I've talked a lot about the Big 5 themes for 2014 and of course there
are other contenders for big issues in geospatial. I wanted to look at one that
is not so much an issue for geospatial now as one for how geospatial grows in
the future and that is education.
The geospatial industry is continually growing and broadening to the
point that many people are using and even producing data and products that they
don’t really realises is geospatial. To support this the next generation of
geospatially literate employees is needed. Obviously now this has spread beyond
the traditional GIS user to a whole range of developers, software engineers and
analysts amongst others. However this diversification just means that an
introduction to geospatial is needed at a younger age than ever rather than
waiting until university when people are already specialising heavily. It would
be a shame to lose out on potentially brilliant developers because they have no
concept of spatial or how important and powerful it can be.
At the Future Cities event in Scotland we are running a parallel
session from students attending some local colleges. They will get a chance to
talk to some of the great speakers from our event and get an understanding of
the broad importance of geospatial information and future cities specifically.
This is being held in collaboration with RSGS who are organising a visit to the
University of Glasgow map library in the morning.
This is something the AGI wants to get more involved in (possibly through
collaboration with RGS and their geography in schools programme as per this
announcement a few days ago). We have recently moved to engage more with
university level students through opening up free membership and we will be
looking to create resources for students with the new website.
This is an important issue both
for education and the industry, at a later date I hope to have an article from
one of our council members who has a particular interest in education. In the
meantime however I would love to hear suggestions for how the AGI, industry and
indeed government can help usher through the next generation of geospatial
innovators.
STEMNET may be another way to enter the education. This was particularly useful for engineers (ICE worked with STEMNET) to encourage graduates to enter schools or give on-line mentor-ship to schools, particularly secondary schools. http://www.stemnet.org.uk/
ReplyDeleteWISE (Women in Science and Engineering) is also another way of educating those at primary/secondary school. It was my first experience of someone showing me how hydraulic pumps worked and it never really left my side!
http://www.wisecampaign.org.uk/
HTH
Shaman Durrant