Our Top Ten Places in Wakefield

Mapping places using Local Studies… and `Streetview’ mapping

BECTA/ OS Map-pilotMethodist J & I – Year 5

23rd & 30th April 2008

© Crown Copyright 20yy. Ordnance Survey/MapPilot

`Top Ten Places’ in … activity

• In choosing a theme for this next piece of work I wanted to move beyond the school and grounds to explore the school locality, i.e. the city of Wakefield. This `Top Ten Places’ idea gave us a focus for the next stage of work.

Kings Hedges School, Cambridge [PGQM silver – 2007]

A gallery of photographs was A gallery of photographs was created from the Geograph websitecreated from the Geograph website

The Geograph British Isles project aims to collect geographically representative photographs and information for every square kilometre of Great Britain and Ireland.

http://www.geograph.org.uk/

Photographs on Geograph are covered by the Creative Commons Licence. This means that they can be downloaded and used in school projects.

Importing a `Streetview’ OS Map into Local Studies

2. Next we added `hotspots’ by dragging the icon to the appropriate place on the map.

3. We then inserted a photograph into the Information box (these boxes open up when the hotspot is clicked)

4. Finally we added a description to say why we thought someone might want to visit this place.

1. First we imported a map from the OS/BECTA Pilot Project into the background layer of Local Studies.

© Crown Copyright 20yy. Ordnance Survey/MapPilot

Adding hotspots to our map of Wakefield

• We mainly worked with a partner to add information to our map – this meant we had someone to check out ideas with.

• Mr Parkin had a partner too.

Using the Using the programmeprogramme

• By Week Seven the children were showing a great deal of confidence when importing maps, adding hotspots and saving their projects.

• This is a very valuable activity for helping children to locate places on a map.

Most of the children were very good at locating places on this

Streetview map.

© Crown Copyright 20yy. Ordnance Survey/MapPilot

One problem that we had was that some of Wakefield’s most important buildings, for example the Cathedral,

the Museum and the Town Hall are all sited to the North of this map.

Online mapping programmes, for example Google

Maps, allow much greater

flexibility than the fixed parameter map used here.

When selecting the parameters of the map for the children’s use I decided to centre the school approximately in the middle of the map.

© Crown Copyright 20yy. Ordnance Survey/MapPilot

It was interesting to see which places the children had chosen and

to read their comments.

Two girls chose to take some extra photographs to add to our gallery

A number of people in the class chose to use these images. So we need to say a big thank you.

Where children chose to locate a photograph sometimes revealed a

misunderstanding

Actual location

The children chose this

location. It is easy to see why

they made an error because

people do moor barges on the Fall Ings Cut.© Crown Copyright 20yy. Ordnance Survey/MapPilot

Where next?

1. It would be useful to print some paper copies of the OS maps at different scales for use in the classroom.

2. I’d like to try importing the digital maps into either Textease or the SMARTBOARD software. Both of these programmes have a gallery facility, both can be hyperlinked to new pages and both have drawing tools. So virtually anything that can be done with the Local Studies programme can also be done with these other software packages.

Where next (cont.)?

3. I’d like to find out what the children feel are the advantages/ disadvantages of using online mapping programmes, (such as Quikmaps and Google `My Maps’) and whether they prefer these to fixed map (simple GIS) programmes such as `Local Studies’.

• One problem we encountered on Week 7 was the very slow speed of the internet based Quikmaps programme which made it pretty much unusable.

Where are we now?

• With the aid of the schools ICT technician we were able to find ways of saving our Local Studies projects. (Though he wasn’t happy with the solution!)

• The children are now confident in using the programme.

• I’m not entirely sure that the adults are as confident about using it with new children – perhaps some of the Y5 children could help with this.

The Local Studies Software

• The Local Studies software does not seem to be keeping up with the developments of school networks – nor the changeover to the OS Mastermap.

• One very real innovation – which would make the software so much more user friendly is if the `Map-importer software (from Local Studies – which at the moment can only be used to import NTF files) could be adapted to import and resize a wider range of map file formats.

Acknowledgements

• The staff and Y5 children at

Methodist J & I School, Wakefield

Project author Wendy North

04/05/2008

This PowerPoint will also be shared through my blog site:

http://primarygeogblog.blogspot.com/