.. _why_oggmedu:

Why OGGM-Edu?
=============

OGGM-Edu was created as an educational branch of the Open Global Glacier
Model (`OGGM <http://oggm.org>`_) project. It is now largely independent from the
main project and, we hope, has become a useful educational website!
Here is what motivates us:

- OGGM-Edu offers **"hands-on" and practical activities**, but only very little
  textbook content: we see the platform as an **interactive complement** to
  existing :ref:`online resources <other_resources>`.
- Therefore, OGGM-Edu does not attempt to be a "one stop shop" for all things
  related to glaciers: our target groups are **instructors** and
  **independent learners**.
- The main themes we are currently working on are the use of **glacier models
  to learn about glaciers and climate change**, with a focus on **global issues**
  (see-level rise, water availability, regional and global climate change):
  these topics have grown out of our own research interests and expertises,
  but it doesn't have to stay that way. We are open for new ideas as
  well!
- We rely on an **open-source**, **decentralized** and **collaborative**
  content creation system:

  - *open-source*: everything is available on our online repositories,
    with an open license allowing nonrestrictive reuse.
  - *decentralized*: content using OGGM-Edu or that can be run on OGGM-Edu
    does not have to be stored on our repositories. For example,
    out `own notebooks <https://github.com/OGGM/oggm-edu-notebooks>`_ are
    stored in a separate repository, and so are
    `Lizz' notebooks <https://github.com/ehultee/CdeC-glaciologia>`_.
  - *collaborative*: thanks to the decentralized open-source model, any new
    modification and innovation can feed back into the original website,
    if the author of the new content chose a license allowing it (which we
    strongly encourage!).
- We use **tools familiar to scientists**, not web developers: our apps and
  notebooks are written in the Python programming language, this website is
  written in the `rst format <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText>`_.
  These tools are much easier to learn and adopt for scientists than,
  css, javascript or html for example. That way, we hope to engage more
  people to use and develop the website further.

If you want to know more, you can watch our 2021 seminar presentation
explaining these points into more detail and demonstrating some of OGGM-Edu's
applications:

.. raw:: html

  <iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/428194632" width="640" height="357" frameborder="0" allow="autoplay; fullscreen" allowfullscreen></iframe>
  <p><a href="https://vimeo.com/428194632">OGGM-Edu: an interactive platform to learn and teach about glaciers on Vimeo</a></p>

The slides are available `here (online version) <https://oggm.org/oggm-edu-talk>`_ or `here (pdf) <https://github.com/OGGM/oggm-edu-talk/raw/master/oggm-edu-talk.pdf>`_ .