[Teachosm] Update on plans for Geography Awareness Week & TeachOSM

[Steven Johnson]

Hello list,

Mikel and I are sending this joint message to update you on 1) plans for
OSM community participation in Geography Awareness Week, and 2) the
TeachOSM website.

First, on the topic of Geography Awareness Week (GAW), Mikel & I have been
actively engaged with a working group organized by National Geographic to
organize and promote GAW events nationwide. Through the work of this group,
things are rapidly coming in to focus for TeachOSM events for that week. In
short, November is shaping up into a big month for OpenStreetMap and
Education. And now is your chance to jump on board.

     "Teachers, students, community groups, map lovers, in the US and
around the world, join together to celebrate geography and make maps with
OpenStreetMap, the free and openly editable map of the world."

Geography Awareness Week is November 16-22, and GIS Day is November 19; a
focused opportunity to engage higher education students (and accelerating
secondary students) in our community's love of geography through the global
network and real contributions of OpenStreetMap. This year's theme is, "The
Future of Food", and we are encouraging OpenStreetMappers to organize
mapping events around that theme. Your can organize a general mapping event
around adding groceries, community gardens, urban farms, community
supported agriculture, farmers markets, restaurants. Or, you can do
something more specific.

We have an anchor event scheduled in WashDC at National Geographic on November
21, where we'll be focused on 1) farmers markets and community supported
agriculture in North America, and 2) digitizing agricultural land use in an
international context to support HOT.  There are a half dozen other events
planned around the US and internationally and we urge YOU to begin
organizing an event in your area.

We're offering a few resources to help you out. First, we're standing up an
#osmgeoweek website, which is in development, but going live this week. The
draft site is at http://mikelmaron.github.io/osmgeoweek/, and the
associated GitHub repo at
https://github.com/mikelmaron/osmgeoweek/tree/gh-pages. Please let us know
if you want to help, and you can be added as a collaborator. We've defined
and posted a first round of projects, but please consider adding your
project idea. We will soon have teaching guides, and some specific mapping
project ideas (both remote through the tasking manager, and surveying) on
the food theme. Secondly, if you have ideas for tasks, or want to get
involved in any other way, then please reply to this (TeachOSM) list, or
post to the general info email we are setting up at osmgeoweek at gmail.com.

Second item, the TeachOSM site...

    "TeachOSM is an online resource to assist educators at all levels to
introduce open source mapping, on the OpenStreetMap platform to the
classroom. Individual instructors can use the materials provided to develop
assignments for their particular discipline and curricular needs.
     This site provides the resources help instructors identify, assign,
manage and grade a mapping assignment; this includes training documentation
for both the instructor and students."

This is an idea long time incubating, and we are sprinting to get a first
draft of the new site up, perhaps this week. We are basing the site code on
LearnOSM, and priming it with materials put together by Nuala and Richard
at GWU. The TeachOSM site should be flexible enough to incorporate lots of
different teaching styles and learning environments, and will definitely
need your contributed experience and wisdom. If you have a compelling case
study where you've used OSM in the classroom, this would be the place to
post it. An early (rough) version of the site is currently published at
http://osmlab.github.io/teachosm/en/, and the GitHub repo is at
https://github.com/osmlab/teachosm/. Feel free to offer comments and
contribute your classroom wisdom.

Thanks for lighting up new minds to the fun of OpenStreetMap, and look
forward to collaborating.

-Mikel and Steven


-- SEJ
-- twitter: @geomantic
-- skype: sejohnson8

There are two types of people in the world. Those that can extrapolate from
incomplete data.
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