SPLINT Meeting

Friday, 24 February, 2006

I attended a meeting today at the Royal Geographical Society on SPatial Literacy IN Teaching (SPLINT). It was almost a who’s who of GIS with presentations from Paul Longley (UCL), Don Janelle (UC Santa Barbara), David Rhind (City), David Maguire (ESRI), Mike Batty (UCL) and Michael Goodchild (UC Santa Barbara) amongst others. The focus of the meeting was (obviously!) spatial literacy as a result of the HEFCE funded CETL based at the University of Leicester (and shared with Nottingham and UCL). Interestingly this CETL is targeted at the taught postgraduate level. The project was “officially” launched in January with a great deal of press coverage received as a result of their “Surname Profiler”. The deliverables promise a lot that will be of use from schools, through to undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. In particular instructors will find the development of teaching aids useful and should check the SPLINT website regularly. It would be very useful if podcasts and Powerpoints of the days presentations were made available….