"Spatial Data – It’s Not ‘Just’ Maps"
Lesson Learned After Five Years of Outreach
5*S: Space, Surveyors and Students is an SFI Discover Award, an outreach partnership initiated in 2019 between Maynooth University (Depts of Geography and Education), TU Dublin, Tailte Eireann (ex- Ordnance Survey Ireland), the Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland and Esri Ireland. The goal of 5*S is to help educators and school students learn how satellites (mainly Copernicus) and spatial data (in a GIS) can help meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 5*S hopes these events will encourage students to consider studying these topics for leaving cert, through into 3rd level or even pursuing it as their career and is particularly timely considering the pressures on Geography at second level in Ireland and restructuring in Leaving Cert. Lead by MU Dept Geography, 5*S is now entering its 6th year, and during this time has reached approximately 40,000 school students, over 300 teachers and student teachers, developed almost 100 StoryMaps for public use, has 12 contributing industry partner companies volunteering time, released an Augmented Reality App for teaching and learning with over 10,000 downloads entitled SatelliteSkill5, reached schools in over 20 counties and has an annual presence at all of the major national education and career fairs. Obstacles getting to this point range from a reluctance to recognise that spatial data is actually data, just with location, to the importance of developing a repeat model for better engaging with students. 5*S was chosen by the Irish Government as an exemplar case study for submission to the United Nations, and shows that outreach is not always straightforward if it is to be done properly, and early learnings on how to actually measure ‘success’ were some of the most important. This talk will outline some of the successes, the obstacles, highlight the methods designed to tackle them, and present some of the evaluation methods and metrics that show how we measure progress.
Speakers: Dr Conor Cahalane and Helen Cullen