intensive Instructor Interaction I

Learning

Enabled Aware Literate GISociety GISociety Technology Business Education Enabled Aware Literate Spatially

The GI Success Diamond Application Demand GI Edu GI Science GI Technologies

“The only sustainable competitive advantage, is the ability to learn and apply the right stuff faster” Wayne Hodgkins

ESRI AP Discuss education with you today Everybody is an educator, and all of you are doing phantastic jobs in this area Education is critical for the success of our industry, today, and even more so tomorrow Two groups: people who need to know about GIS, and ‚spatially aware‘ customers BoK, and Spatial Thinking book Spatial literacy !!! GIS Day Move to server-centric GIS changes rules …

Education … is critical for the success of our industry, today, and even more so tomorrow Two major groups: people who need to know about GIS, and ‚spatially aware‘ customers