Hi, Sounds like a great course. Being a Ph.D student in geography and recently taken a semester class in developing VGI-based application, I strongly recommend not getting into SDKs (given the course title is mapping mashups and beyond). Setting up the environment for everyone takes about 2 months time and probably only 10 percent of the student would use it after class or even remember how to set it up again.
Another topic worth looking at is Linked Data. Some resources can be found from the GeoVoCampDC2011 (http://vocamp.org/wiki/GeoVoCampDC2011). For a second year undergrad course, doing implementation with linked data might be too much but the idea of it could be quite inspiring to the students. Regards, Sen On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 2:32 PM, R E Sieber <[email protected]> wrote: > ** > Hi Everyone, > > I'm teaching a new course on Mapping Mashups and Beyond in the Fall. It's > for second year undergraduate geographers and I hope it can set them on a > path to being part of the next generation of geospatial data > handlers/modelers/developers. I could use any help in helping me make this > course successful. > > What I'm thinking of teaching is > > > - Exploring digital earth architectures (e.g., Google Maps, Google > Earth, Microsoft Bing Maps, OpenLayers, NASA WorldWind) > - Writing KMLs and KMZs for digital earths > - Contributing volunteered geographic information (VGI)* via Open > Street Map (entering, editing, examining metadata) > > > > - Using geospatial Application Program Interfaces (APIs) > - Geotagging and harvesting other geographic content, for example via > web scraping > - Developing online databases > > > > - Installing and deploying the WAMP software stack > - Developing server/cloud-side geospatial applications > > > > - Collecting real time data (e.g., Twitter) > - Working with location based services, for example with the iPhone > SDK** and ushahidi > - Exploring social, political, and legal issues of using VGI > > Remember that these are geographers so they'll have near zero > computing/software engineering skills. Moreover, having been taught GIS, > they'll be biased towards a particular way of thinking about geospatial data > handling: it's only about making maps; it's desktop bound; and it focuses > mainly on spatial analysis. So any advice you have on what I should be > teaching and how I should be teaching it (e.g., how much of any of these > bullet points) would be vastly appreciated! > > thanks, > Renee > > * I know, I know. I don't like the term either. > > **I doubt I'll get to the SDK. It'll be hard enough to get them through > WAMP. Here it's probably just ushahidi. > > _______________________________________________ > Geowanking mailing list > [email protected] > http://geowanking.org/mailman/listinfo/geowanking_geowanking.org > > -- Sen Xu Ph.D Candidate Department of Geography, GeoVISTA Center, 302 Walker Building Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802
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