The Effect of the Bologna Process on the Cartographic Courses in the Hungarian Higher Education

After the 1990 political reforms, it took several years until Hungary officially signed the Bologna Declaration (1999). The progress was very slow: the implementation of the Bologna principles only started in 2002. The nation-wide introduction of the BA and BSc system began in 2006 and will be continued at master level in 2009. One of the most important bodies in this process has been the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. This Board consists of university professors and academics and has control over the establishment and introduction of curricula at all higher education institutions in Hungary. As for cartography and geodesy, we had two independent 5-year degree programmes in the pre-Bologna system (Cartography at Eötvös Loránd University, and Surveying and Geoinformatical Engineering at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics) and two 3-year degree programmes in the College of Surveying and Land Administration in Székesfehérvár. Due to the integration of Hungarian higher education institutions in 2000, this college was incorporated into the University of West Hungary as a faculty. These institutions had worked a lot on establishing and developing their own programmes. However, due to the implementation of the Bologna process, these individual programmes have lost their independence. It is only natural that all these institutions were interested in finding a solution to keep as much of their original curricula as only possible. Although about 140 BA and BSc programmes were established at national level, the Bologna system in Hungary did not allow any cartography-related BSc programme. However, Eötvös Loránd University and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics have established their MSc programmes that are related to cartography. Four universities also agreed on starting a new MSc in GIS, but the Hungarian Accreditation Committee refused the approval of their joint proposal. There are further cartography-related MSc programmes waiting for decision by the Hungarian Accreditation Committee. Some BSc and MSc programmes (such as geography and informatics) established specialization in GIS, and this gives us the opportunity of teaching cartography and GIS to a larger number of students

Application of web 2.0 in cartographic education. Is it time for cartography 2.0?

The term web 2.0 was first used in 2004 at a conference where the organizers focused on the new generation web services. Although web is not software and it has no versions everybody understood this term and also understood the real meaning behind it. In the last 30 years, cartography considerable changed and we may think of using a similar term for our science: cartography 2.0. Although web 2.0 is not a clear and easily definable term, we can list new features of the web which has formed this new term. Wiki, blog, RSS, mashup applications, social networking are the key features (and other less notorious ones are still under development) which are not concrete applications, but rather philosophies. Wiki is a type of website that allows the users to easily edit/change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for collaborative authoring. Can we effectively use this new technique in cartography? Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject, as personal online diaries; they can be part of a wider network of social media. There are some cartographic blogs available (operated mostly by younger cartographers) which can give new chances for collaborative work, so they may help the cartographic education. One of the most prominent mashup applications is the websites which are connected to GoogleEarth to use their basemaps/satellite images to add their own geographically located contents. These applications are also used by non-cartographers to help them to “make maps”. Are these new features enough to introduce the new term: cartography 2.0

New technologies in making orienteering maps

Orienteering maps are special type of maps, which are mostly made by non-professionals. The technology of making these maps (fieldwork, drawing) has considerably changed in the last 20 years. Base maps can be made by digital photogrammetry or airborne laser scanning technology, but the methods of creating state topographic maps (which are used as base maps of orienteering maps) have also changed in the past few years. The accuracy of these maps has also increased to help the users. In the fieldworking, we can use GPS devices (sometimes with real-time differential corrections) for measuring points and lines. GPS devices are available for more than 20 years, but only in the last few years they became used in fieldworking as regular techniques. For faster, but not very accurate distance measurements, we can use ordinary laser distance finders. The orienteering maps are drawn by computer software. In some countries, these were the first types of maps which were created only by computer methods. Orienteering maps are good indicators of how the new cartographic techniques are easily applicable for non-professionals or how widely they are used as everyday techniques. This paper summarizes the milestones of the development of these techniques to understand how we can make these methods and devices more user-friendly and simpler

Mapping standard for sprint orienteering: standardized competition maps for urban, park and forest areas

Orienteering maps are one of the map products where the symbol set is standardized, no national deviations are allowed. Orienteering has developed a new form of competition which was originally held in parks or urban areas. This competition form is a very short and fast event where good media coverage is possible. The use of parks and urban areas has a significant advantage: it brings the sport into the midst of people and offers opportunities for increasing public and media awareness of orienteering. The international specification for traditional orienteering maps contains symbols for man-made features. However, the symbol set needed revision and extension in order to provide a clear and unambiguous interpretation of urban terrain required for fair competition in sprint orienteering. There are a number of reasons why the mapping of urban areas needs a modified approach compared to that used for the depiction of the 'classic' forested terrain

Edutainment in cartography

Edutainment is a mixture of education and entertainment. In the software industry edutainment was very popular in the 80’s and the first part of the 90’s when the graphic capabilities of PC-s were very limited. The early computer games were based on textual information. From the second part of the 80’s low resolution pictures became a part of a computer game, but that was still quite far from the so called multimedia. As the CPUs and graphic cards became more powerful computer games started to develop rapidly. Nowadays the 3D, the virtual reality, the real time animation and the high quality sound are the essential parts of computer games. The computer games in edutainment are nearly totally disappeared. In the last some years the internet games turned to be more popular: the relatively low bandwidth and the lack of web multimedia standards gave new opportunities for the edutainment in this environment. Cartography can profit form this revival because maps are very popular content of the web

A Térképtudományi Tanszéken készült atlaszok és jelentősebb kiadványok

A Térképtudományi Tanszék a nyolcvanas évek közepén- végén kezdett olyan nagyobb térképészeti feladatokba, amelyek eredményeképp önálló atlaszok, könyvek készültek el. Ezen kiadványok egy része egy szűkebb szakterület számára készült, de a kilencvenes évek elejétől egyre több olyan kiadvány készítésében vettünk részt, melyek könyvárusi forgalomba is kerültek. Ez a cikk csak egy időrendi válogatás, melyben az érdekesebb, fontosabb kiadványokat veszem sorra

A térképészet lehetőségei a www-n

World Wide Web can have an effect nearly all kind of science. Output oriented subjects (like cartography) can use this new kind of media much easier than other subjects. However WWW, this new "output device" requires new view, we have to keep in mind the limits of a real output device, the computer screen. Creating maps for computer screens is a known problem in cartography because of the existing digital maps, CD-ROM atlases. However the process of creating WWW oriented map images is not only a simple process of scanning or converting of existing digital map

Brave new cartography

A huszadik század második felében sok változás történt a különféle tudományterületeken, s ez alól a térképészet sem kivétel. Ebben a rövid tanulmányban ezen folyamatok főbb állomásait szeretném felvillantani, s kísérletet teszek a közeljövő változásainak előrejelzésére. A térképészeti technológiák változása magára a térképészetre is visszahatott, ennek függvényében hogyan is jellemezhetjük ezt az új térképészetet. Ezen új technológiák mindenki számára előnyösek lesznek vagy olyan veszélyeket jelentenek, amelyekre a szép, új világ kifejezést szokták használni? Hogy ezen kérdésekre válaszolhassak áttekintem az elmúlt 50 év legfontosabb technológiai változásait a térképészetben