GITTA - Geographic Information Technology Training Alliance

GITTA project on 2nd place at Medida Prix

(September 18th 2008) GITTA has finished on second place at this year's MedidaPrix, a prestigious award for projects implementing the use of new learning technologies in higher education in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The prize money of Euro 100,000 was split into three parts: The winner MatheVital receives Euro 50,000, and us as well as third place e-teaching.org receive Euro 25,000 each. The award is the result of the work of many people. We'd like to thank all of you who contributed to the project in one way or the other.
The prize money will be invested in setting up a network with other interested groups in emerging nations and developing countries in Latin America and Eastern Europe, to help with translation to other languages (content is now in German, English, French).

Award ceremony (large image)

Additional access to CartouCHe content

(August 11th 2008) From now on, subscribing to the GITTA newsletter gives you full access to the contents of the CartouCHe project as well. Find an overview of the available content here.

GITTA in the final round of MedidaPrix 2008

(July 3rd 2008) We are happy to announce that GITTA has reached the final round of MedidaPrix 2008. This means that we are one of 19 finalists of a total number of 77 candidates that all achieved the formal criteria.

OLAT accepted at the Google Summer of Code students program

(March 18th 2008) OLAT, an open source learning management system founded by the University of Zurich, has been accepted at the Google Summer of Code program. The GSoC initiative offers students the possibility to work for open source projects and be paid by Google (around $5000 for a summer job). The aim of GSoC is to foster open source projects, to recruit talented programmers for the project ant probably also for themselves. Students interested in receiving such a grant should apply until March 31st, 2008. For interested students a free visit of the first int. OLAT conference 2008 in March 27th/28th could be organized. More information here:

Workshop: Exchange of Experiences in e-Learning and Curriculum Integration

(October 24th 2007) The GITTA association would like to proceed a workshop with focus on "Exchange of Experiences in e-Learning and Curriculum Integration". In order to help us with the organization of the logistics, we would appreciate if you could indicate your interest in attending this workshop by casting your vote on the following Doodle poll.

New ESRI ArcGIS Desktop 9.2 one year site licences available for students

(July 18th 2007) ESRI offers one year site licences of ArcGIS Desktop 9.2. The order form can be downloaded here.

First steering committee meeting on January 17th 2007

(January 3rd 2007) The first meeting of the steering committee responsible for the new GITTA Association will take place on January 17th 2007 at the University of Zurich. The GITTA newsletter will inform about outcomes and news as soon as possible.

GITTA Association founded

(November 21st 2006) On November 16th 2006 the association for promoting GITTA (in German "Föderverein") was founded at the Institute of Geography of the University of Bern. This new GITTA Association is open to every active member or sponsor interested in using, updating and/or promoting GITTA materials. The statutes, membership fee, contact person etc. can be found on the GITTA Association page. A redesign of the GITTA website in 2007 will hold extensive information about this new association and about how the project members will work together in future.

New GITTA lessons online: Basic level complete

(November 3rd 2006) We are very happy to announce that with the release of the "Spatial Modeling Module" (containing 5 lessons in French) the GITTA basic level is fully online and available without any limitations. Furthermore, intermediate lesson 1 and 2 (both in English) of the "Spatial Analysis Module" have been put online today. Please register to our newsletter to get our "Full Access Link" and have a look at the new lessons.

GITTA lessons available as IMS CP or SCORM Module

(May 30th 2006) All GITTA lessons available as open content can now be downloaded as ZIP archives in both the IMS Content Packages and the SCORM format. These content packages can directly be imported into any learning management system (LMS) supporting one of these popular standards. On the content package download page you can find the zip files and an installation tutorial movie for both OLAT and WebCT, two widely used LMS. The layout used is kept plain, no chapter numeration and navigation elements are used, since these parts will be provided by the LMS. If you tried out one of our content packages, we kindly request to provide us a short feedback including the LMS you are using, version and experiences. Thank you very much.

Older GITTA news can be found in our archive.