The document describes the Geo Future Excellence Programme, which aims to enhance geography teaching in secondary schools by focusing on issues of sustainability, quality of life, and citizen participation. It seeks to engage students in real-world problem solving through hands-on learning experiences and collaboration. The programme brings benefits to students, teachers, schools, and society. It also discusses using open data and open source GIS software to analyze and illustrate geospatial data related to quality of life and sustainability across districts in Heraklion, Greece. Key challenges include engaging all students, limitations of available open data, and preference for individual over collaborative online work.

1. Open Data & Open Source GIS
in school action
towards a sustainable
and livable environment
Periklis Georgiadis
Experimental General Lyceum of Heraklion

2. The framework:
Geo Future Excellence Programme
Enhance teaching approaches and means to
Geography in upper secondary education
Focus and bring awareness to hot issues
quality of life, sustainability, smart use of technology
Civic/geographic space - citizen relationship,
participation, collaboration
Produce Learning Objects and Didactic Interventions
in modern Geography
nature, humanities, economics, technology

3. Geo Future Excellence Programme
What it brings
 to students
Face big issues of our era; energy, natural resources,
sustainability, climate change, water shortage, European
citizenship, participation, globalization
Learn by doing, explore & investigate, learn on site by
experts, learn how to learn, learn to claim & contest
Think in terms of solutions, not for the sake of learning
Blend multidisciplinary knowledge (Geo, Bio, Eco, His,
Sci, ICT)
Work with fellow students, home and abroad

4. Geo Future Excellence Programme
What it brings
 to students
Face big issues of our era; energy, natural resources,
sustainability, climate change, water shortage, European
citizenship, participation, globalization
Learn by doing, explore & investigate, learn on site by
experts, learn how to learn, learn to claim & contest
Think in terms of solutions, not for the sake of learning
Blend multidisciplinary knowledge (Geo, Bio, Eco, His,
Sci, ICT)
Work with fellow students, home and abroad

5. Geo Future Excellence Programme
What it brings
to teachers
Enrich their skills and methods
Exchange ideas and experiences with colleagues abroad
Meet new challenges
to the school(s)
Get in touch with society and up-to-date knowledge
Enhance curriculum
Contribute to social, environmental, etc., awareness
Contacts outside school (companies, universities)
Excel and become a leader
to society
Interact with schools and tomorrow’s citizens

6. Open Data
Availability and accessibility
Reuse and distribution
Universality, no exclusions, no restrictions

7. Open Data
Availability and accessibility
Reuse and distribution
Universality, no exclusions, no restrictions
Useful, usable and used

8. Open Data
Availability and accessibility
Reuse and distribution
Universality, no exclusions, no restrictions
Useful, usable and used
Cultural, Scientific, Financial, Statistical, Biological,
Meteorological, Environmental, transport…

9. Open Data – What for?
Data

10. Open Data – What for?
Data
Information

11. Open Data – What for?
Data
Information
Knowledge

12. Open Data – What for?
Data
Information
Knowledge
Decisions

15. Geospatial Data
Any data that can be illustrated on a geographical
map (be it digital, or not)
Data that has a location component
(e.g. geographical co-ordinates)
Enriched data – new perspective framework
New relationships, new illustrations, new content
User / community creativity
Challenge: create, maintain, use, re-use, add value

16. Geographical Information Systems (GIS)
IS to capture-input, store, process, analyze, manage,
and illustrate-output geospatial/geographical data
Impress geospatial data onto Geographical or
Cartesian Coordinate System
Include non geospatial attributes, i.e. descriptive
attributes
Relational or Object Oriented Model implementation
In a broader sense, besides data and software a GIS
includes related hardware and processes

17. Main Problem - Scenario
“Consider quality of life and
sustainability in the Heraklion districts,
comparing them with one another. Use
QGIS to illustrate your results from a
geospatial perspective.

18. Main Problem - Scenario
“Consider quality of life and
sustainability in the Heraklion districts,
comparing them with one another. Use
QGIS to illustrate your results from a
geospatial perspective.

19. Sub-queries
Quality of life, sustainability: infrastructure,
networks, security, transportation, landscape
beauty…
City districts: Seek Open Data
Study: Objective measurements vs. subjective
opinion recording
Comparison: Questionnaire – quantification – indices
QGIS, geospatial perspective, illustration

20. Tools
Private working group http://blogs.sch.gr/groups/gfep/
Blog http://blogs.sch.gr/gfep/
Google Maps – Google Earth
LibreOffice Writer vs. MS-Word
http://blogs.sch.gr/gfep/files/2015/02/questionnaire.pdf
Google Forms http://goo.gl/forms/mjC1F7XApD
LibreOffice Calc vs. MS-Excel
QGIS
qgiscloud https://qgiscloud.com/perge/pubGFEPresults

28. Finding and using Open Data
Local Authorities – National Statistics Authority
Not online – not machine readable – email works!
Cleansing – merging – compatibility fixing – manual
additions / completions

37. Issues
Not all students engaged equally
No time for DBMS Perspective
Open Data difficult to find, inconsistencies, noise, etc.;
background teacher work required.
Online collaboration tools not attractive; students
prefer to click, not to talk or debate

38. Thank you!
Questions?
Slides Background: The Gall-Peters projection map, south at the top