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</o:shapelayout></xml><![endif]--></head><body lang=EN-US link=blue vlink=purple><div class=WordSection1><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Hi everyone, hope you had a great weekend. Just a quick update on the HOT Training Center – sorry, there are basically too many settings in moodle for my brain to retain; I think all the courses became available on Saturday, but some of the enrollment settings prevented most of them from actually being accessible. That should all be fixed now and most all the content is done, there are a few lessons here and there that I am not happy with yet, will release soon. Also I’m not exactly sure how we will maintain the flow from: Activation Essentials => Role Course => Leadership Course; currently you can enroll for the role courses before you complete Activation Essentials, but you cannot complete them without. The Leadership Course is a bit different and the ‘best’ way I could figure out how to prevent enrollment before completing a Role Course was to set an enrollment key, but so far I think I have to give it out manually. Anyway, that is not such a big deal at the moment because maybe some of you have noticed that I keep bumping the Exams further out – and that is because we are very close to having a Badge system, so I’d prefer to have that in place before anyone actually completes a course.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>It’s great to see that a handful of people have enrolled in Activation Essentials in the last couple days, I hope it is at least somewhat informative on the Activation Protocol and general direction of the HOT Disaster Mapping Program.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>Kind regards,<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'>=Russ<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='color:#1F497D'><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div><div style='border:none;border-top:solid #B5C4DF 1.0pt;padding:3.0pt 0in 0in 0in'><p class=MsoNormal><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'>From:</span></b><span style='font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Tahoma","sans-serif"'> Russell Deffner [mailto:Russell.Deffner@hotosm.org] <br><b>Sent:</b> Friday, August 21, 2015 1:10 PM<br><b>To:</b> hot (hot@openstreetmap.org)<br><b>Subject:</b> Disaster Mapping Program Overall - nearly complete<o:p></o:p></span></p></div></div><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Hello HOT,<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Forgive the many typos and errors you may soon witness. Almost exactly 11 months ago we were awarded a grant from the Hewlett Foundation in order to improve our ability to respond (i.e. enhance the HOT Disaster Mapping Program). Those funds were used to improve the HOT Export Tool, Field Papers and create an Activation Curriculum. For me it has been a project of many sprints since I was selected as the Curriculum Specialist just about four months ago. Within a week of starting the contract to develop both a ‘procedure and curriculum’ for our Activators I was in DC with a small team of core HOTties for a 3 day sprint to just dump as much knowledge onto me as possible.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>From there it felt like a 3 month marathon to capture everything that was happening with the Nepal Activation and merging that into the ‘procedures’, the result I am so happy to present to you is the Activation Protocol which can now be seen in ‘print’ form here: <a href="http://hotosm.org/sites/default/files/HOTActivationProtocol.pdf">http://hotosm.org/sites/default/files/HOTActivationProtocol.pdf</a> <br>This is the first time HOT has really tried to define any of our organizational programs, and it really took a community to make it come together. Rather than a traditional ‘top-down’ approach to this policy/guidance hybrid document, it really started from that original brainstorming, built out through community input and then I just got the pleasure to mold it and work with some great people on flow, design, etc. You will notice it is ‘pre-dated’ for September 2015, and that is because we recently came to the conclusion that ‘why not launch the protocol and training at the same time’ – so sorry for those who have been waiting a long time to see the final results.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Regarding the training, although I’ve chipped away the entire time, the last month has been a bit of an ‘iron man’ challenge. However, I am super excited to start getting volunteers trained; I think this is going to greatly enhance that high-level coordination aspect that seems to be our greatest challenge right now – there’s truly a ton of moving parts behind-the-scenes of an Activation and we need more trained people to make it operate more smooth and consistently. It is my pleasure to invite everyone to the HOT Training Center – beta launch! Before I give you the link, this is where the disclaimer comes into play – there are many unfinished components to what will hopefully be a very thorough, educational and maybe even entertaining site for all of our volunteers who want to be on the roster for Activation Teams. <o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>This is the beta launch, so really the core component that I am delivering is the content; my goal is to have all 11 courses built-out content-wise before the end of today. Graphics, exams and assignments (which will be completed as a trainee during an activation or simulation exercise) and certificate/badges are just around the corner. We will be conducting a couple of workshops where we will perfect/tweak/add/remove/etc. so that, back to the general “September 2015” date – by the end of the month we will have a much more robust Disaster Mapping Program at HOT. Right now the only course you can enroll in is Activation Essentials, but all the others will be available starting Saturday morning; prepare for many typos, inconsistent labeling, missing pieces, etc. each course has a forum (for now) for reporting errors or making suggestions, feel free to make notes there.<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Here’s the link: <a href="http://courses.hotosm.org/">http://courses.hotosm.org/</a> - warning this is also ‘futuristic’ as in it will currently give you a server error but redirect you to where the current courses live (on the dev server, but we’re switching over as I type, at least by next week it will be all switched over – warning: we might lose track of course completion, etc. so if you don’t want to risk having to take courses over, you might want to wait a bit).<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Thank you so much to everyone who pitched in to make this happen!<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>=Russ<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Russell Deffner<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Activation Curriculum Specialist<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Email: <a href="mailto:Russell.Deffner@hotosm.org">Russell.Deffner@hotosm.org</a><o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>OSM/Skype: russdeffner<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal>Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT)<o:p></o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><span style='font-size:8.0pt'><a href="http://hotosm.org/">Web</a> | <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team">Wiki</a> | <a href="http://hotosm.org/updates">Blog</a> | <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Humanitarian_OSM_Team#Communication">Contact</a> | <a href="http://hotosm.org/donate">Donate</a><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p><p class=MsoNormal><o:p> </o:p></p></div></body></html>