\title{Education and Curriculum Committee}
\author{Charlie Schweik, Committee Chair}
\maketitle

%\section{Education and Curriculum Committee}
%\begin{itemize}
%\item Contact name: \textbf{Charlie Schweik}
%\end{itemize}

Overall, the OSGeo education and curriculum committee's goals are to: 
\begin{enumerate}
\item build and maintain a social network of educators at all education levels;
and 
\item build and maintain a system for the storage or linkage to geospatial
educational content. 
\item As we will note below, there are mixed feelings in the committee about the
degree to whether a third goal should be a focus on the sharing or development
of geospatial curriculum recommendations.
\end{enumerate}

\section{Key Accomplishments}

\noindent \\ \textbf{Continued expansion of our educational inventory}

Our key accomplishment for 2008 was the continued growth in our inventory of
educational material on the
\href{http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Educational_Content_Inventory}{OSGeo wiki}.\footnote{Edu content wiki:
\url{http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Educational_Content_Inventory}}. Our inventory
grew to 47 submissions in multiple languages with submissions from all over the
world. This year we hit the nice problem of having a wiki inventory page that
reached the wiki length limit. 

\noindent \\ \textbf{Creation of an online searchable database for educational
content}

This "problem" led to our second key accomplishment (thanks largely to Tyler
Mitchell), who developed a new
\href{http://www.osgeo.org/educational_content}{educational inventory system}
that is a web-database application. We now have an online mechanism that allows
the user to search for educational material based on software type, language, or
topic keywords.\footnote{Searchable content directory:
\url{http://www.osgeo.org/educational_content}}. This system also has an easy to
use \href{https://www.osgeo.org/node/add/edu-content}{input form} to the
database which allows new entries to be added, or the ability for a user to edit
an already existing record.\footnote{Add new content:
\url{https://www.osgeo.org/node/add/edu-content}} An
\href{https://www.osgeo.org/educational_content_rss}{RSS feed} for tracking the
entries is also available.

\begin{figure}
	\centering
	\fbox{\includegraphics[width=\columnwidth]{annual_report/committees/education_inventory.png}}
	 \caption{Educational inventory system search tool}
	 \label{ref:edu_inventory}
\end{figure}

\noindent \\ \textbf{Live-DVDs}

In addition to the above, several of our committee members worked to help
produce "live-DVDs" for use in various situations, and also for distribution in
the FOSS4G conference in South Africa.\footnote{More on these efforts can be
found at \url{http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Live_GIS_Disc} and \\ \indent
\url{
http://blog.ominiverdi.org/index.php?/archives/57-Ominiverdi-with-OSGEO-Edu.html
}}

\noindent \\ \textbf{Free GIS Book}
There are also several members who are actively working on a "Free GIS" textbook
(currently written in Spanish), with much of the authoring being done by group
member Victor Olaya Ferrero, Universidad de Extremadura, in Spain.

\noindent \\ \textbf{Subversion system for new derivative work}

We also established a subversion system on the OSGeo server in an effort to
develop a library of the "source" of these tutorials, so that we could establish
a "new derivative work" system. Specifically around the idea of software-related
tutorials, the situation could easily arise where some new user or educator
wants to take an existing OSGeo inventoried tutorial and modify it in some way.
Translations of a tutorial into another language is one example. Updating a
tutorial for a more recent version of the software it describes is another. For
this reason, we established a subversion-based repository to maintain the source
of some of our educational material. As we will describe in the "Areas for
Improvement" section below, this system has not been used by our members.

\noindent \\ \textbf{Continued growth in our OSGeo edu listserv subscribers,
from 111 in October to 139 currently}

\section{Areas for Improvement}

\subsection{Keeping momentum going in the group}
The most significant challenge is keeping the committee active and moving
forward. My sense (Schweik, the edu chair speaking) is that we have a very
engaged group, with a core group who care about what we are collectively trying
to do and are committed to helping it move forward. The challenge we have is how
to get more people to contribute to the groups' collective efforts. I have been
reflecting on this, and think two issues are particularly important. 

First, our group is made up entirely of volunteer contributions. Consequently,
two concepts are key to keep the group moving forward. The first is the concept
of user-driven innovation, raised by Eric von Hippel (2005, Democratizing
Innovation) in his discussions of open source software collaboration. This
concept is meant to capture the motivations of people to voluntarily contribute
to an open source collaborative effort when the effort is on something they
personally need and want for their own work or other personal situation. A great
incentive to contribute to something is personal need. The more we as a group
can connect people with similar needs and interests and match that to group
goals the more progress we will make as a group. For example, if we can somehow
"match up" two, three or four people world wide who have a need for a set of
educational material in some open source geospatial domain, and help them to
collectively act, the more likely it will be that we will see continued
contributions.

\subsection{Task Granularity}
The second important concept is what Yokai Benkler (2005, The Wealth of
Networks) refers to as "task granularity". In short, finer-scaled (easier to do)
tasks will be more likely done by volunteers than coarse-scale (more difficult,
time consuming) tasks. This concept explains why Wikipedia has made more
advances than Wikibooks, or why microblogging applications like Twitter seem to
be gaining traction. To the extent we can identify fine grained tasks to move
our group forward, the more progress we will make.  From this standpoint,
contributions of educational modules is more likely than contributions of full
courses, for example.

This insight into the value of fine scaled tasks leads me to realize that it is
more likely we will continue to get contributions for educational material if we
make the posting of this material very easy. The web-based input form that Tyler
Mitchell developed to our searchable database makes it quite easy for a
contributor to post information about material they have developed and link to
it (assuming their content is on the Web somewhere). The idea that some in our
community will make the added effort to learn how to submit their source
material into the Subversion system is perhaps, in retrospect, wishful thinking.
This is a coarser-scaled task, requiring many associated with our group to learn
how to use Subversion, and then to take the effort to place their content on
this system. Subversion may be easy for programmers, but it is not something
non-programmers commonly use. 

My sense right now is that asking educational material contributors to post
their "source" in Subversion may be too coarse a task to ask of these
volunteers. My conclusion from this is that if we want to move to a system where
we enable new derivative works to occur, it will probably require a
decentralized system where one person contacts the author of some work we have
inventoried, and they work it out between them how the source code is shared.
But we should all encourage people undertaking new derivatives to share them
with the OSGeo community via our inventory Web system once they are developed.

\subsection{Forge connections to the OSGeo Local groups}

One way we might be able to harness the incentive of user-driven innovation is
through the closer linkage between our education effort and local OSGeo groups.
It seems natural that these local OSGeo groups will devote some of their efforts
toward educating people in their geographic areas about open source geospatial
technologies. For example, in the regular (bi-annual ?) physical, face-to-face
meetings of local chapters, I could see opportunities for presentations or
tutorials on some recent advance in open source geospatial technologies. It
should become almost second nature to share any educational content developed
for such meetings with the rest of the OSGeo educational community.  Somehow we
as a group need to figure out a way to help make this to happen.

\subsection{Improve communication of individual edu members on what they are
planning to do over the next year}

A second way to harness the user-centered innovation incentive is by creating a
better system for communicating what we (individuals associated with the OSGeo
education group) are working on or planning to work on over the next year. What
I have learned from my empirical work studying Sourceforge.net open source
software projects, is that software projects that continue to be successful in
terms on ongoing collaboration involve small teams (an average or 2-3 people).
The key is to connect the few people on the planet who have the same educational
content needs and who can see benefits in collaborating and sharing each others
end-products.

\subsection{Better communication with OSGeo software groups}

Finally, I continue to wonder why we don't have a better connection with the
software groups affiliated with OSGeo. In my view, the software groups should be
very interested in working with us, since through education their tools will be
promoted. At the very least, any educational material that they develop on their
products should be inventoried in our system. Moreover, they may have a need to
find people to help develop educational material on their product, and therefore
having a periodic "conversation" with the members of our group on their
educational needs couldn't hurt. We need to strive to develop a more direct
dialog with these groups.

\subsection{Should we aim to develop GIS-related curriculum recommendations?}

At the October 2008 meeting at FOSS4Geo in Cape Town, there was some interest in
the second education BOF meeting to develop guidelines for open source
geospatial curricula. However, there was some mixed reactions as to whether this
is something we should pursue. There are already some well established
organizations doing this kind of thing, and in hallway conversations later I
heard some with strong feelings that this is not an initiative this group should
pursue.  This remains an open question that perhaps this group should revisit.

In short, over recent months the activity and dialog within our group has
diminished. That in part is because I have been distracted in my own work and
perhaps haven't encouraged and engaged the group enough. But we continue to
inventory material, and there is a core group who has continued to meet at the
last two FOSS4Geo conferences and have developed some fairly strong "social
capital." I am personally very appreciative of the people in this group who
have, through the posting of their material or their active participation in the
listserv discussions helped to "lead by doing." Over the next six months, I will
be working to pursue the ideas listed above. I hope others in the group will
step up and help to take a leadership role in moving some of the above ideas
forward, or by taking on something they think is important that we should be
doing that I haven't listed here.

\section{Opportunities to Help}

\begin{itemize}
\item Contribute relevant educational material into our educational repository.
\item We need people to help us develop a "new derivative" work system. We need
examples of material taken by others, modified, and given back to the community.
This could be in the form of translations of material, updates of old material
for new software releases, etc.
\item Contributions to the FreeGIS book effort.
\item Help this group develop better communication with OSGeo local groups,
software groups, and data group.
\item  We need people to step up and take on the tasks above, that is, take on
some group leadership for our subtasks.
\item  Please join us!\footnote{The Education Committee mailing list is:
\url{http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/edu_discuss}}
\end{itemize}

\section{Outlook for 2009}
Given the above, we should stay focused on the effort of building educational
material for all kinds of users (K-12, higher education, or other educational
situations) and work toward building a system where new derivatives can be made
from old, perhaps out of date, material. Our goal should be that the OSGeo
educational repository becomes the first place people look to for open source
geospatial educational materials.

With that goal in mind, for the rest of 2009, our group will:
\begin{itemize}
\item  Continue our work migrating content from our old wiki-based educational
inventory page to the new database-driven and searchable system with the goal of
eventually decommissioning the old wiki page;
\item  Work to grow the number of members associated with the education group;
\item  Continue inventorying new educational content stored or linked via our
established repository. I hope this leads to identification of some key material
to be included on the next Live DVD, and that we continue to build a system
where translations of material are completed.
\item  Strive to achieve some "success stories" where new derivatives of some
educational content are created from some of our already inventoried older
content;
\item  Strive to help Victor Olaya Ferrero in his effort to develop the Free GIS
textbook;
\item  Work to develop an inventory of data for various parts of the world that
sits, side by side, with our educational inventory (in conjunction with the
OSGeo data committee); and,
\item  Develop and maintain stronger connections between educational committee
and other OSGeo groups, such as the OSGeo local chapters, the data group, the
live DVD group, and specific software projects.
\end{itemize}
