Free Cartography Workshops: A Formative Opportunity for Primary School and Engineering Students

This paper presents a methodology for conducting educational activities to accomplish two objectives: (a) divulge the role of free technologies in society among primary school children through the implementation of free cartography workshops; (b) contribute to the integral formation of computer engineering students, specifically in the development of soft skills and social context awareness. The free cartography workshops are instructed by university students and aimed at primary school children. Concepts like local knowledge and collaborative knowledge construction, as well as basic cartography terminology are constructed through playful activities. Cartography related tasks are completed through the use of free software Open Street Maps and Field Papers. The proposed methodology is based on the systematization of a previous experience, carried out in 2016 in rural areas of the country, in the context of the celebration of the Science and Technology Month, an event organized by the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Telecommunications (MICITT). The paper also describes the experience provided by using this methodology in two free cartography workshops held in communities with a lower social development index.