Shawn, My memory is fuzzy but there was a HS class that incorporated OSM in the curriculum in around 2009/2010.
It was discussed at the first SOTM US in Atlanta. There were a number of issues with the instructional effort on all sides of the equation. For the school, they felt our tagging system/editor was offensive because it included features that conflicted with local morals and laws (brothels, for example). For teachers, the teaching material was thin. For the OSM community, as you pointed out, the students engaged in what we'd consider vandalism (tagging each others' homes as bars and brothels) and I'm guessing that you're seeing more of that kind of vandalism. Using OSM in an educational setting is a laudable goal. It teaches kids not kids not just the material but lets them work on something "that really matters". It teaches them to be part of a larger community and work within that community. It also hopefully teaches them the value of the kind of work we're doing, our ethos of Free Data and collaboration, etc. At the same time, as you've seen, unless this is done carefully, it can be a real problem. In OSM we've seen classes using OSM doing mass imports, for example. We've seen these kind of edits that we'd normally classify as vandalism, etc. The Wikipedians see something similar when they work in schools, and this issue of quality is always an issue. As we see OSM used more in education, we have to really make the instructors aware of the issues and make sure that monitoring the student edits for quality is part of their workflow, both in terms of instruction/grading but also in terms of ensuring that the OSM data remains of high value. - Serge On Tue, Dec 16, 2014 at 7:04 AM, Shawn K. Quinn <skqu...@rushpost.com> wrote: > Does anyone know anything about a school course (middle or high school > most likely) incorporating OSM in or near Lexington, KY? I saw one > changeset comment mentioning something about extra credit but not > mentioning what the edit actually was. In addition I cleaned up plenty > of vandalism: a road on top of another road labeled "Short cut to > school", three exclamation marks added to a street name, undeleted a > fire hydrant (!), and a couple of other things that I'm drawing a blank > on right now. > > While I support OSM-related lessons in the classroom on general > principle, but I have to wonder if some of the garbage edits that come > with it offset the good edits. And to put it bluntly, the higher the > grade level this is coming from, the more disappointed I will be > regarding our public education system in 2014. > > http://www.openstreetmap.org/history#map=13/38.0462/-84.4885 > > -- > Shawn K. Quinn <skqu...@rushpost.com> > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk-us mailing list > Talk-us@openstreetmap.org > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us _______________________________________________ Talk-us mailing list Talk-us@openstreetmap.org https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-us
