Dear Glennis, I hope you don't mind, but I'm copying this email to the OpenStreetMap mailing list - the other members might also have ideas, suggestions or corrections, and might even be willing to volunteer their services. (OSM folks: this email is addressed to Glennis Ravenscroft, currently the Geography HOD at Saint Mary's school, Waverley. Feel free to send your replies to the list: I'll collate your input for my communication with her, and I'll keep you up to date if we come up with any interesting projects.)
Anyway, thanks for getting back to me so quickly! As a geography educator and author of textbooks, I know you're passionate about helping people learn about their environment, including teaching about the use, creation and understanding of maps. You'll be glad to know that this passion extends to a group of volunteers who are active across the globe, including South Africa. The openStreetMap project aims to create, source and make available high quality free and open map data that is usable and relevant to the community at large. When I say "free" I am specifically referring to the concept of "freedom": Google Maps, for example is "free" in the sense that it can be used free of charge from their website, but it is constrained by copyright. When you add information to Google Maps using Google Mapmaker (http://www.google.com/mapmaker - not yet available in South Africa), it belongs to Google, and you don't automatically have the right to use it in a product or service. OpenStreetMap, on the other hand, is available under the Creative Commons Share-Alike license, and will soon be available under the Open Database license (http://www.opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/summary/). This license gives us all the right to use the data in any way we want, to modify it, and to share it. Some of us will be present at the Software Freedom Day event this Saturday at the Pretoria CSIR: http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2010/Africa/South_Africa/Pretoria - I'll be at the Wikimedia Foundation stall, but I'll also be helping out at the OpenStreetMap stall. There are a number of ways that one can interact with OpenStreetMap, and although I'm not a professional educator, I believe that some of them could be helpful in geography education. I know this is a long email, and even so, it isn't near an exhaustive list of what is possible. I haven't even touched on balloons or kites for aerial photography (which I still want to do, and which could be great fun! Maybe one could include a temperature and/or air pressure logger to combine this with a meteorology lesson?) I'm also not going into the technical aspects of the geoid that we use to represent the surface of the earth (I don't know the details of this topic well myself, and it might well be beyond the scope of the high-school syllabus.) I don't know your challenges as a teacher. I have no idea about the kind of projects you already do, and what you feel will excite and inspire your students. I'm just someone who cares about open information and is fascinated by the OpenStretMap project. If I can get more people to be aware of the project, and if you can find new ways for your students to engage with their subject, we all win! So here are my suggestions for discussion. Let me know what you think: *** Walking papers: This is what I think would be the most fruitful aspect of the map for learners. If you go to http://walking-papers.org/ you will see instructions on how to create a printable pdf map of your own area, for example this one: http://paperwalking-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/prints/rt9wb7lf/walking-paper-rt9wb7lf.pdf From local knowledge or by walking or driving the streets, you can then write directly on the map that you've printed out. You add street names, draw in important buildings, note where there are traffic lights, roundabouts, gates, etc. You then scan it in and upload it (which I would be happy to do, given annotated maps). The system reads the barcode on the map, aligns it to the data, and either the student who wrote on the map or an eager volunteer (of which we have quite a few!) can use it as a backdrop to enter data onto OpenStreetMap. I did this with a friend last weekend in Dobsonville Soweto when I was there for a tournament, and we transformed the quality of the map in the local area. It now lists the local churches, schools and even some restaurants, pubs and ATMs. Most of the streets now have names (they were copied off the kerbside markers - we're not allowed to copy from commercial maps, as they are copyrighted.) You can see the results here: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=-26.22389&lon=27.86667&zoom=15&layers=M . I'm going to Kwabhekhilanga school in Alexandra for a company Community Engagement project on 6 October, and I'll be making contact with their Geography HOD: I want to bring them a few stacks of paper maps to write on, and I'm thinking of sponsoring prizes for the best quality entries. Maybe the map features that are relevant to their learners are different in some ways from the ones that will be relevant to your learners. This concept is the one that I would really like your input on. Do you think you could adapt it to be able to use it as a fun, personally relevant project for your learners? *** Scale calculations and basic surveying: The WalkingPapers maps don't have a bar scale. I think that's not just an omission - it might be because of the projection that is used: the scale is not uniform across the map. This is not really an issue for the large scale maps that you would be using, so maybe it would be a nice excercise for students to measure the distance between two points and calculate the scale of one of the maps - the inverse of the usual map scale calculation. Building on that idea, how about drawing a feature (e.g. one of your school buildings) accurately on a walking-papers map using surveying techniques? For this task, you'll probably want a large-scale map like this one: http://paperwalking-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/prints/7r3bmq87/walking-paper-7r3bmq87.pdf *** GPS logging and electronic maps: When I go on a hike or a bike ride, or if I'm driving somewhere where the roads have recently changed due to construction, I take my GPS unit with me, and record a track of where I've been. I then upload the track to OpenStreetmap: this kind of information is used as an aid to ensure that roads are drawn in the right place, and to mark tracks that aren't visible from aerial photograpy. Do your students ever go to small towns, for example for sports tournaments? If any of them have GPS-enabled phones, they can record GPS tracks that would be usable in the project, for example using TrekBuddy (http://www.trekbuddy.net/ - downloadable for free at http://www.trekbuddy.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4721). It's also possible to use OpenStreetMap data in commercial GPS units. With all the road closures and construction going on in the area, we are frequently more accurate and up-to-date than commercial services. *** Editing the map directly: It's quick and easy to create a username, and then you can click on the "edit" tab and directly change the map - it's like Wikipedia, but for maps! you should see aerial photography as a backdrop to give context and to aid in identifying map features. *** Topographic charts: If you click on the "+" on the right hand side of the map, and select "cycle map", you get a chart with contour lines with elevations listed, with streets overlaid onto it. The NoName option is nice: it shows you which streets still need to have names added. Most of these were added from Yahoo aerial photography, which was donated to the project (pretty good quality; it's the default background when you edit the map). *** Finding places on the map: This is not unique to OpenStreetMap. It has a very similar interface to Google Maps, and also has a search function. See http://www.openstreetmap.org/ - you can pan around, zoom in and out, and type in street names in the search box (for example, try typing "Saint Mary's School, Johannesburg" into the search box). This would only really be a way to introduce people to the map. *** I hope this contact leads to some kind of collaboration, and I look forward to hearing from you. Kind regards, -- David Richfield e^(πi)+1=0 _______________________________________________ Talk-ZA mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-za
