[Teachosm] TeachOSM High School in Massachusetts

Thu May 7 18:45:56 UTC 2015

Shawn

This is awesome.  Thank you for your hard work.  I am an university professor and I have been integrating it into my Intro to Geography course.  The class has over 100 students in it, so the students check each others' work and then I examine it aftercwards.  It is still a big assignment and I am trying to discover a better way to evaluate the students' work.  I think it is great you have pushed it into the High School level.  So you have a set of lessons integrating it into the AP Human Geography course?  If yes, have you contacted Seth Dixon at the AP Human Geography to take it further.

I have a lot on my plate (just like everyone including yourself), however how can I help?
Tom Mueller

Thomas R. Mueller, Ph.D., GISP
Advisor: Geography Major with GIS and Emergency Management Concentration
Co - Director: Pennsylvania View
Department of Earth Sciences, California University of Pennsylvania
"A man never gets to this station in life without being helped, aided, shoved, pushed and prodded to do better." - Johnny Unitas
________________________________
From: Shawn Goulet [shawn.goulet at gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2015 10:50 PM
To: teachosm at openstreetmap.org
Subject: [Teachosm] TeachOSM High School in Massachusetts

Hi All,

I am currently a GIS Analyst/Developer at a regional planning agency in Massachusetts.  My position's role is to support our internal staff and the municipalities within our region (Barnstable County a.k.a. Cape Cod) incorporating geospatial data solutions into their initiatives and projects in respect to land use planning efforts.

For the past 2 years, I've been working with a high school AP Human Geography teacher and her students in Massachusetts (Barnstable High School's Social Studies Department<http://www.barnstable.k12.ma.us/Page/307>) to integrate OSM mapping into their curriculum.  Over the past year, I've been working with a high school senior that went through the high school AP Human Geography program at another high school (Mashpee High School's AP Human Geography program<http://www.mashpee.k12.ma.us/webpages/creynolds/ap.cfm>) in an effort to plan for the integration of OSM mapping in their curriculum.

>From my perspective, I see the OSM as possibly being an extremely valuable tool that can be updated by the masses to maintain up-to-date datasets for all to leverage through geospatial products and issues we face.  I also see it as a very valuable tool to educate students using geospatial data.  In my role, the onus that myself and others in our department have shared is then shared with the masses.  As such, to some extent, the responsibility to maintain these datasets and the time and resources needed to accomplish the data management to maintain constant up-to-date data is alleviated.

I understand that some individuals believe that students editing the OSM can be dangerous.  However, I was never was made aware of OSM even existing until not long ago.  I see the opportunity for students who live in the communities and utilize many of their civic services and institutions as a uniquely valuable resource.  To me, their contributions are highly valuable and, in turn, their experience through constructive contributions to the OSM is highly valuable to their educational experience.

I want to share with you and make you aware of the major obstacles that we have faced over the past 2 years.

1)  OSM isn't part of the curriculum
This obstacle begins with actually getting teachers interested in the concept of having their students contribute to the OSM.  Since OSM editing isn't part of the AP Human Geography curriculum, the teachers need to understand the value in it for their students.  They need to teach to the curriculum and OSM not being a component becomes the first obstacle.  What we have been doing is a) assigning grids of their municipalities to the students and having the students edit within those grids and b) tying different OSM map features into the different sections of the curriculum (e.g. for the Population and Migration section, map features tied to hospitals, educational facilities, medical facilities, funeral homes, hostels, etc.).

2)  Learning how to edit the OSM
This obstacle stems from teachers being interested in the possibility of integrating OSM editing into their lesson plans.  I was initially given the opportunity to present my plan to the entire Social Studies Department of the Barnstable Public School system (approximately 15 teachers at the time) and only 1 was actually interested.  I was lucky enough that her interest did not stop there.  She has actually allowed me to work with her and her students in doing this.  Her openness to learning how to edit OSM and offering me time out of her lesson plans to teach the students how to edit is the only reason why I have been able to work with them.  Hopefully next year I will be able to say the same for the Mashpee program.

3)  Coordinating schedules
The AP curriculum is content rich and time consuming.  I also take time out of my schedule to dedicate to meeting with the students, getting them up and running and working with them through questions and obstacles they encounter.  In addition, issues out of our hands such as what we faced this past winter in New England with snow storms resulting in numerous school cancellations has delayed meetings.  As a result, we have not met since December and will not be able to meet until early June once the their AP sections have completed.  This has resulted in a HUGE negative impact on momentum.  I will have to re-teach many things come June.  There is no incentive for the teacher to meet as they are playing catch-up because of the classroom time they lost throughout the winter.

4)  OSM is not part of the STEM initiative (or any educational initiative) that I know of
Should it be part of the STEM initiative?  I do not know, but it seems like it would not be a huge stretch.  If it were part of any educational initiative, it would make integrating it into U.S. K-12 education MUCH easier.  If high school students' contributions to the OSM in the U.S. is deemed valuable, in my opinion we NEED to start the discussions surrounding incorporation of it within the frameworks of U.S. education.

5)  Support from the OSM community
Does the community deem contribution from secondary education students valuable?  If so, what kinds of support for such movements are there/could there be?  Scholarships?  TeachOSM programs for educators?  OSM editing jump starts for students?  An organized effort that produces positive OSM contributions from teachers and students would be very valuable for people like myself.  I/we cannot do this alone - the time and energy commitment is a lot to handle alone.

Thanks for your time in reading this if you have made it this far!  Hopefully I have convinced you that I care about this.  I would love to hear from others that may be in similar situations and what obstacles you may be facing and see if we identify and begin the necessary dialogues to incorporate OSM contributions into U.S. education.  I will be giving a talk at the State of the Map U.S. conference this topic if you happen to be going, would love to connect with you there: http://stateofthemap.us/gis-smorgasbord/ or at any TeachOSM gatherings at SOTMUS.

Cheers,
Shawn

Shawn Goulet
Twitter: @Shawn_Goulet<http://twitter.com/shawn_goulet>
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/ShawnGoulet<http://www.linkedin.com/in/ShawnGoulet>

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