GIS EXPERT is a popular-awareness contest intended primarily for pupils of elementary schools and students of secondary school, universities, but also kindergartens. Participants develop their own GIS projects in teams or they can benefit from the projects fixed by contest organizer. Projects must be processed using the free available IT tools (open source) focused to geographic information systems (GIS).

Policy Context

Description of target users and groups

Pupils and students of kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools, universities;

Teachers/trainers/tutors;

Others interested in geographic information systems;

 

Municipal experts.

Description of the way to implement the initiative

The competition is divided into 3 parts:

1.Informational part. Within this part an information campaign is conducted from January to June every year. Candidates have the opportunity to learn what the geographic information systems is and in particular to what the competition brings them - how to use GIS and how to work in team for developing projects. Promotion of the "GIS-EXPERT competition" is mainly supported by the Internet. All necessary information are described in detail on the "GIS-EXPERT competition" website.

2.Educational part. Within this part the actual information on geographic information systems is brought to people. For better awareness of what the geographic information systems is we organise for the candidates as well as for general public specially tuned training how to work effectively with GIS. Training is devided into basic and advanced. Training events are held in the period January to October.

3.Competitive part. The phase of competition is organised on two levels - local (city) and regional (the Ústí region). In the regional round of competition the teams present their projects in the form of large posters (A0 format). The posters are evaluated by professional jury consisting of experts in geographic information systems and representatives of the town Most/regional institutions.
The regional round of competition is similar to the county round. Authors of the projects present their works in the form of a poster of A0 format size and by light public presentation using multimedia tools (e.g. Power Point presentation etc.)The local round is organised on a date fixed by local organisers usually 14 days befor the regional round. The date of regional competition is always adapted to the world day "GISDAY".

Publication of winners. Cups and small prices are given to the winners. The winner´s team get themark "GIS EXPERT" and they can use it for one year. Prices are financially supported by the city of Most and Ústí Region.

Number of participating students in 2007 : approx. 100
Number of participating students in 2008 : approx. 150

Technology solution

Main results, benefits and impacts

The penetration of geographic information systems to everyday´s life must be reflected in the preparation of pupils and students to use GIS applications. Intensive penetration into the use of GIS is not only to science but also to all areas of human life such as government offices and other Internet services, requires the integration of these skills and knowledge in teaching at primary and secondary schools.

Return on investment

Track record of sharing

The aim of the project:

- Addressing mainly the young generation;

- Dissemination of idea "GIS to schools";

- Dissemination of GIS products based on Open Source platform among schools;

- Learning interested persons to work with GIS;

- developmnet of teamwork

 

Cooperation:

- GIS EXPERT team directly cooperates with educational institutions and universities; (Department of Geography, Geoinformatics Laboratory)

- Organization of educational events for children and youth in collaboration with various institutions;

- direct link to the global geographic information systems (www.gisday.com)

Lessons learnt

The main idea is : "To learn about GIS by learning with GIS".

This means to teach by practical using the methods and tools of GIS. To the students are presented the principles of simplification of reality by its decomposition to the thematic layers (river flows, municipal sites, railways, forests, borders, etc.), ranking of thematic layers into the logical sequence ("sandwich principle"), joining of relevant symbols and creation of a legend, calling the information about the selected element (the identification of the element - e.g. finding of the population of the State).

Students learn to the GIS by thinking about the task, using the GIS methods and looking for solutions. The team work is important which supports communication skills.

The main benefit of the contest is to increase multimedia teaching and comprihensive involvement of modern information technologies.