The Adolf-Weber-Gymnasium in Munich (AWG) has offered the candidates for 2012 a two-year workshop (2010-2012) titled "Monitoring Earth from Space" as a combination of the school subjects Geography and Physics and as a bilingual course (German and English) together. Through a combination of geographic and physical aspects of remote sensing and its applications, the AWG-workshop aims at providing fundamental knowledge about modern geoinformation and classical geosciences at the same time. The geographic aspects of the topic are dealt with in English, while the physical themes are taught in German. One main objective is also the inclusion of partners in science and industry outside school. In addition to that a GPS-project has been installed in co-operation with the University of Erlangen, to find out about spatial perception of users of GPS-handhelds in comparison to users of analogue maps. First steps were undertaken to teach the use of a GIS. The exam papers of the candidates will deal with applied techniques in geoinformation, the latest concepts of remote sensing, or future desiderata in geoscience teaching. Sponsors of the workshop include the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Technische Universität München.

Results of the GPS-Project were presented at the annual meeting of the Hochschulverband Geographie und ihre Didaktik in Ludwigsburg (Prof. Vetter and Dr. Barnikel) and the W-Seminar itself was presented at the annual Workshop for Learning with Geoinformation in Salzburg (Mr. Plötz). Extended abstracts of both presentations have been published in scientific journals.