KartozaViewing posts for the category Education
A step forward in Kartoza's QGIS and GeoNode Training
Learning online has become an essential part of education globally. Kartoza has answered the call for up-to-date, engaging and dynamic teaching material by updating our QGIS and GeoNode teaching platforms. Kartoza uses our open source 'changelog' platform, that allows for continual updates and customisation of material to deliver cutting-edge training.
The Kartoza Intern's journey creating a field survey with QGIS, Mergin and Input
Simple, powerful and efficient field data collection is vital for any project with a geospatial aspect. Input is a FOSS application created by Lutra consulting that brings the power of QGIS to a portable device for data collection. The Kartoza intern team was challenged to get to grips with Input. The team decided to keep it simple and create a project to collect data from local parks, including paths, trees and infrastructure. This blog follows the journey taken by the team and includes tips and tricks to help novice users.
School GIS task: create a 5km COVID-19 lockdown exercise buffer around your house
If you are doing some teaching in the classroom and some online and you are finding "blended teaching" overwhelming, this task is designed for asynchronous self study.
An intern's perspective on her working experience at Kartoza during the summer vacation
As a leading Open Source GIS company, Kartoza aims to introduce people and organisations to the world of Open Source GIS in South Africa. The majority of educational institutions in South Africa still teach students GIS and Remote Sensing using proprietary software. During the last few years, there has been a steady increase in institutions migrating to using Open Source GIS systems.
Kartoza is always on the lookout for young and talented students to enroll them in our vacation work or internship program with a possibility of employment. The following story is the experience from our most recent intern, Natalia Dambe, a Master's Student at the University of Cape Town. In her words:
Report back on the first QGIS User Conference in Nødebo, Denmark
I finally have some time to sit down and write up some thoughts on the QGIS User Conference and Developer Meeting (aka Hackfest) that we just held in Nødebo, Denmark. First up I need to thank Lene Fischer, who was the organiser and wowed us all with her relaxed and competent organisational approach to the conference. Thanks also to the University of Copenhagen School of Forestry - they sponsored the event by providing the venue and accommodation - and the venue was absolutely awesome with little cottages in the forest and all sorts of interesting diversions scattered around the forest. Lene gave me a list of names of people who helped to organise the event - I am sorry I have only got your first names but a very big thank you to you all!
QGIS course at AfQUA
Kartoza has just wrapped up a three-day Introduction to QGIS course that we gave pro bono at The African Quaternary: Environments, Ecology and Humans conference in Cape Town (AfQUA2015). Thank you to Kelly Kirsten from the local organising committee at the University of Cape Town for inviting us. Admire Nyakudya presented to about fifteen conference delegates from around the world. Attendees ran QGIS 2.6.1 on their own notebooks on the operating system of their choice. Some already use QGIS, some were experiencing QGIS for the first time and some some wanted to compare it with ArcGIS. The course content was guided largely by the QGIS training manual but as we usually do, adapted for the requirements, interests and pace of the class.
MyCOE GCE TechCamp
The AAG (American Association of Geographers) and US State Department, through EIS Africa, ran the South Africa edition of the GCE MyCOE Youth TechCamp from 13-23 July 2014. Kartoza and its former incarnation Afrispatial, were brought on board to lead the technical and educational aspects of the TechCamp. The TechCamp was ten days of cultural exchange coupled with hands-on GIS learning around a theme of climate change. The main goal of the programme was to stimulate the role of Geography in the students and to teach how new technologies are advancing the use of Geography in the real world to solve problems.
The excellent team in the Geography Department of the University of Pretoria hosted the TechCamp (see their post), while we all stayed at the Altelekker Youth Camp in Irene. Thirty-seven 15-17-year-old high school students did GIS classes, learnt about climate change issues, listened to guest speakers like Colleen Vogel and Roger Ellis, went on field-trips to Freedom Park, Maropeng, Sterkfontein Caves and Dinokeng and had lots of fun. The students were selected over the previous six months through a competitive process: ten from the USA and the rest from South Africa. Students from both countries came from a range of backgrounds: private and public schools, rural and urban, advantaged and disadvantaged. Some were computer literate and even had won GIS awards, while others had hardly touched a computer. The main aim for integrating these students was to initiate a skills transfer as well as a cultural exchange.
The setting for most of the lectures was the University of Pretoria, which was carefully chosen to stimulate the participants into appreciating what university is all about and also making them aware that Geography can be regarded as a career. The climate change project focussed on water-related issues centred around Centurion Lake: pollution, planning, dolomite and sinkholes. We prepared datasets covering Gauteng, including satellite imagery, a DEM, OpenStreetMap layers, Tshwane Metro layers, geology and other public data. These were provisioned from a central PostGIS database and from Spatialite databases on USB drives. The students learnt the basics of GIS, through to digitising, basic analysis and map composition, all using QGIS. They all took the data and QGIS software home with them to share and distribute.
By the end of the TechCamp the students' computer and GIS skills were phenomenal. They were put to good use in the "TechTorrent" on the last day, where each of eight teams presented the research projects they had been developing all week. Their presentations employed tools such as Prezi and ESRI Storymaps and all contained maps made in QGIS.
with contributions from Admire Nyakudya and Bridget Fleming