So tonight I’m struck by two things.
- One I don’t blog enough. I’ve got a lot rolling around in this empty head of mine and I plan or at least I’m going to try to do this once every two days.
- I don’t document enough – I’ve really got to spend some time finishing a training course and writing down a lot of my processes.
Anyway, for those of you keeping up I visit a High School and talk about OSM (Red Bank High School in Chattanooga TN). My first trip in was all about OSM. Second Trip in we actually did a lot of mapping. Third trip got a bit out of hand….I think this is trip four. We started out using Mapzen. Mapzen is great. The problem we had with it is the short time I have at the school. I would like a week – I get at most two days. We lose a day with logging in and me running back and forth between 30 some odd kids. So I’ve made the decision to go with Potlatch. I will see what happens.
The plan tomorrow is to be more organized. Typically we tell the kids to just map. Go nuts. Typically that is what they do. Go nuts. We haven’t had much if any vandalism but I’ve had to spend more time cleaning up the map than what I’ve wanted. So tomorrow’s exercise is to do a few things that kids are familiar with:
- Gas Stations
- Banks
- Churches
I have decided we are going to have 15 minutes of OSM. Then 15 minutes of getting a login and then 15 of me showing them what to do. Finally 30 minutes of me screaming at the kids. The goal is to get them to map those three things. To make it relevant (and productive) I’m going to suggest a point system. A point for getting in a facility correctly. A point for Naming it Correctly. A point for every attribute (address possibly) they put in – Correctly. How will I check it – haven’t decided yet.
My whole reason for doing this is two-fold:
- One I need to keep them focused. In general they do good work. Even the kids that one would typically labeled as less than optimal. The map updates quickly. They get almost instant satisfaction and they can point to something “on the internet” that they have done.
- Two, I need more of Chattanooga done and these things are important. We have an OSM group here in town – this is good for that group. It helps us get more information on the map. I’m alerting them tonight as to what is happening tomorrow. Short notice – I know. It’s the way I work at times.
