Teaching CAD / GISGvSIG

gvSIG Batoví, the first distribution of gvSIG for Education is presented

The exercise of internationalization and empowerment pursued by the gvSIG Foundation is interesting. There are not many similar experiences, never before has free software had the maturity that it is now, and the scenario of an entire continent that shares an official language is interesting. Reaching the business level has had its beginning, reaching the academic level will surely be a guarantor of sustainability if advocacy is made on policies that support it.

The Minister of Transport and Public Works of Uruguay, presented last Thursday gvSIG Batoví, the first Uruguayan distribution that gives origin to gvSIG Educa.

Gvsig batovi

gvSIG Educa is a customization of the free Geographic Information System gvSIG Desktop, adapted as a tool for the education of subjects with a geographic component. gvSIG Educa aims to serve as a tool for educators to facilitate the analysis and understanding of the territory for students, having the possibility of adapting to different levels or educational systems. gvSIG Educa facilitates learning through the students' interactivity with the information, adding the spatial component to the study of the subjects, and facilitating the assimilation of concepts through such visual tools as thematic maps that help to understand spatial relationships.

gvSIG Batoví is, in this way, the launch of free software that will probably be adapted and used in a large number of countries. gvSIG Batoví is a software promoted by the National Topography Directorate for the Ceibal Plan, through which Primary and Secondary students will have access to a wealth of educational information represented by maps.

"Since the implementation of the Ceibal Plan, the government seeks to encourage policies that favor the development and benefit of the education of children, our future and present in the country," said Pintado, noting that due to its geographical characteristics our country can not produce goods to Large scale, "but we can generate unlimited knowledge of any kind."

During the presentation of this new tool, ceremony attended by the Undersecretary of the portfolio, Mr. Pablo Genta, the National Director of Surveying, Mr. Jorge Franco and the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Eng. Hector Cancela, the Minister He pointed out that beyond these productive limitations, "we Uruguayans can be distinguished by intelligence, by the ability to innovate and investigate, and link those knowledge to development." "And for this, this new software called" gvSIG Batoví "will be fundamental since it allows access to a vast universe of knowledge," he said.

The program "gvSIG Batoví", product of the joint work of the National Directorate of Topography, the Faculty of Engineering and the gvSIG Association, will enable students to acquire knowledge of Geography through the use of the XO - low cost portable computer - , also extendable to other areas of knowledge, such as History, Biology, among others.

The most interesting is the possibility that gives the teacher and / or student to develop their own thematic map from the different layers of information that has the territory. The aim is to encourage learning by discovery, making cartographic work a formative knowledge.

With "gvSIG Batoví" we present a first set of previously developed thematic maps of the Uruguayan territory, such as political and physical maps, population distribution, transport and communication infrastructure and land cover. The ease of access to these thematic maps -as installable plugins from the application itself- will allow the easy sharing of cartography between teachers and students of the entire community of users of this software.

Beyond the educational environment, professional users of gvSIG technology will be able to access plug-ins to these new mapping and mapping functionalities, making it a new, extremely simple way of sharing territorial information.

Project URL: http://www.gvsig.org/web/home/projects/gvsig-educa

In concussion

It seems an important step, although we took the news to lay some of our impressions.

The challenge for the gvSIG Foundation is to sell a new model, not software. Personally, it is what has impressed me the most and I applaud. The technical is very easy to sell and gvSIG in this sense has achieved a lot, although it has also cost a lot of money, an issue that many question but it is justified that there are no free things in this life. Selling a new model requires a strategy of social, political and economic intervention at different levels. This also requires a lot of money and the results are not immediate like the evidence of technical work. There my first warning, because if the technical evidence is questioned, let alone the evidence of the model that will walk with more disparity and with this crisis any excuse is valid to cut subsidies.

Latin America is a continent with different levels of maturity in political stability, in the administrative career, in planning and linking the academic with the political and economic. In this regard, a level of incidence must be worked on so that technical efforts are linked to public policies, which guarantee their fulfillment in the medium term. Not an easy task if we compare the diversity of progress from Mexico to Patagonia. Systematizing it will be the best thing that can be done.

So, including geography with computer tools in an educational field, we find it interesting at the primary intervention level, which is almost preventive. The Ceibal Plan is a very well established initiative, but you must make sure you support its institutionalization or that it is seen as a project of "some who passed through here." The secondary intervention level will be a good challenge, where it is necessary to change the way of thinking of those who make decisions and much more at the tertiary level where what remains is to make palliative efforts in the face of irreversible evils in practice.

My suggestion is almost the same. Beware of being too "Taliban". In this world, extreme exercises are difficult to sustain despite being effective. The ecosystems of current technologies must be sustained in coexistence with both proprietary initiatives and Open Source. In the first moment that the economic sectors that dominate many Latin American countries feel attacked by a model, they close the doors even if for this they have to carry out a coup d'état or renounce international cooperation. And then there will be, what is systematized, what is linked through public policies, the users who defend what they understood from the model.

 

In good time with gvSIG Batoví

Golgi Alvarez

Writer, researcher, specialist in Land Management Models. He has participated in the conceptualization and implementation of models such as: National Property Administration System SINAP in Honduras, Management Model of Joint Municipalities in Honduras, Integrated Cadastre-Registry Management Model in Nicaragua, Territory Administration System SAT in Colombia . Editor of the Geofumadas knowledge blog since 2007 and creator of the AulaGEO Academy that includes more than 100 courses on GIS - CAD - BIM - Digital Twins topics.

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One Comment

  1. What a good article, your ideas have inspired us and now we at the Francisco José de Caldas District University in Colombia have opened a group of free software and Geographic Information Systems called SIGLA (Geographic Information Systems with Free and Open Software) and now we are starting to publish content in http://geo.glud.org, visit our!!!

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