As I work away at the #MapLesotho initiative (there’s a 48 marathon happening as I write) I am also rather proud/gratified/thrilled to have finished grading about 60 assignments submitted by my BA and MA classes in Digital Arts in Humanities at University College Cork.

The second assignment for both this year was to participate in a choice of OpenStreetMap initiatives. The first was simply to get their feet wet working with their own neighbourhood. For the more adventuresome I introduced the #MapLesotho option. For those looking for a real challenge I set a couple of them working in the Irish Townlands Mapping Project which extended OpenStreetMap editing to use of MapWarper and a few intermediary tools adding a temporal challenge to their work.

Following some lectures to attempt to impart not just skills but an appreciation of the implication of the tasks that were being undertaken I was hugely gratified by the unique, creative and simply outstanding reflections that they submitted. They got it! and ran with the challenge.

I am not trying to figure out how I might share some of these exemplary projects. They currently exist on a variety of class blogs that I hope I might point to and reward the superb efforts and spread the word. It’s a great experience to be a part of the realisations, discoveries and community engagement that took place and I have to say great pride in the passionate efforts of the students.