Darius has just made the following valid point RE software upgrades:
"Do we actually NEED to keep up to date with the latest version of
Idrisi
(or any other mainstream GIS software for that matter) in order to teach
GIS effectively?"
On the one hand I agree with Darius (especially with regard to using it
myself & teaching the basics).
However, it is worth baring in mind that Clark no longer support "old"
versions of Idrisi (V1 & Dos), so that you cannot buy new licence
extensions for them (as I was told today by Clark Labs). Thus if you buy
more PC's for your lab and you want to use idrisi legally on them, you
have to buy supported versions of Idrisi, such as V2. You cannot buy V2
extensions unless you have a V2 lab kit. So, you have to upgrade your
V1/Dos labkit(s) to V2 (even though there is nothing wrong with your old
version), then buy the number of new extensions you want. Then, I guess
you could run V1/Dos on all your machines legally, but after spending
all that money would you want to. In that case, you might as well go the
whole hog and upgrade your entire lab to V2. Alas, you can't do that
because you cannot afford to - that's why you tried to buy the V1/Dos
extensions in the first place. (That's the situation we are in anyway).
The other side of the deal relates to what sort of graduates are we
hoping to produce? As it is, many graduates cannot get GIS jobs because
they do not have enough Arc / Erdas / MapInfo etc experience. Employers
do not seem to recognise a sound theoretical GIS background and
experience with Idrisi. While being behind with software is not always a
problem in this respect (Idrisi is a fair example of this V2 over V1),
one only has to look back to Erdas when it changed from Erdas V7.5 (Dos)
to Erdas Imagine, which was a whole new beast altogether. Thus, what I
am getting at (eventually) is do we (as HE) not have an obligation and
do students not have a right (as paying customers) to be using and
gaining experience with industry current software?
Thus, while we may not want to / need to upgrade from a personal or
conceptual perspective, we may have to from a practical one.
_______________________________________________________
Mr Oliver Tomlinson,
Lecturer in GIS, @@@
Geography Division, @ @
University of Derby, @@@ @ @
Kedleston Road, @ @ @
Derby. DE22 1GB. U.K. @@@ @ @ @
Tel +44 (0)1332 622222 @ @ @ @
Ext 1797 @ @ @ @
Fax +44 (0)1332 622747 @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.derby.ac.uk/schools/seas/geog/geoghome.html
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