GST 101 - Introduction to Geospatial Technology - FOSS4G Labs

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FOSS4G course curriculum for GST 101 - Introduction to Geospatial Technology

This curriculum currently contains labs written to use FOSS4G software such as QGIS.

All labs now updated to QGIS 2.8

Lab Topics

• Lab 0 - Getting to Know FOSS and FOSS4G
• Lab 1 - GIS Application Paper Assignment
• Lab 2 - Spatial Data Models
• Lab 3 - Understanding Coordinate Systems and Map Projections
• Lab 4 - Displaying Geospatial Data
• Lab 5 - Creating Geospatial Data
• Lab 6 - Understanding Remote Sensing and Analysis
• Lab 7 - Basic Geospatial Analysis Techniques

Labs with a checkmark are completely converted to Markdown

Completed Lab Contents

Each Module folder contains a folder designating which version of the QGIS software it is written for (ex. Module 1 Lab\QGIS 2.8\...). The hope is that as new software versions are released, the prior lab's version will be updated and stored in a new (appropriately named) folder.

Each lab contains the following four resources:

• Module n Lab.md - Markdown file of lab
• Module n Lab.docx - MS Word document of the lab converted from Markdown
• figures - Folder containing all images reference in the lab
• Lab n Data - Folder containing all data referenced in the lab. If the data is too large for GitHub, a Markdown file containing a link to the data will instead be included.

Feedback

Open an issue or fork and submit a pull request on github, or, email Richard.Smith@tamucc.edu.

Curriculum Philosophy

This curriculum was developed to bring a complete set of labs using FOSS4G to the community. As educators, we found the amount of ready-made FOSS4G curriculum lacking, or woefully out of date. Therefore, with the support of the Department of Labor, we decided to create the world's first complete FOSS4G curriculum available for everyone to use, for free.

We do not want this curriculum to die! Therefore, the Spatial {Query} Lab at Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi is spearheading the continued development and updating of these labs.

License: Creative Commons 3.0 License

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/.F

Curriculum History

FOSS4G Lab Author: Kurt Menke, GISP Bird's Eye View GIS

Original Lab Content Author: Richard Smith, Ph.D., GISP Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi

The development of the original lab documents were funded by the Department of Labor (DOL) Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grant No. TC-22525-11-60-A-48; The National Information Security, Geospatial Technologies Consortium (NISGTC) is an entity of Collin College of Texas, Bellevue College of Washington, Bunker Hill Community College of Massachusetts, Del Mar College of Texas, Moraine Valley Community College of Illinois, Rio Salado College of Arizona, and Salt Lake Community College of Utah. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

These documents continue to be modified and improved by generous public contributions.

Curriculum Document Format

All curriculum is written in Markdown. Markdown was chosen for these reasons:

• Markdown is easy to learn and contains enough functionality to render the labs.
• With the lab documents converted to Markdown, GitHub can track all changes to the document; this is not possible with, say, a Word or PDF document.
• It is very easy to convert Markdown to multiple other formats using software such as PanDoc.

Each lab begins with a lab title.

• Course titles are always size Header 1 # GST 10X - Course Title and are the only size Header 1 in the lab document.

The lab number and name is listed next.

• Lab number and titles are always size Header 2 ## Lab n: Lab Title and are the only size Header 2 in the lab document.

An attribution block is next as we always want to give proper attribution.

• This Markdown document contains the attribution block: Attribution Block for Lab Documents.md.

An Introduction, Objective, and Video Statement are listed next.

• These three sections are always size Header 3 ### Introduction and are always sections 1, 2, and 3 respectively.

The lab Tasks (logical blocks of content) are next.

• The Tasks are always size Header 3 ### Task n - Task Title. A lab document contains as many Tasks deemed appropriate by the authors.
• The last Task is always a challenge for the students to attempt on their own without (m)any step-by-step instructions.

The last two sections are Conclusion and Questions.

• These two sections are always size Header 3 ### Conclusion and are always sections 4 and 5 respectively.

When a figure is placed in the lab document, the figure is never provided a number, instead, it is referred to by its relative placement to the referring text (ex. refer to figure below). *All figures should be placed within the 'figures' folder in the same directory as the Markdown document.