GIS Curriculum Development in Japan
UCL Geography SPLINT collaboration supports major initiative
Professor Paul Longley and Dr Alex Singleton visited Japan in early December to support a major initiative to create a core curriculum for teaching Geographic Information Science in Japanese universities and schools. Like the core curriculum in GI Science developed by the US National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA), the project aims to provide shared resources which will benefit the wider Japanese geographic information science community.
Paul holds a Visiting Professorship at the University of Tokyo and has delivered a series of seminars to discuss potential future research and teaching collaborations with UCL. Alex spoke to the University of Tokyo group on the UK GIS curriculum and the outputs of the Spatial Literacy in Teaching (SPLINT) project.
These activities build on successful relationships developed with several Japanese universities during the course of SPLINT. They have included the delivery of a series of teaching courses in Japan, and sabbatical visits by Japanese academics to UCL.
The plan is to continue strengthening synergies between SPLINT and the curriculum development activities led by the University of Tokyo during the next 5 years.
Further details on the talk given by Alex can be found on the SPLINT website: www.spatial-literacy.org
