Hatarilabs was defined as a platform for knowledge sharing in water resources based on open source software. From the times we reached only 10 visits per day, we were really focused in providing great and useful information for general users in water resources specially on hydrogeology.

There is a special concept that we pay particular attention to: the learning process. Besides the courses, we spend much time developing educational resources in water resources software by web content with video, input data, using n open source software so everyone can increase their capacities based on applied cases.

However, based on what we see we still have some doubts about the way that we are learning software in water resources, and we are concerned if the level / rate of knowledge shared will cope with the next challenges of humanity as climate change in water resources meaning droughts, floods and others or developing sustainable policies in water resources.

A geo economic perspective

If you are in a country that is not in the first 8 economies in the world or the Group of Eight, most probably you won't know personally the developers of the software you use and your learning experience will be restricted to the schema teacher - class - exercises - exam, something similar to the way you learned calculus or statistics.

Due to the rate of software development and the amount of new software available, the traditional schema falls short into providing a general or partial understanding of the latest developments and students are generally on their own, having to use Youtube videos to understand or use something in a less painful way.

How do we learn? How do we learn with less pain?

Based on a true story:

Just recently Modflow 6 has incorporated the package for variable density flow, the Buy package. As enthusiastic hydrogeeks we searched all the available resources; there was only the manual, a method on Flopy and a sample exercise on a testing repository. Despite the fact that we are more than 15 years in the field of groundwater modeling it took us 2 days to have a clear idea of the package, based on deciphering the applied case, reading the source code of Python, making analogies to other packages. It might be that we are not intelligent enough to learn fast, in that case this whole article is a partial view and should be dismissed from a rational perspective.

We came up with a tutorial with video, codes, input data and the overall improvement of the educational resources to learn that package. But the package still lacks a graphical user interface (GUI) therefore it will take years to increase substantially the amount of users, or it might never be used widely in countries that are not in the Group of Eight.

Educational resources, self-learning and yes-you-can

First, we have to accept that there are huge gaps in the way we teach software in water resources around the world, ranging from countries like the UK to Ethiopia.

More initiatives on online education in applied software are needed otherwise we won't cope or won’t make the required inertia to create plans against climate change or variabilities on the water cycle.

We have to pay attention to the student, regardless of their background or missing capabilities. Software till now is made by humans and every human is therefore capable of learning and using it, since it is a tool from the many ones the homo sapiens have used to build this civilization.

There is a need to be proactive and compete in all fields such as social networks. We have to market the “Yes you can!” spirit that promotes the self learning to different professionals in water resources.