[GRASSLIST:6528] Tecahing GIS with GRASS

Dear list,
I am going to teach a coure on GIS and I would like to use GRASS. Some questions.
1.- Should I introduce the students to the newer version 6 or use to the stable 5.4
2.- Are there any teaching materials for the lab, tutorials, that could assist me on this task.
3.-How can I overcome thee concurrent access problem, creating and account for each user or is there another route.?
Thanks in advance

Alejandro Hinojosa
Geology Department ,Earth Sciences Division
CICESE
P.O. Box 434843
San Diego Ca. 92143-4843

Phone + 52 646 175-0500 ext 26045
Fax + 52 646 175-0557
                          175-0559

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Alejandro Hinojosa wrote:

I am going to teach a coure on GIS and I would like to use GRASS. Some questions.

2.- Are there any teaching materials for the lab, tutorials, that could assist me on this task.

   Consider using Markus' and Helena's Second Edition of "Open Source GIS: A
GRASS GIS Approach" as the textbook. See <http://www.springeronline.com/&gt; for
details.

Rich

--
Dr. Richard B. Shepard, President
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. (TM)
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863

I am going to teach a coure on GIS and I would like to use GRASS. Some
questions.

1.- Should I introduce the students to the newer version 6 or use to
the stable 5.4

GRASS 6 is a lot more powerful and a lot less arcane. I'd suggest using
it.. a lot less scary.

2.- Are there any teaching materials for the lab, tutorials, that
could assist me on this task.

start here:
  http://grass.ibiblio.org/gdp/tutorials.php

Marcus has his short course:
  http://mpa.itc.it/markus/shortcourse/index.html

The GRASS book is very good but aimed at GRASS 5.4. Most raster and GIS
things are the same, but sites and vectors have changed. It is worth
having a look at.

The GRASS 4.2 Seeds Beginner's Tutorial (Leics) is nice, but somewhat
out of date.

3.-How can I overcome thee concurrent access problem, creating
and account for each user or is there another route.?

GRASS 6 allows concurrent use, just make a different mapset for each
user and keep the read-only but viewable-from-all-mapsets maps in the
PERMANENT mapset. Concurrent use of the same mapset is not allowed, and
users should not be encouraged to start switching mapsets mid-session if
there is a chance of collision. If each user is running from their own
account and the data is central, they should be able to view others
mapsets as read-only so not much danger there.

Would it be centrally installed binaries or run off of an application
server? If app server, you might have to do some (known) hacks to slow
down the 100% CPU use during mouse queries; it's an outstanding issue.

Hamish

Hello Alejandro,

answers inline...

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005 10:57:16 -0700 Alejandro Hinojosa
<alhinc@cicese.mx> wrote:

Dear list,
I am going to teach a coure on GIS and I would like to use GRASS.
Some questions.
1.- Should I introduce the students to the newer version 6 or use to
the stable 5.4

From my point of view I would highly suggest to use the stable version
GRASS 6.0 or even the shortly upcoming version 6.0.1.
You students should definitly have a look at the new vector features in
GRASS 6.
Furthermore nearly all raster-modules are ported to GRASS 6.

2.- Are there any teaching materials for the lab, tutorials, that
could assist me on this task.

GDF Hannover bR [1] offers trainig cources and tutorials [2] as well,
currently only in german language. A english translation is ready
translated and needs only some "polishing".

Again, as other posters already mentioned the book Neteler/Mitasova
[3]/[4] is excellent as a GRASS reference book.

3.-How can I overcome thee concurrent access problem, creating
and account for each user or is there another route.?

I am not quite sure what you mean. If you are talking about users on a
single system, it is good to have single users on one maschine.

If you are talking about a distributed data-basis (e.g. on a NFS-mount)
you should create seperate mapsets for seperate users.

Hope this helps

Best regards

  Stephan Holl

[1] http://www.gdf-hannover.de/leistungen.php?id=3&lg=en
[2] http://www.gdf-hannover.de/media.php?lg=en#scripts
[3] http://www.gdf-hannover.de/media.php?lg=en#books
[4] http://mpa.itc.it/grasstutor/gb2004_abstract.html

--
Stephan Holl

Check headers for GnuPG Key!
http://www.gdf-hannover.de