International Cartographic Association
Commission on Cartography and Children

Newsletter

September, 2008

 (Download the doc version here)

1. Representing the ICA Commission on Cartography and Children in international events

This summer our Commission was represented in four international conferences:

During the International Geographical and Herodot Conference we have the opportunity to contact representatives and members from the IGU Commission on Geographical Education and the Herodot Thematic Network for Geography. During our contacts, we agreed to follow and develop the relations between our Commission and these organizations, to have closer and oftener contacts exchanging information that can be interesting for all the members. Colleagues having research related to cartography and children were personally contacted and expressed their particular interest to know more about our activities. Their email addresses were added to the Commission email list and they are also receiving this newsletter: we are very pleased to welcome them to our community, hoping to begin and follow a very fruitful co-operation.

A report entitled "Cartography and GIS" - Training School for Teachers in Geography have been presented by Temenoujka Bandrova and Milan Konecny in the 5th International Conference on GIS (ICGIS-2008). The idea for the training school was positively accepted and some efforts could be made for its distributing in Balkan region.

During AutoCarto 2008 some ICA commissions had their workshops. Commission Co-Chair T. Bandrova presented a report entitled "Creating and updating of navigation maps for children purposes (in crises situations)" within the ICA Working Group on Cartography on Early Warning and Crisis Management Workshop. This is an attempt for further cooperation between our Commission and this Working Group, giving particular attention for development of children cartography within crises management.

2. New rules for the Barbara Petchenik Competition in 2009

The final version of the new rules for the next Barbara Petchenik Competition was placed to the Commission website. We want to thank all the colleagues who sent their very useful opinions and help us to work out this document. The new rules try to detail the activities to be developed by each responsible at the correspondent level (teachers, national and international coordinators, local organizer of Barbara Petchenik exhibition at ICC and the International Judging Commission). The theme of the competition is changed every four years and the new theme for the next two competitions (2009 and 2011) is "Living in a globalized world".

3. Proposal for a School Atlas Competition

The proposal written by our Past Chairman Patrick Wiegand (about the possible organization of a competition on School Atlases, within the International Map Exhibition organized in ICC conferences) with some modifications can be also found on our website. Next November the ICA Executive Committee will discuss this proposal and if it is approved, the School Atlas Competition will be announced for ICC 2009.

4. Proposal for research themes in our website

During our meeting in Borovets (January 2008) Necla Ulugtekin (Turkey) proposed to create a new menu point within the Commission website to collect research themes, which can be developed by MSc and PhD students in universities or other higher education institutions all over the world. A first step can be to make a list of themes arranged by countries, including colleagues' data (institution, address, email, etc) for personal contact. Till this moment we have no reactions to this proposal, but we consider it an interesting and useful initiative to be developed. We would exhort the colleagues to contact us by email if they are interested to collaborate in this idea.

5. Upcoming conferences

Everyday Cartography: Atl@s 2009

We are planning a joint ICA Commissions Meeting (with the participation of our Commission and the Commissions on Education and Training, on National and Regional Atlases and on Use and Users Issues) that will be held at the National Geographic Institute in Madrid (Spain), in April 2009. More detailed information will be sent for Commission members in October and it will be placed to our website too.

24st International Cartographic Conference (ICA ICC 2009)

ICC will be held between November 15 and 21, 2009 in Santiago de Chile. The first call for papers and other informative documents can be downloaded from the Conference website: www.icc2009.cl.

6. GIS Day

This year GIS Day is on November 19. Detailed information and interesting materials about GIS can be found at www.gisday.com, where you can make registration of your activity. If you plan any activity this day and you are interested to see this information published in our website too, please contact us by email.

Temenoujka Lubenova BANDROVA
Associate Professor
Department of Photogrammetry and Cartography
University of Architecture, Civil Engineering and Geodesy
1, Chr. Smirnenski Blvd. 1046 Sofia
Tel: +359 887 83 27 02 Fax: +359 2 866 22 01
bandrova_fgs@uacg.bg
BULGARIA
  
José Jesús REYES NUÑEZ
Professor Assistant
Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics
Eötvös Loránd University
Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest
H-1117
Tel: +36 1 372 2975 Fax: +36 1 372 2951
jesus@ludens.elte.hu
HUNGARY