GIS Day 2009 at
Technical University of Liberec et al
Liberec, Czech Republic
The longest celebration of GIS Day 2009 in the Czech Republic enlarged into a whole week
Partners: Technical University of Liberec, Regional Authority of Liberec Region, Fire Rescue Service of Liberec Region, Gymnasium of F. X. Salda Liberec, Czech Geological Survey, Elementary School Sadska, ARCDATA PRAHA, s.r.o., and Children's Television
The annual event of GIS Day was already held for the ninth time in the town of Liberec, the seat of the Regional Administration with 100 thousands of inhabitants, located in northern Bohemia. There are many ways in which the event in Liberec differed from GIS Days organized elsewhere in the Czech Republic. Schools and professional organizations had worked together to prepare a unique GIS Day event here. Such cooperation had its advantages: together we could prepare more diverse and more interesting program for more visitors. The number of visitors increases every year; therefore, we have a program for the whole week ready.
The main part of the program was prepared for elementary and secondary schools. At the beginning of the program each class learned basic information about GIS principles and technologies. The main part of the visit was focused on individual pupils' work on the thematic GIS workstations. We took advantage of children's natural curiosity, so we had prepared tasks in which the children were forced to use interactive web maps, Google Earth or ArcGIS applications to find the solution. The big success celebrated especially the workstations at which the children from partner primary and secondary schools demonstrated the creation of maps in ArcGIS software. Another type of activity was a competitive knowledge geogame called "Maps Wandering."
For public audience we prepared evening lectures. Topics for this year were "Google maps" (in cooperation with Google center in Zurich) and "GIS at home" - how to use GIS at home using the freeware of Quantum GIS software.
One entire day was devoted to the event called "GeoCup," the competition of the university students from the Czech and Slovak Republic. The students compared their GIS skills in three categories: Map composition, GIS analysis and GIS in spatial management.
However, the list of the particular events of Liberec GIS Day is still not complete. GIS Day Liberec was accompanied by an exhibition of maps and map posters which took place in a large modern building of the Regional Library. Exhibited were maps created by elementary and secondary schools and university students and also experts from the authorities. Who was not able to create a map in GIS, he or she could draw it by hand. Also, there was the "Discworld" competition announced for school teams, whose task was to draw their own map.
Another specialty of the Liberec GIS Day was also the cooperation with the Children's Television, which prepared a special GIS Day promo video for the entire Czech Republic and was preparing video news during the whole event time. The children journalists did not miss to interview any interesting guest. GIS day Liberec, Czech Republic, in numbers:
- nearly 1 000 of visitors
- 31 elementary and secondary schools
- 8 organizers and 6 other partners
- nearly 4 hours of video casts
Where to find us:
http://gisday.tul.cz
http://www.youtube.com/gisdayliberec
http://www.facebook.com/dnygisliberec
http://twitter.com/gisdayliberec
http://geogame.kraj-lbc.cz