From 25.04.2011 to 29.04.2011, the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais, (INPE) (Brazil) and the Institut for Geoinformatics (ifgi) (Germany) of the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster held a one week workshop in Sao Jose dos Campos, Brasil. This event was organised in the context of the German-Brasilian Year of Science, Technology and Innovation. Researchers of the GI@School initiative of Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster got in touch with scientists from Brazil, all of very different professions, to present work, exchange ideas and discuss future cooperation. This workshop was divided into two parts, a scientific meeting to present and discuss ideas and concepts of the use of GI in the educational context and hands-on session, where the  GI@School-group presented concepts and software for use in education (more information).

The GeospatialLearning@PrimarySchool initiative was presented during the scientific meeting part by Thomas Bartoschek. Henning Bredel presented his work in software development for OLPC´s XO-Laptop. During this part of the workshop, many interesting topics were presented by the participants; you can find all the presentations here.

The whole week was filled with inspiring discussions, development of new ideas, also for future cooperation and the exchange of ideas. The second part of the workshop was finished by a mapping party to add the area of the INPE to openstreetmap. The results can be seen here.

Some impressions of this week:

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Theodore, our local assistance – especially for translations into Kinyarwanda – got a big fan of OpenStreetMap. Yesterday he mapped two more hills of Kigali with one of our Garmin GPS60CSx and is looking forward to continue… Kigali is growing fast on OSM since Theodore is in the game   So perhaps we could start a movement of naming streets the same way, as this is a major problem to get around here. Navigating motos or taxis works just by heading them to landmarks like Ministeries,  Hotels or Bars… somewhat an adventure for non-residents.

Part of Kigali before Mapping

Part of Kigali after Mapping

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During our work in Kigali, we are mapping openstreetmap data. Not only for the school where we performing our tests, but also other parts of Kigali city. Theodore for example was excited collecting data in his sector and enjoyed to create his very first map on OSM. Have a look on PRE and POST:

Sector Kicukiro before collecting data

Sector Kicukiro after mapping

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