Working Groups
Co-Chairs:
Josef Strobl (University of Salzburg, Austria, josef.strobl@sbg.ac.at)
Liyang Xiong (Nanjing Normal University, China, xiongliyang@njnu.edu.cn)
Cuizhen Wang (University of South Carolina, USA, cwang@mailbox.sc.edu)
1. Scope
Digital Earth education is the big picture process of facilitating learning across disciplines, aiming to better equip future generations to visualize, reason, analyze and manage our Earth in a digital world. Education provides an important pathway to spread knowledge and build capacities fostering Digital Earth through young scholars and professionals. Since the development of Digital Earth aims at improving the understanding and maintaining of our Earth, all stakeholders need to be involved in Digital Earth studies, requiring full attention to be paid to Digital Earth education and capacity building.
2. Objectives and Methodology
The WG5 aims to address the following objectives: (1) to identify members interested in engaging with the Digital Earth education community, and (2) to provide a virtual platform to facilitate learning and professional development in support of Digital Earth.
The WG5 supports members in defining and promoting Digital Earth education across disciplines, and in distributing Digital Earth related materials for sharing and efficient utilization. The main focus is engagement of K-12 and higher education. Particular efforts will be made to promote experiential learning via trainings, discussions, conference sessions, and paper/video competitions.
3. On-going and Planned Activities
WG5 long-term plans are:
(1) Promoting cutting-edge in-person/online courses in various forms with particular efforts on standardizing “Digital Earth” course contents under the ISDE umbrella.
(2) Providing academic certificates to both educators and students to increase motivation.
(3) Holding paper/video competitions to encourage students presenting in ISDE summits and symposia.
(4) Offering Education Excellence Awards to encourage scholars to engage in DE education.
(5)Developing position papers on DE education to guide this direction and area.
WG5 short-term plans (e.g., 2021) are:
(1) Promoting the video competition event at the 12th International Symposium on Digital Earth in Salzburg (6-8 July): https://digitalearth2021.org
(2) Identifying and engaging contributors to WG5 with worldwide representation.
(3) Establishing a communication platform for WG5.
(4) Developing synergies with other ISDE Working Groups.
