Ideas for the Schools mapping project
RobJN
Public
Seen by 296
We made some amazing progress in January and a number of great tools have been developed. How else can we support the quarterly project to map schools?
Bogus Zaba Mon 8 Feb 2016 2:21PM
As far as I can tell from overpass queries I am almost the only mapper taking part in the Schools Project in Wales. SK53 is working his way through some schools on Anglesey and North Gwynedd but South Wales is getting no attention at all. I am not intending to do much outside of Flintshire, Wrexham, Denbighshire, Conwy, Anglesey and Gwynedd. Is there a way of sending a message to all registered mappers in relevant areas bringing the project to their attention? I am guessing not everybody follows the talk-GB mailing list.
Harry Wood Mon 8 Feb 2016 5:22PM
I should tweet about it more from @OSMUK
I was meaning to keep an eye on the tracker and tweet when we hit 200 users ...but I missed it. ReTweeted RobJN's tweet a few days later https://twitter.com/mappamercia/status/694585842501816321 ...grab me on IRC any time if any of you have a suggestion for a tweet to send out.
Robert Whittaker Mon 8 Feb 2016 6:16PM
Speaking very generally, it would always be good to get some press coverage for OSM. I'm not sure how well it would work for this project (or for a lot of others) as we're mostly playing catch-up with OS. Possible angles might be the general awesomeness of crowd-sourcing, high completion level, good relative to existing products, and/or contributing fixes/updates back to source data. Maybe only the first will work here though.
Out of interest, does anyone know how many school and college POIs there are in https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/business-and-government/products/points-of-interest.html ?
Jez Nicholson Thu 11 Feb 2016 9:59AM
The Ordnance Survey have 30,214 POIs for 'mainstream' education. This is roughly made up from 25k Edubase + 3k from the Information and Analytical Service Division – Education Department + 2k from the Welsh Assembly
RobJN Mon 8 Feb 2016 9:31PM
@robertwhittaker I like the idea of press coverage. Is it worth doing anything first (e.g. a "How to map schools" guide) so that we can link to this in the press release?
Gregory Marler (former Director) Tue 9 Feb 2016 3:56PM
Robert W,
Could OSM links on your progress tool/webpage append &layers=N so that notes are seen when one looks for a school.
I made a GIF to show how to add a note, with the intention I might encourage people to leave local information about schools (back gates/footpaths are helpful). But then I didn't really promote it in that way.
https://twitter.com/gregorymarler/status/692383788928753665
I'd make some GIF screencasts to explain mapping schools, but GIF creation in Linux isn't as easy as I'd like.
Poll Created Tue 9 Feb 2016 8:16PM
Let's do a press release Closed Fri 12 Feb 2016 7:08PM
How do people feel about running a press release related to the schools project. Good idea?
Results
| Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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Agree | 66.7% | 4 |
BZ
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| Abstain | 33.3% | 2 |
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| Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
| Undecided | 0% | 43 |
DS
PB
CS
GR
IC
SR
CS
DU
YP
L
|
6 of 49 people have voted (12%)
RobJN
Tue 9 Feb 2016 8:17PM
I think this is a great idea - good for outreach. Will need the help of others though :-)
Bogus Zaba
Wed 10 Feb 2016 9:40AM
Generally seems like a good idea but I have no idea who would be on the distribution list. Tech Journals/websites: Not very exciting for them; Local Authority/Education media: more likely, but unsure what they read.
Robert Whittaker
Fri 12 Feb 2016 12:23AM
But if it's to be picked up, I think we'll need some sort of angle to make it newsworthy. This might be achievement based, or perhaps something that explains the benefits to society, or both.
Jez Nicholson
Fri 12 Feb 2016 7:11AM
I think it's a great idea which fits strongly with the proposed aims of OSM-GB. But I/we lack the practical knowledge to do it properly. There are people like https://pressdispensary.co.uk who can help. But money.
Harry Wood
Fri 12 Feb 2016 3:46PM
Why not? But the project description/docs are not really currently in good enough shape for a big bang promotion. It needs a clear description and call to action. Current wiki page is a jumble tags and links, and lots of assumed OSM knowledge.
Gregory Marler (former Director) Wed 10 Feb 2016 9:43AM
"no idea who would be on the distribution list"
Local press might be interested, as schools are an important local issue.
RobJN Thu 11 Feb 2016 10:13PM
So how should we take the press release idea forward. Anyone want to have a go at putting a rough draft together?
Gregory Marler (former Director) Fri 12 Feb 2016 11:57AM
In the spirit of do-ocracy I bashed out a start, but I have looked at the many resources on Google that can help. https://hackpad.com/OSM-UK-Schools-Project-bcgTXlEJ0K3
Personally I think the benefit to society is a good angle to go for.
Is the Guardian's open data stuff still strong? Thhey might be interested.
Once we've written the press release I could pass it to a good friend (front-page journalist for a number of North East papers) & get feedback on it. He recently wrote this on FB...
I was just searching for a photo in our archives and came across [2007 photo of me].
It was one of those conversations I that usually I dread...
"What do you do?"
"I'm a reporter."
"Why don't you write a story about me?"
But in this case, it turned out better than usual...
RobJN Fri 12 Feb 2016 6:01PM
That's easy to fix with a bit of work! Do you have any contacts from your time on sky news etc?
Gregory Marler (former Director) Thu 25 Feb 2016 3:40PM
On 9th March I'm meeting up with my journalist friend about some stuff we do, but we've also tacked on to talk about an OSM Press Release.
I'm not really sure what to talk about. Does anyone have any questions? Does anyone want to try and work on it further so I have something closer to finished that he can then comment on?
Jez Nicholson Sat 27 Feb 2016 7:51AM
I'd like to know where they get their stories from, and what sort of thing are they really after. Would a straight story about the latest school mapping be interesting in itself or does it need to be wrapped in something linked to the latest current affairs (e.g. mapping hospitals linking to junior doctors strikes) or something whimsical and shareable (e.g. the map of rude UK placenames). Do they want stats? Do they want us to create images (maps, charts, graphs) that they can republish, or just provide figures, or both?
RobJN · Sun 7 Feb 2016 4:14PM
Let's share ideas of how we can continue to support the project to map schools in the UK. Is there any tool that could help us, should we be reaching out to new people, can we ... You get the picture! Share your ideas below :-)