digimap for schools Comments Off on Got 10 minutes?
We've put together a series of 4 short guides on using Digimap for Schools. The guides are intended to be worked through over 4 weeks and new subscribers to the service will be sent one each week, post sign-up. Each guide takes just 10 minutes and by week 4, you'll be making the most of the cross-curricular potential that Digimap for Schools offers.
We guide you sequentially through key features and provide short videos to demonstrate each function. A short practise exercise plus links to some of our lesson ideas are included.
Week 1 Maps and Places Get to grips with the essentials of searching, zooming and viewing our range of maps – contemporary, historic and aerial.
Week 2 Making your mark Find out how to add text, shapes, symbols and images to your maps. Create prints in different sizes and formats. Organise your maps into folders for different classes or projects.
Week 3 The numbers Check out how to find a grid reference and measure map features. Add measurement labels to any shapes and lines you create.
Week 4 Explore and Report Explore the Geograph images available at your location. Add buffer zones. Create and upload a file of points to your maps.
Week 3 – add measurement labels.
We really value your feedback so let us know if we can improve these, or if there are any other resources that we can provide to help you get mapping!
Have you checked out our free resources recently? We've updated this area of our website to make it easier for you to see what's available. We have lots of high quality resources for each stage of the curriculum, written by geography experts such as Dr Paula Owens and Alan Parkinson. Have a look and get some fresh ideas for the new term!
For those who like to keep their options open, we've included a Primary and Secondary page so that you can browse and filter all resources available for those stages.
We think this is going to make life much easier for you. As always, it would be great to get your feedback. Does the new design work for you? Have you put any of the reources into practice? Get in touch and let us know!
digimap for schools, Maps Comments Off on Digimapping your Daily Mile!
We are delighted to present new Daily Mile learning resources that give you some great ideas for bringing your Daily Mile into the classroom. Many teachers want to bring The Daily Mile into the classroom – Digimap for Schools is the perfect classroom accompaniment to The Daily Mile – the drawing, measurement and annotation tools allow many numeracy, history, social studies and literacy based activities to develop from running The Daily Mile!
How can Digimap for Schools help?
Explore your area using a 1-mile buffer and adding compass points- where could children reach by running a mile in different directions? Extend this exercise by looking at aerial and historic maps of your area.
Choose a famous route, such as Hadrian's Wall or the West Highland Way. Find out the distance and calculate how many Daily Miles it would take your class to complete the route!
Add Geograph photos to your maps to see what geographic features have been photographed in your area or find photos of famous landmarks.
Research and plot a route, with distance and stopping points, to show tourists around your town.
We hope you enjoy exploring the resources and bringing your Daily Mile into the classroom! Remember, we would love to see photos of the maps you create or of you out and about on your Daily Mile – tweet them to us @digimap4schools.
We have recently added the ability to create sub-folders within your Digimap for Schools account, to help you store and organise your saved maps. You could create folders for different classes, projects, dates, places or schemes such as Duke of Edinburgh.
You will need your PIN to continue. These have been emailed to the main Digimap for Schools contact at your school. Check with them for the number or contact us to request it.
The Map Manager area will open and you will see a list of saved maps. It's a good idea to create folders first. Click Add Folder on the left and name your folder. When you next create and save a map, you can select any of your folders to save the map within.
To move maps to any folder, just click a map and drag it to the folder of your choice. You can move multiple maps by checking the boxes to the right of the maps and dragging all of the selected maps to a folder.
We hope it will be a really useful tool for you. Let us know how you find it and if there is anything we can do to improve it.
We recently received some fantastic feedback on Digimap for Schools from Dr Neil Clifton, a retired chemistry teacher/lecturer. When his grandson showed him our service, Neil was so impressed that he requested access so he could further explore the maps and tools available. A lifelong mapping and geography enthusiast, whose son studied geography, Neil enjoys contributing photos to the Geograph project.
Every child/pupil/student in every school in Britain should have access to this brilliant facility which has been developed by a team at Edinburgh University in co-operation with Ordnance Survey.
For little more than the cost of a set of text-books, the project allows access to the whole range of Ordnance Survey mapping, right up to the largest scale of 1:1250, (on which even garages, sheds and tiny streams are depicted, and where appropriate, named).
The team has put much thought into the project, which has made it easy to use, and attractive in appearance, so that even young children will enjoy exploring and using it, for locations such as their immediate home surroundings, as well as for locations that they have visited, or hope to visit, in more distant parts of Britain.
A beginner, in perhaps year 1 or 2 in their junior school, might look at a map showing their own school. And as the child develops and matures, they will trace their own house and the route they follow to get to school. Then, finding perhaps the location of the local supermarket, where the railway station is situated and so on, their confidence as map-users will increase all the time. The pond or stream where they go fishing will be found – and perhaps the map will enable the discovery of other possible fishing sites nearby.
The benefits to those students taking geography examinations can hardly be overstressed. But there are so many other ways in which the use of these maps will help the young person to acquire a love of the environment and a care for its well-being. It is here that our future botanists, naturalists, photographers, walkers, cyclists, and leaders of the next generation of young people are born.
If any teacher is still unconvinced of the real and lasting value of making this resource available in their schools, I would urge them to look at the (free) trial which shows just a small area of the country.
digimap for schools Comments Off on Geograph images now available!
You can now view images from the Geograph project in Digimap for Schools. Geograph aims to collect images for every grid square in Great Britain. So far more than 5 million images have been contributed.
Just click the Geograph icon on the toolbar to start searching and viewing images. Our search facility offers suggestions as you type to aid your explorations. A short help video is available on YouTube, to help you get started.
Dr Paula Owens has authored some fantastic new learning resources to accompany the new Geograph feature. They have lots of ideas to inspire you to use the images. Landscape Alphabet has some fun ideas on using the images in Key Stage 1 to support language development.
There are three resources aimed at Key Stage 2; A focus on rivers, Flooding and Other Hazards, and Photographic! There's also a Getting Started resource with lots of suggestions for searching. All resources include ideas for linking in literacy and numeracy.
We hope you will find Geograph a useful tool and enjoy viewing the wonderful images that are available. Do send us your feedback and any examples of fun images you find!
Hi folks, we have planned a series of webinars in May.
To see more details on the webinar content and register, click the link after the webinar of interest to you.