 The recording. And I'll start with with introducing myself. My name is Mary and Ruby and I manage the STG today program at the Sustainable Development Solutions Network. I was launched in partnership with Esri in the National Geographic Society in July 2020 to advance the production and use of real time and geo reference data for the SDGs. And it's a pleasure to be moderating this webinar today. I'm just going to check and see it looks like Jeff hasn't joined us today. Yeah, there we go. Looks like Jeff is tuning in. We'll kick off today's webinar with a keynote by Professor Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of SDSN. Welcome to a panel discussion about the need for timely data on school locations, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the challenges it revealed and exacerbated regarding access to education. We'll include two technical demonstrations by our partners, the humanitarian open street map team, and Esri will walk us through the two platforms you can use to map the school and participate in my school today. And we'll have some time for questions at the end. So feel free to submit your questions to the Q&A box. Hi Jeff. Can you hear me alright? Greetings. I can. I know you've stepped away from a conference to be with us so thank you for making the time to share your insights. The floor is yours. Great. Thank you. Let me just. Can you open up my video. Let me see if I can do that. Are you able to turn on your video now? Let's see. No. Oh, wait a minute. Good. Great. Great. Thank you so much, Mariam. Thanks to all the participants of my school today. This is such a timely, interesting and important project. I wanted to step out of the meeting that I'm in in Cyprus right now to greet everybody and congratulate you and urge you to move forward. We have, of course, a multiple crises, but one of them is the education crisis. In fact, Secretary General Gutierrez in his agenda that he set forward for the UN highlighted the heartless state of education today in the COVID period. And even before COVID with hundreds of millions of kids, not getting the educational services that they absolutely urgently need. COVID, of course, put hundreds of millions of more kids out of school and out of reach. And there are many processes underway, rather urgent and desperate processes to try to close the access chasm right now, whether it is, of course, making it safe for kids to go back to school, massively scaling up a training of teachers and getting kids and schools online connected with digital devices so that they can benefit from the online environment and also as necessary learned online if the schools are closed or if classrooms are connected. My school today is a is a very innovative and important part of that effort. I also want to salute UNESCO and UNICEF and ITU for the Giga initiative, which is closely related, which aims to get all schools and all learners online, in line with Secretary General's call for universal digital access. No later than 2030 and for education, it really needs to come much before that. My school today is not only helping in that by even helping ministries of education and district officials know where the schools are have them geo referenced, increasingly understand the nature of the facilities their capabilities and their gaps. Do they have digital connectivity do they have electricity how many teachers how many classrooms size and students enrollments and so forth, but doing this in two ways that are extremely important one today. My school today is about timely information, and second participation, because my school today is about bottom up participation of students all over the world, especially with the focus in Africa to participate in this geo referencing to learn GIS systems tools to be able to use the information that is gathered for learning about their local SDG challenges and learning how to use statistical and geographic geo referenced data. So I see this project is extremely pertinent and important. Next year will be a global summit on education. I really want my school today to be an important contributor to that summit and working closely together with the rest of the UN family. And also that we're contributing to solutions. I would like my school today to be working closely with the ministers of education. We have a fantastic partnership in Ghana where the minister told us on our most recent online meeting how important this participation is for his policy planning for his strategy of allocating resources between schools and sharing resources among schools, and how important this initiative is for participation and gaining new knowledge as a pedagogical device as I believe that everybody should learn GIS tools the same way that they need to learn spreadsheets and basic statistical tools, and this project can be a great learning device as well. Thanks to you for the leadership and to colleagues around the world that are participating today. I very much look forward to the new breakthroughs of this program. And of course, I'm very eager to help in any way to support your very important work. Thank you so much. Thanks for letting me join briefly today. Thank you so much, Jeff, for joining us. I think we'll be addressing a number of the points that you raised in today's panel discussion, and we hope to expand our collaboration with other stakeholders to help get every school on a map and every child in a school. Thank you so much for joining us. Good. Thanks a lot best wishes everybody. Thank you. So moving on to the panel discussion. We have three wonderful panelists joining us today. We have narrowed to the technology lead at UNICEF that I am a assistant lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar and she's also a youth mappers regional ambassador and Lorian Innes, a business development manager at Africa Geoportal. Thank you all for joining us today. The first question I have for the panel is about how digital access has become an inherent part of education access for many education systems during the COVID-19 pandemic. How does this impact a student's need for access to a physical education facility? Neroa, would you like to start? Sure. I'm not able to start the video. Let me see. Otherwise it's fine I can just go ahead. First of all, hi everyone. Thanks so much for having me here. I'm Neroa Furutusa. I'm part of the Giga team where I lead as Miriam said our technology work and Giga is an initiative to connect schools to the internet and through that connect students to relevant information opportunity and choice and maybe rather than focusing on the impact that COVID has created in the access to these physical spaces that maybe other members of the panel might be able in a better position to speak about that. I'm going to speak about the impact that it has created in access to content, in access to education and how schools can still play a key role within that. In Giga we believe that schools are not only centers for education but are centers for entire communities. On top or in addition of learning, it's places where vaccination campaigns happen, where people go to vote, where community members gather after school hours and access different types of experiences and different types of content and services. So within that context being able to locate schools have a deep understanding of where they are, where are these center points for communities and using them to again distribute access to learning and distribute access to a relevant digital services. It's very key. And that's where Giga's first step and where we are really putting lots of efforts is in creating a global map of school locations because without knowing where the schools are, you cannot connect them to the internet or you cannot deliver any kind of services and the resources that they need. So that's really the very first effort or thing that we are doing on our end. You can go to projectconnect.org and you'll see the public map of school locations that we are creating over there. We have almost a million schools mapped and the goal is to map every school in the world by 2030. And within that my school today, it's a really important effort for us by engaging with community members by engaging with the crowds to help us support this type of efforts, and among each other create these comprehensive, complete data set of school locations around the world. Thank you so much. I think all the panelists will be able to share their video now sorry, sorry about that. Yeah, what are your thoughts about this question. Right, you're still muted. Sorry. Thank you very much for inviting me to these important events. I'm glad that you invited me. I'm Raya and assistant lecturer at the State University of Zanzibar, but I'm also a youth map as regional ambassador, and I'm also currently the Swiss map as mentor. And luckily this I'm very interested in this my school project because we are currently doing a similar project, the school mapping project in Zanzibar, funded by OMGTZ, and also supported by liquid telecom. And the idea is at first of course it was to provide school location for the schools across Zanzibar. So when we met with the liquid telecom they were interested also to find ICT data available into those schools and find the means proper means to provide internet connectivity across the schools. Of course they are doing a project across Africa. So for our case we are doing it in Zanzibar. It seems like we are having a similar objectives and aims that the ones you're doing. But coming directly to the question that how does this impact a student's need for access to a physical education facility. I will talk personally based on my context in which most of the time internet accessibility is very we lack internet access we don't have a reliable internet access. So moving into online teaching it's very high for us. Some of the schools like mostly private schools started some initiatives during the school closures for the lockdown in for this pandemic, but it failed as most of the students were some of the students are not able to buy gadgets themselves they are using their parents, but in addition to that, the lack of reliable internet access was a hindrance to, to a deployment of that. So in this I can see an impact and a need to access physical education facility at the long run, though we are using digital content and digital online learning and digital tools. So you still need school facilities for the students to be there and access the, the, the, the, I mean, access the online materials to access the lab facilities to access internet facilities, etc. But in addition to that, it is not only based on the school's location but what are the facilities currently we have in those locations in those schools I mean, because there are some, some of the schools with the computer labs, there are some computer labs but they don't have access to internet. But in addition to that we have gone to rural areas where the electricity is not accessible. So you see it as a large impact. And as for this project we are working directly with the Ministry of Education we have a full support from the Ministry of Education. And they have some, of course they need some of the data and this data at the long run, they will use it in the Ministry of Education management information system, which will help them in making new policies in regulating where to put new schools where to, if there's a need to close one or if there's a need to put school into a certain area. So that's how what I want to talk about. Yeah. Thank you. And sorry for those who doesn't know about youth mappers youth mappers is an initiative. It's a worldwide initiative. It's a basic on student led chapters in which university students are mapping. They are mapping initiatives they create maps but they also students are trained and given skills to to be mappers themselves. So they are doing that and they are working under the open that initiative. So they map the different facilities and different things and they put that into open street map. Thank you. Thank you. Laurie and would you like to go next. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you very much for inviting us to speak today. My name is Laurie and in this I'm regional manager for Africa for Esri. And on the panel today representing Africa to your portal. So for those of you who don't know I've Africa to your portal is an Esri initiative to support the geospatial community in Africa. Africa to your portal is an online platform completely free for single users and really what we're providing is three things. First of all we provide tools for mapping spatial analysis and field data collection. And we provide learn lessons and this is a very important part. These learn lessons are really for anybody like a student teacher or geospatial professional to get up to speed with how you can use the tools how you can map and analyze that data. And lastly Africa to your portal provides data itself of course and the data consists of many different sources. It includes data from Esri, but it also includes data from other global organizations like NASA, the World Bank, also open street map data from FEO and others. Next to that we also have data from regional organizations like RCMID and country data, as well as data provided by the larger user community within Africa. So Africa to your portal in a nutshell is all about providing geography to the community for development. We've used for many different goals and topics including conservation health, especially during the COVID-19 crisis last year, but also of course in support of SDG calls like equality and quality education as we're talking about today. So coming back to your question about the access and the remote learning. So we know and we've seen that a lot can be done remotely, but we also know that a lot is lost when things are done remotely, right, the shared experience, you know, interacting with peers interacting with the community at large. And, you know, we feel a hybrid approach is probably something that absolutely will work, especially in a field of geography for us. So we can do a lot remotely, but what we're missing is that the students go out and learn in the environment, right, that they speak with people about the problems and that they apply technology to help with practical applications. So this is why as we we try our best to provide, you know, learn lessons as well as the technology and that technology can be used remotely. So it can be used online, but it also can be used in the classroom, but also more importantly outside or mobile devices and within the community. And all these tools are provided through Africa to your portal. And I totally agree with the previous two ladies, you know, the schools really can function as communities and that's a very powerful role for these for these youngsters going into the future. Thank you so much. The next topic is about using kind of a bottom up approach to improve data on school locations and how that approach supports existing education related data and decision making processes at a local level. So, Raya, would you like to start and share your thoughts on that. Okay, maybe we can. No, no, no, would you like to start, and then we'll go back to to Raya. And yeah, no, the video is working. And I think that button up approaches are definitely super helpful and also complementary to existing centralized approaches that we traditionally work with the way we we've been gathering our data. It's combining different approaches and I do believe that maybe a single approach won't solve the entire problem but definitely will complement each other. And it's different approach brings a different value to the to the problem. Usually the data that's gathered by governments it means that it's gathered. It's not very timely. Usually this data collection efforts happen every few years. They are very resource consuming, both time wise but also other types of resources as people have to travel to the physical locations gather the data. Another challenge with this type of approaches is that oftentimes data is inaccurate as well. And there is no easy way to validate and ensure that the data that you are receiving it's accurate. And if you identify errors or accuracy issues and it's again very difficult to fix them and correct them. This approach allows us to work with with the people with communities to the crowd and directly collect this data, making it, coming directly from the ground, getting the needs and understanding what are the needs, and listening what people have have to say, that's the local ownership piece, and by promoting or by supporting this local ownership of the data, you also create an incentive for community members to make sure that the data that they share it's relevant it's accurate, and that it's up to date so for us and the way we've been interacting with we've had few crowdsourcing initiatives on our end as well. It's that we see this type of initiatives very valuable to complement existing data to validate and fill some of the gaps that we identify in data that already exists. There are many initiatives that are happening at the same time and sometimes there are duplication of efforts so we really want to avoid duplicating efforts and making sure that the work that we do and that the efforts that we put on the ground are to complement. So on that we've had, we have a mapping game, a crowdsourcing mapping game that we've built to help us crowdsource the validation of data. As I said earlier, oftentimes data that we receive from official sources, it's not accurate, and we even find locations that when you start putting them or putting them on a map, either they are outside the country itself or they are in a place with no buildings at all. So we are using crowdsourcing to validate these data to receive at scale. And I think that the effort that my school today is doing, it's even, it goes beyond that, because that doesn't allow you only to validate data but it also allows you to gather new data that you didn't have before and maybe go to communities and places that either they have informal schools or they have types of facilities that wouldn't necessarily be included in official formal data sets. Thank you. Raya let's go back to you if you can hear me. Okay, maybe not. Lorian, over to you. Thank you. So the bottom up approach. I think the first law of geography really supports this. The first law of geography is that everything is related to everything else but near things are more related than distant things. So from a community perspective it means that people that are more involved in what happens in their own community. And then bring that back to education as a parent, you know, you want the best education for your child and you want to understand, you know, where the school is what are the facilities that the school has. Do they have water do they have internet do they have electricity, you know what are social distancing policies. How do I get my child to school you know what is the road infrastructure like are there any dangerous crossing. And this is all information that's really important and relevant for for, you know, parents to know. And of course for the local community to then make those decisions. So as a parent living in that local community I really have a vested interest in making sure that authorities have the right data to make the right decisions for those schools, and also from a student perspective, you know, learning is easier if you can relate to it. I'm really saying geospatial data is not just about the school but also looking at geospatial data within the community really helps them improve their learning and really brings that back to life and how important it is for the entire community to have access to work with this data and to, as Raya said, have ownership of that data. So yeah absolutely agree with that statement of a possible approach. Thank you. Let's try one more time. Raya, can you hear me. Maybe we can, we can come back to Raya. She may. Oh, there we go. I have some issues with my PC I don't know what happened. Well, coming to the second point that you have raised about the bottom up approach. It's a best way to go. They start with the community themselves. And those people are the ones with the ground truth information, rather than like asking this remote mappers. So it's a very good idea. But in addition to that, that we are also we are also making the community feel like participate. They feel they feel welcomed to support the initiative and to contribute to the data. So it's a thing and they will be able to share that openly. And so, in addition to that, this information is really helpful, especially for the parents to understand where their children, for example, should catch their bus to school. Maybe if is it near to their homes, so that they can either walk and what about the walking routes and building locations. So if to see if there's anything that can danger their students so it's really important. And in addition to that, it's not that time consuming. Once you have your gadget you have the tools you can simply even a student can map his or her own school. So it's quite a good thing. Yeah. Thank you. On the next question I have for the panel is, can you share your experience or maybe an example on how information on school locations can help highlight gaps in quality education opportunities. Lauren, let's start with you. Sure. Well, there's many different ways that location information can help highlights gaps right and the map that you have put out there, showing the walking distance to school broken down by gender and number of students shows a very, very clear picture. And that really highlights huge inequalities across the continent and within countries. So as Raya was just saying as well, it's not just about, you know, some of those key data set like distance to school is also about ability to get to school and to stay in school right. So you also need to look at things like income levels in the area, household size and demographic in general, things like employment rate, the quality of the education at the school, as well as the education levels within the school, if this has an impact on it, as well as the infrastructure at large is what was Raya was mentioning as well, you know, the, is there access to electricity internet. Just to give you a very personal example from my experience, you know, in England, students get assigned a state school of free education roughly based on their proximity of the house to the school. And schools themselves get rated based on how well the students are doing. And if you then start mapping the location of the school, bring in the ratings of that school and bring also in the income levels in that area. You'll find that there's a direct correlation between the income level in the area, the house prices, and how well the schools are doing that area the quality of the schools. And really what I wanted to show you there is that it's not just about the data right it's about the ability to utilize that data to then perform analysis and provide actionable information. So it's really about providing the data with the tools and the technology all in one place so people can actually utilize it and creates the actual actionable information on it. Thank you. Nadia, would you like to go next. I already spoke a little bit about how relevant important the data and the mapping work. Okay, I think there might be a connectivity issue there. Um, Raya, maybe we can move on to you and then go back to when she's back. Raya, can you hear me. Okay, looks like maybe we have lost two of our panelists. Let's just give them maybe another minute to see if they can reconnect. Otherwise we can move on to the next section and then come back to them when they're connected. Raya, are you able to hear me like there's some issues with their connection there. What we could do is maybe move on to the next, the next segment of the webinar today and then we can come back to to the panelists with the final questions, once they're back online. So, the next section of the webinar, we're going to hear from Dio Kidude and from OSM Uganda and project manager for hot Uganda, and Jason Saul, global manager for schools at Esri. So, we're going to teach us how to map schools directly in OSM and use my school today's ArcGIS survey 123 to georeference a school, and also answer a few questions about the school facilities. Dio, would you like to start. Good afternoon and good evening for those coming from the different times that we have. My name is Dio Grashas and I want to be sharing with you a quick dive in how you can actually map the school. I'm going to quickly share my screen and let's get started. You let me know when you can see my screen. I've done a couple of presentations before and before yourself. We can see your screen. Amazing, amazing. So yes, for those who are new to OpenStreetMap, OpenStreetMap is basically a kind of Wikipedia platform for where people can actually edit and add features, geographical features, schools outside as buildings and roads, and as well as schools are going to be sharing these days. You just type in OpenStreetMap with org. Okay, come to the sleeping map that we have here. I overstay hard around Uganda, but overstay what's across the world. This is a company wherever you want to go to school. And for this demonstration, I'll be showing you one of the areas we school them very well. OpenStreetMap has multiple ways you can actually edit, but today we're going to be using a more process for editing access using the ID in browse editor. This platform is really good, especially for beginners who are making very simple additions to OpenStreetMap platform. So when you click this ID editor button here, you'll be given a window that actually looks like this. Over the years, I've actually come to London. Whenever you try to do very straight demonstrations online, always the internet can always fail you, but when you click the ID edit button, you'll be given a window that looks like this. Your screen will open up in the area you've been zoomed into. And when you actually get this window, you can have to be able to navigate around using your wheel mouse. You can pan and navigate around and just get navigated to where you are. And then you say, okay, right, if you know where your school is, you look at the different roads that you have, you can navigate around, but when you know the area mapping in, and this is what really OpenStreetMap is all about, really using local knowledge or really just mapping what you 100% know is exactly to the ground. Now, the multiple ways you can actually add this school to OpenStreetMap, and you can even really go into detail, but today we shall try to keep it simple to make sure that we get the real simple basics. So adding a school comes in different shapes and sizes. You can add a school as a point feature as a point location with a single X or Y coordinate. And with that you just have to use the buttons here at the top. When you see your window open up, you'll have the point icon, the line and the area icon. So if it's a point, a school as a point, you just need to use the point feature icon. Just click on that point feature icon or press one for shortcut. I know a couple IT goals we always want to use shortcuts when they're actually mapping. Always keep on zooming in much closer to the area looking at. For this case, I am looking at around this building here. This is where the school that I do know from experience and also being on the ground that this is where a public primary school is located. So once I do know the location of where the school is, and I've clicked the icon, it turns blue, just so that it's active, and your mouse becomes a crosshair. So once you see, this just allows you to really pinpoint exactly where you want to place it. When you're actually mapping a school, you always try to place a big structure of school. Sometimes you just try to place the point feature in the center, as well as you can again, don't be very super accurate, but just within the center of the school, just drop a pin. And once you drop a pin like that, it starts glowing, giving you a sense of, okay, you've dropped a pin, you've dropped a point, or you've dropped a latitude and longitude. And I guess that point and latitude mean. So, on your left hand side of the screen, you will see a feature such Hano appear, where you can just simply search for school. Very simply like that, it's a school. All right, and then you actually have different choices. Now, depending on how you actually are going about this, you can use multiple ways to add schools. So one of the ways you can actually add schools to this is just like in a school like I mentioned, and then it's clicking school. Now, when you click school, like I've done school grounds. Okay, if it is a university that you know, you can also type in university. Okay, so you have university colleges, again, you can already go a little bit deeper, but for this area I know it is just a primary school so just type in school. All right, and then I take school grounds again you cannot even find more information when you click the icon here gives you more information of what the school ground will look like so primary or secondary school or people's typically between ages of 18. So 16 and 18 so it's really cool that you get know that inside the information before you start adding if you just say guess I'm not sure of what way college university lands, you always click that icon with the I that shows you the information behind the tag you're adding so when you click that pattern you see that the icon actually changes it's still glowing, telling you that if you have any extra information, you can definitely add that but the icon has not changed knowing now that you've actually categorized as a school. And now this is where the local knowledge comes in and definitely that we talked about. We know the name of the school we know who's operating the school the address the street. If you know all that information, you are amazing at that. Of course, if you do not know again you don't need to always struggle because we believe in the crowdsourcing platform you always put what you can, and someone else will add on the legal website if they have all the different tags so many tags connected to this. Are you guys here now. Yes, we can hear your idea. I'm sorry about that. So yeah so hopefully you cannot be able to add the name of the school. So I'm going to put in what was it just quickly. Like you bring in that. I'm right with the primary school. Okay, make sure you always capitalize the letters and names as well. Operator, I don't know if the government or the government or the government that is government as well. If I know it's a specific person if it's privately only can always add that and add all the way down to the different. One other thing we do as once you added the point feature as well. You can actually also be able to also map the building as well because some of the structure. So being able to add the building as well so what you do as well. We also be able to if we know the extent of school. The building structures of this case is the area area. The ship of the structure over. The area, again, is building. Building features here building. And then you search again for the different types that you may have access to school. Building is part of the school and specifically school. You always try to make it as regular as you can so you just edit the different. I was going to be a couple of buildings out to all of them. It's actually quite a big school. So we just use the area again. And the beauty about the plot of the kitchen. So I asked the school building again. And then I press Q. On my on my PC. The structure is regular. So I've added school buildings. I want to maybe. I sing on the cake if I do know the extent of this of this school. And I do know for this for this case but if you don't know you don't need to go by this. If you don't know the extent of the school, you can also just close the whole area. But you know that is bound by the school. What you say. Is. It's cool. It's like I've done. And then you just say. School grounds. So you are able to actually act. They cover the whole area. Once you're done with the editing. But you're talking about the building. You're not only giving not only just a point feature as well. But you added also the buildings of that school. And really been in campus, the area around us, that the school is solving all the school. In campuses as well. Size and structure. Some schools and being a really small one. So really knowing that it's really key as well. So once you've made your edits in open stream of the Vital Bodies is we quickly upload this. click that's quite safe. When you click save, the door is raised on the screen. Just to give you a way of capitalizing and seeing what you've actually edited so far. With the Chased Comment here on your left hand side, you're able to add different, yes, the comment I want you to have, say, I'll say I've added a school. And so once I've done that, I'll be able to click upload. And just be lucky I'm able to see what you've summarized and added to the platform as well. So it's good to click to add someone else to look at you. And this I'll review them just in case there are any errors you've made as we are working on this as a global team and a global world as well. So it's simply once you click upload, you give it a couple of minutes. But when you click upload here, give it a couple of minutes and it will actually be on the map ready to be served like it is here right now. What will be the product school? I already have a question about use and check. For more information on schools of different shapes and sizes, I encourage you guys to go and check out the OSM, which has a really detailed step-by-step guide on how to actually use the different types of weather features and the complexities of the, I know, universities and colleges and taking positions that are way bigger than the school that I'm just going to do right now. I'll be adding the link to the chat as well. But that is how simply you can actually be able to add the school to OpenStreetMap remotely. Yeah, so thanks everyone. And hopefully that was a very quick deep dive in how to add the school to OpenStreetMap. Thank you. Thank you, Dio. Jason, are you able to share your screen? Yeah, sure. Okay, awesome. Thank you, yeah. Okay, so hopefully you can see my screen. Is that okay, Mariam? Yes, we can see your screen. Looks great. Fantastic, okay. Okay, so I'm just going to take a few minutes now to talk to you about Survey123 and how we might use it in also an education context and also how we could use it for mapping schools or schools data as well. And I want to just want to put Survey123 into a little bit of context first of all, rather than just sort of seeing it sitting on its own or some sort of isolated sort of data collection app. It's actually, it sits inside ArcGIS Online. And what you can see on the screen at the moment is my ArcGIS Online account in here. And ArcGIS Online is free for all schools globally and that includes Survey123 and many other things in there as well. So ArcGIS Online is free for all schools globally as part of our schools program. And we have ArcGIS Online, just some quick context. So we have some mapping tools. In here, so is our new map viewer, and the ability for children and the young people to add their own data, create their own maps, incorporate all sorts of different types of maps and data into one place in 2D. We have 3D maps. This is something I've been working on for some schools and some education resources about the ongoing eruptions in La Palma. And so we have, there's La Palma in here and we've been looking at some drone data for the lava flow around there. So the ability to incorporate sort of current and almost near real-time data into a teaching lesson and resource. I think it's really quite a powerful teaching tool. And we've got things like StoryMaps, which are also part of ArcGIS Online. And this is a StoryMap I created for a previous webinar for the program. And this is about where we're looking at maybe low bandwidth or offline options for using some of these tools. And then students ask, this one happens to be about students route to school and safe routes to school and this type of thing and trying to get children to think about the local area and what learning opportunities can we create from that local experience in there? So I'm just gonna go back to my main ArcGIS Online page. So Survey123 is simply an app inside ArcGIS Online. And so you can see it is my StoryMaps and is my 3D Scene Viewer and my Map Viewer. And here's Survey123. So I click on Survey123, opens up for me. And I can go and choose to create a new survey. And Survey123 is about detecting data. Sometimes on a mobile device, sometimes via a browser, that just depends what we want to do. And if I click on New Survey, I have different options I can start to go and create surveys and some templated ones. There is a desktop based version of this, which is maybe sort of more complex. You can ask more complex questions with Survey123. And I'm just gonna go back and this would be starting on a blank survey form. So the ability, the idea here is actually I can start to create my survey format as I want. I can construct questions from this list on the right hand side. As good practice, I always like to start with a map. So usually collecting data about a location. And all I did there was pick up the map and drag it over here onto the left hand side. And I can then start to ask. So I can start to say, where are you collecting data? I can zoom into wherever location I want to go to. I can set the type of map. I can collect points, lines or polygons as well inside Survey123 as well. And so this is my first part of my question in here. I can choose to actually make this a requirement for the filling out the form. And you can see other options in here as well. And this is essentially how you start to actually work through your question. So I can add in, maybe I can pick this up, take it over, drop it on the question now. And so now I've got a drop-down list of questions I want my one to ask. And so you can see it's really easily. I can just start to build. Maybe I want to date and time in there. And we can just start to construct our survey form. And one of the other interesting things you can put in here is an image, if I can see image. Where is my image gone? Let me go straight in front of it. And so, and so I can move through this, the design phase of my question now. I can save it, I can publish it as well. So we can preview this and we can see what it looked like on different devices and how it reacts. And we can also choose how we actually want people to fill out this question and how we want to collaborate with people. And just to let you know, there's going to be some audience participation in this demonstration, okay? So I'll get ready. So if you have a phone ready with you, I'm going to ask you to use the camera in probably in a few minutes time. So just a little warning there. It's going to be some audience participation. So with my survey form, I can choose how people are going to collaborate with me. It's going to just save my survey. Who actually didn't publish it? Published my survey. So take about 10 to 15 seconds. And then once I've just, once it's actually published, it means I can then choose who can fill it out. So I can actually make, it's just people who maybe who have to log in to ArchEye online or into Survey123. Or I can make the public, the survey public so anybody can fill it out. And they can fill it out on a PC or a laptop. I can fill it out on a phone. They can collect data in many different places around using the different types of collaboration tools. And what you're doing, you're collecting data in real time. So here we go. Thank you. Here's my collaborate tools. And you can see I can choose how we want people to interact with the survey. I can get people to answer a survey via QR code. And actually who can submit data to the survey? Who can see it? And various other sort of security options we've got here actually who can see the results, who can update the survey. And so the more you enter this, there are many more sort of layers to actually using Survey123 to define and create the survey form that you want to use, okay? Now, this is where we come to the audience participation piece. So what I'm going to do, I'm just going to jump over to another survey I've previously created. And this is about using a survey form just to map the speed or the internet speed, maybe your score, but we're going to do this for where you are now. And it's supposed to be just a little bit of fun. So don't take this too seriously. And so you can see now, if I've gone to my Collaborate tab, the settings are everybody can actually fill in this form. And there are two ways you can fill out this form for me. So this is going to be part of our demonstration today. Now, if you've got a reasonably modern phone, a few years old, your camera should recognize the QR code. Okay, so I'm going to use my phone first of all, and I'm going to just point my camera app at the phone. It recognizes it, gives me a link, I open that up, and there's my survey form open for me. So if people can do that and fill out the form, that would be very useful. Otherwise, we won't have any data to look at later on in the demonstration. Now, if that doesn't work for you, in the chat window, I'm going to put this link, which you can click on, and you can fill out the form. Now, the form will ask you to estimate, to locate yourself, or your score work depends where you are, estimate your internet speed. And also, if you want to, if it's appropriate, take a picture out, what can you see? Take a picture of your workstation, or what can you see from your window? And I'm trusting you all to be sensible with this, please. So I'm going to go and do a question now. So I'm going to use my phone, and I'm going to locate myself, allow me to use the location, and it's going to go back to the survey, let's find that location, and I'm going to estimate my internet speed, it's done. And I'm going to take an image of my workstations, I'm talking to you guys, and use that photo, and I'm going to click on submit. That data's gone from real time from my phone. If I'm going to click on the analyze tab, hopefully it's more than just me taking part. Here we have the results coming in so far, of who's actually completed the survey in there. So from your mobile device, or wherever you're filling in your information, or if someone's out in the field filling in the form, this information comes back to you, the creator of the survey, in a ready format, right in here. So here's the locations in there. Here's some of the photographs that we just took, is that mine? There we go, thank you, that's not me. And as well as actually collecting the data and coming in real time here, if I click on the data tab, I get other options as well. So here we go, that's great. So we're starting to see some, where we are, people around the globe. We can see the SNM8 speeds coming in here. For one, two, I can export this, there's different formats into Excel, or CSV, or KML, or shape file. I can click on some of these points here, and we can inspect the data. It's much better than my view. So the ability to really interact with the data here, but we can also go a stage further than this. And if I was to click on opening map viewer, there's the data, let's just zoom out a little bit so we can see all these data. I can expand that into a full tab, and I can immediately start to go and map the data. I could set up some presets about mapping this data in here, but I can simply go to my, change my style. I'm going to estimate your internet speed, and it's immediately going to go and create some proportional point maps for me in here. And I can go from done, and maybe I want to change the base map to maybe a darker color. And there we go. So there we have almost like near real-time data from around the globe. Let's have a survey, one, two, three, mapped instantly. And also, it's still saved inside your Arch Linux and line accounts. And we also have the data sitting in here that you can export to other formats as well. So we see a lot of schools globally using Survey, one, two, three, for fieldwork. And I think the application of using this to map my school is a great application as well. So any questions, please put them into the chat and I'll happily answer them for you. Thanks, Maryam. Thank you both so much for the informative demonstrations. We'll be sharing the recording of this webinar on our website so everyone can look back and follow the instructions at their own pace. And we do have step-by-step mapping guides in English, French, Arabic, and Portuguese available on our website. So participants can learn how to map a school directly in OpenStreetMap, or they can access the survey, one, two, three, and share their information through the survey. So I'm going to see if our panelists are online and if they can hear me. Raya, are you still with us? Yes, yes. OK, perfect. So maybe I'll go back to one of the panel questions and give you some time to respond to that since I think you may have lost your connection during the panel discussion. So one of the last questions that I had mentioned for the panel was, can you share your experience on how information on school locations can help highlight gaps in quality education opportunities? And if there's an example, you could share with our participants. OK, I think I cannot... OK, let me... You should be able to share your video now. OK. OK, I will personally talk on the project that we are currently doing, the school mapping project for the case of Sanseba. We are conducting with the SUSEath mappers. We are collecting data to promote, and the main idea is to promote further and future initiatives in Sanseba around the city and STEM learning. So basically, as I have said before, it's not only about location, but we are looking at how this data could be meaningful used by, for example, the Ministry of Education and other organizations like those who come and provide help and come up with education projects to facilitate STEM learning and to provide internet connectivity into our schools. So we are actually involving other stakeholders to help them also to be able to do what they are doing. For example, there are different education projects that have been conducted in the schools of Sanseba. As you know that the school facilities or the schools themselves are in poor condition. But you find it, some of the schools, even if the projects come, some of the schools are given priority. So it's also a good idea to map the schools but with the facilities that they have, also with the current initiative that have been done to those schools. Otherwise, the government will not be able to visualize or to understand which schools have been, like have been gone or have been undertaken which development projects. So the idea here is what I'm trying to say is in addition to the school's location, we are also looking to other attributes that could help those stakeholders who are working directly with developing education. Of course, for this case in Sanseba, but it could be for any area that it's worked upon. So that is the main concern. So I was looking into integrating these things that my schools today is doing, the Geoportal and Esri. We could like have built a collaborative project or collaborative initiative in which the students are not only collecting the data because now we are having the data, the data needs to be analyzed, the data needs to be visualized. So the government, for example, it's much easier to show a visualization map to the government than sending the raw data which is really hard for them to understand. But what we are trying to do is once we have the data collected, then we need to equip the students with these visualization tools and skills so that they come up with something innovative out of it. So I can see that this will help in making, will help with the Ministry of Education, of course, and the government in making informed decision because now we are having real time data for schools. So I see it in that angle. Thank you. Thank you, Raya. It looks like Nano had to jump off and is not online with us. So if there are any questions for the Giga initiative, I'm hoping that maybe some of our colleagues who are online can respond in the chat. Before we kind of wrap up the panel discussion, I wanted to see both Raya and Lorian if you have any final thoughts you wanted to share with our participants. Thank you. I think we have raised a lot of very important points and it's all about collaboration. It's about the community and about enabling the students locally. And I think the tools that we discussed are all available. The will is there. So I think it's a matter of making it happen. And as Raya said, we're happy to collaborate and provide the platform where people can share that information, do more with it and provide it as a platform for schools to utilize for learners but also to disseminate that information not just to the community but also back to decision makers and help them formulate policy. So I think all in all from my perspective we're really looking forward to next steps. Thank you. Raya, do you have any final thoughts you'd like to share? Well, yes. Of course it's the same regarding the collaboration. Luckily on my journey I was able to meet some of the guys from the Geoportal and I made some of the people from ArcGIS system. And luckily my university has asked or has requested for ArcGIS system donation because I have seen that one question here it's showing like why are we are using this and why not using open source tools? Because mostly for example, for youth mappers and other open data initiatives we are using open source tools. And it's really hard for us like to use commercial tools but one of the way that we could look into it is to how to make this collaboration active and see how their programs could help our students so that they gave some license in terms of grant so that we teach our students these tools of theirs that are not open source. So we can kind of look it into collaboration. And in addition to that I was thinking like there are so many initiatives that I have seen now regarding the school mapping thing. Of course everybody is doing it his or her own way. Maybe you have different contexts we have different thoughts but I think it's also very important for us to work and come up because most of the people are collecting the same information, same data but they use different tools they are in different locations but maybe it's a good idea to come up together and see what we are missing and then feel it rather than reinventing the wheel every time everybody's collecting the same data. So yeah, that's what I wanted to add. Thank you so much, Ryan and Lorian for sharing your insights and your experience with us. We looks like we do have some time for questions and before we jump into the Q&A session I just wanted to remind everyone that they can connect with us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to stay up to date about the call to action and future events. We've also created a Google group for those who are interested to participate and collaborate with us and you can visit our website at scgside.org to find more information and access all the resources we have available as part of the call to action. My colleagues will include all of these links in the chat as well. So we've been monitoring kind of the chat in the Q&A box and let me pull up some of the questions we have so we can jump right into the Q&A. So one of the questions is are your mapping initiatives capturing other important attributes such as access to bathrooms, social services, transportation and other services as well as connectivity access and access to internet? Would anyone like to start with that question? And Jason and Dio, feel free to jump in if you'd like to share more information about the work that you're involved in. I mean, I don't know if I could answer this question. Go ahead. Yeah, I'd like to say yes when I did share the link to how we map actually the schooling in OSM actually gets really detailed we ask about schools, name, the fees, they have the access to housing for teachers, the number of classrooms we can even go down to the number of desks that they have. So OSM is really, really open to actually expanding even the attributes of the house. Sure, it's something we can go deeper on but even the different tools that we've shown today as well are very flexible like some of the tools that my colleagues as well as Jason as well where you can actually build your own form as well. So when you have really context your questions if you want to add on top of the really existing questions you were asking, sometimes you can definitely keep doing and then I'm sharing it out there. So I'll say yes, at least we pray to go really deep especially when you take about access to housing for teachers, at least access to fees, internet access as well, sometimes they're definitely looking into as well. Florian, go ahead. Yeah, I just wanted to say absolutely a very good question because it's usually important to map more than all the locations is an absolutely fantastic start because that's the critical point on the map. But then thinking about what else is around it is very, very important. And also in relation to other infrastructure, right? So how easy would it be to get one school on the internet? Where's the nearest cell tower? Where is the nearest broadband network? How far away is this from the school and what is feasible to get a connection going? So mapping all that other data and also things like water and nearest access point to water. How much does it take to actually get water to the school in case it's not there yet? So really looking at that further picture, not just the point on the map but actually the entire community around it is really important and it can be easily accomplished using Survey123 as well. We can extend the survey. It's not just the point data that gets collected. You can collect other information as well. Maybe Jason, did you want to comment on that one? Yeah, I think we'll survey123 as you've seen. You can capture what data you want to. So it's really what's important to you and your community and create the forms to do that, really, the flexibility is there for you. And so it's free for all schools. So schools being at the heart of their community. You start us all to do that. Thank you, Raya. I know that you're also involved in meeting school mapping initiatives. So are you collecting additional information for other attributes about the school facilities in your work? Well, yes, as I have said before, in addition to the location data, we are also collecting the ICT data facilities. So there are so many attributes in our form. We are currently using COBOL to collect the data. So in addition to the school location, the longitude and latitude, we are also collecting if the students have access to electricity, if they have access to internet accessibility, what kind of internet accessibility is it using? Is it close to what kind of fraud is available at the school? Is it a main road or it's somewhere inside? I mean, it's not in the main road. So there are some other attributes that we are collecting in addition to that. As I have said before, because our focus is not only to show the location of the schools, but also to have a dataset that could be used to make proper plan in providing internet accessibility into those schools. And also it will give government informed decision of the ministry as well, so as to know which area to give priority than the other based on the information that we have collected. Yeah. Thank you. There's a question for Jason and Dio. The participant is asking what tools are embedded or built into both OSM and Survey123 that enforce private protection? So they're asking are there pop-up messages to remind users to ask for consent? Sure. Maybe just to take on that. One of the things that we always do in the process in OpenStreetMap is adding only information that is what we call publicly needed or publicly available. Not any person might be able to information is added to the platform. Personal names or personal phone numbers are something that we definitely don't encourage in OpenStreetMap. I am maybe just going to answer for the other part as well in terms of consent when someone's collecting maybe it's more specific information. But for OpenStreetMap we try to focus on information that will be public good and for us when we if we're able to be consuming as a public as opposed to personally, I can say with measure. Yeah, hi there. Yeah, we're similar with Survey123. You've got really quite fine-grained control over who can actually access the survey. If you're actually collecting data publicly, you're fine-grained control over who actually can then access that data as well. So you can secure this data. Even though I showed you we were going through and then it was public, that was just for demonstration here. You can collect data publicly but keep it private. So only the appropriate people actually can see that information. So there are a number of tools and layers that you can add to the security of the data. Thank you. Lorian, there's a question for you. What thought is given to the interface between the Africa geoportal and other portals such as HDX and those at a national level? Yeah, so I tried to answer that in a chat already. But really what we're trying to do is to work as much as possible with existing data portals, right? The idea is not to duplicate anything but to actually work with that data and rather kind of register it on Africa geoportals so that data can get amplified. So really what we're trying to do is make that data accessible to a wider community and a wider user group that we already have available on Africa geoportal. But not just that, the idea then is that the user can take that data and can enhance that data. So you could take the school map, of course, and then you can overlay your own data, which could be data about cell towers in the area. You could add attributes. You can go and collect your own data out in the field and add that to the map as well to make that more relevant and share it out again to the wider community. So it's all about amplification and making the data accessible to a wider audience, right? So yes, we do absolutely work with national portals as well as much as possible. And if people have data on other portals, then we work with them to see if how we can get that data in Africa geoportal linked to it by preference, obviously. Great, thank you. There's another question, and I think this may be relevant to everyone. And that's if you're willing to work with partners outside of the UN ecosystem or ministries to help fill both the data gap on school locations and also the digital divide. Maybe I can go first and respond on behalf of the My School Today initiative. And that is we are open to collaborating and partnering with various stakeholders and participants. So we're working with students, with teachers, with professors, nonprofit organizations, as well as ministries and UN agencies. And we have the information about the different partners and collaborators we're working with available on our website. I don't know, Lorien and Ryan, or even Dio, if you have any experience. And if you can share that with the participants. Yeah, Ryan, sorry. Miriam, we work with a large number of different entities. And that ranges from nonprofit organizations to education institutes, research institute, as well as national governments and global organizations, as I mentioned earlier on at the beginning of the panel. So we are open to work with parties. We also work with youth mappers. We work with women in GIS in Africa. So we really want to make sure that the technology is utilized and really at the core of what Esri does as a company is to try to improve our living in this world through geography. And we do everything we can in our power to help people learn about geography and how to utilize those tools to make the world a better place for all of us. Yeah, and also maybe just to add on to that as well. Yes, we as a material professional team and all the same, we're going to do work very closely, not only in the national organizations, but even the local CBOs as well. Because they are CBOs and districts at the lower level. Because they even really feel the need for this information at the Royal Brass Roast really come up with new acting projects. One of the projects we did as of what in 2018 was really on OSM in schools where we were trying to break that digital divide of equipment we talked about this here in the call as well. Because one of the main reasons we actually market these schools is to make services closer. That is power, that is internet, that is equipment. And we will work with the pilot on how we can work with schools to actually share equipment because one of the things we thought of and something that I personally saw was we had some laptops and some smart phones to share around and we had to make a decision whether to give one school or the other, but then we said, why can't these schools that we just share and give one books and allows that to that epitome. If you don't give one over the other, you don't have to bring one which as well. So we thought it wise to come up with a system and sometimes we were hoping to do more or really having an equipment sharing system that schools can share and so they're actually close to each other. And so being able to actually map out the schools that it will allow us to be able to map out or stress out those efficient tools that we can be using to be able to reach the schools more efficiently and efficiently. So it's something that we definitely see that only working at the big national level but even at the local level really being able to use location information to deliver services closer to the students and the teachers and the institutions around. Thank you, Raya, was there anything you would like to add to that question? Well, I think we are on my side, of course, we are also like for now we are collaborating with the liquid telecom for the students. I mean, the students, the students are collecting the data but of course we don't want to end it there because we have agreed with them that we are going to share the data but in addition to that, as these mappers we are also going to upload the data to the OpenStreetMap and we are thinking about that because there are some available schools that are there with of course with less attributes. So we might need to edit those to make some few edits and then add up the ones that are missing. So in addition to that, we are also planning to and we are open to collaborating with the S3 for example and Geoportals and other organizations that are willing to train our students so that they come with the ideas. Now we have data than what? So the next thing is we are also, we also want to train our students to be innovative. So what innovative solutions they can propose based on the data that they have collected and most of the students are actually coming from my department, which is the Department of Computer Science and IT. So you find that they have some knowledge in IT related issues and once they get these new tools and these new ideas and skills I'm sure that they are going to come up with very innovative solutions to solve the existing problems in the society. And of course to extend this project because currently we are doing it in Wujia Islands but we want also to go to Pemba and then extend it to the whole Tanzania as a, I mean, of course my school today can help but as a point, there's one thing that I need to to speak it out. In my area, the students, I mean school students in the schools are not allowed to go with their phones they're not allowed to be with their smartphones. So you find it, this mapping initiative for now it is at the university level because it's there that you find the students are with the gadgets. And with that, we are also having some issues because some of the students are not having smartphones and some of them are having smartphones but they can, they're going out to the field but then they don't have, they drain charge easily. So they don't finish their work and they say like, I couldn't finish because I don't have this. So we are also planning to extend this to buy smartphones especially for data collection and buying some of the tools that are needed for data collection so that we have it in our, is for data collection. So it's specific for data collection. We are giving them specifically for doing that. Okay, it looks like we may have lost Bria. We can move on to another question and come back to Bria. Bria, can you hear us? Oh, yes, I think the internet was having some issues. But I think what I was saying is that we are open to collaboration. Suzeh Mappas, so we are part of Suzeh. So also Suzeh, the university is open to collaboration in different areas. We are also working, we have our drone lab that is there and we are working under the GICT project. So we are having a project that connects between the Department of Computer Science at IT and that's of geography. So yeah, thank you. Thanks, Bria. And since you have the mic, I might move on to another question that's related to your work. I know you mentioned that you're working with the Ministry of Education and there's a question about how can information on school locations become useful to ministries of education if they can't link them easily with their internal school unique identifiers. I don't know if that's something that you can comment on or if anyone else would like to jump in. I think Bria may have lost her connection again. I think, yeah, just to go into that one. From a technical perspective, it's possible to merge datasets. It might need a little tweaking, but it's something that it's doable. I wouldn't say it's easy, but that depends a little bit on the data itself and how it's structured and organized and also how the data is collected. But I'm wondering if Jason wants to comment on that one as well. But I wouldn't see it as a hurdle because at the same time, you're doing a data cleaning exercise, so to speak, to make sure that the data is updated and data cleaning exercises as well always take a little bit of work. So I don't think it's an obstacle that should put everything on hold. Thank you. I don't know if Bria has connected again, but we are reaching the end of the webinar. So I wanted to give all the presenters the opportunity to share any final thoughts or comments. Yeah, sure. On my side, I think this has really been great being on this chat and really beginning this conversation of schools, datasets, and AI. And I really thank the panel for also sharing their experience and their plans for using this information. I'm a very passionate person about when it comes to schools because I know schools are really a pillar of growth of the country, but even the communities around as well. So I truly believe locating a school, giving them the voice is one step forward as well. And also really using that information to bring the services closer and improve the quality of education and really breaking that digital divide. COVID has really shown the divide we have with some schools really having online learning and making it seem very easy. While other students didn't even have an option to have that, well, going back to the radio, which is also very hard to find in some places as well. So I think this conversation of getting schools on the map, giving them the voice really brings the services closer at least gets their voice heard and it's really exciting to be part of this. Thank you, Dio. Would any of the other presenters like to share any final thoughts? We have about one minute left. I just wanted to say, I mean, I think it's usually important that we give those youngsters the opportunity to play with the technology and to have the technology because the technology is only gonna get more important and there's a lot of things we can do. Yes, there's hurdles and yes, there's things that needed to be improved for them to be able to use it. But they're the future. They're the ones that can teach us in a number of years about technology because they're the digital natives, right? So usually important process and a usually important project. Thank you. Well, I would like to thank all of the presenters and panelists and we look forward to our collaboration together and I'm very excited to see how the participants will get involved and how we can support school mapping efforts in the future. And a big thank you to everyone who participated and tuned into the webinar today. As I mentioned, the recording will be available so please do check back on our website and explore some of the other resources that we've made available as part of the call to action. Thanks once again and goodbye, everyone. All right, thanks everyone, bye. Thank you. Thank you, goodbye.