Meridian Awards 2012

The Learning Lighthouse City Learning Centre (CLC) is one of over 100 operating across the United Kingdom (UK). These provide state-of­the art ICT­based learning opportunities to enhance and enrich the curriculum for the pupils of surrounding schools and for the wider community. In the UK the majority of school teachers make regular use of ICT (Information and Communication Technology) in teaching and learning. The computer to pupil ratio is improving all the time and a rapidly increasing range of ICT equipment is used in schools including digital cameras, usb sticks, interactive whiteboards and digital (data) projectors.

In the UK, schools need to ensure that ali pupils are taught the programme of study, at each key stage (1 to 5), for the National Curriculum for information and Communication Technology. This sets out the expected standard of performance of pupils in ICT capability required at each leve! and give pupils opportunities to apply and develop their ICT capability through the use of ICT tools to support their learning in all subjects (ICT across the curriculum ICTAC). ICTAC has implications for teachers across all subjects in the curriculum. Teachers do not need to teach ICT capability but can exploit new opportunities for pupils to apply and develop the capability that they already have, to enhance their learning in other subjects. Existing and emerging ICT teaching tools provide further opportunities to enhance subjects and add value to teaching and learning. Traditional geographical skills take on a new dimension when adapted to a digital context. In particular, there are many geographical skills in the programmes of study that may be enhanced by digital mapping and Geographical Information Systems (GIS).

Seven years ago the Learning Lighthouse CLC was asked to investigate the possibility of bringing digital mapping into the classroom. Up to that date mapping had been taught using paper based resources and specific CD ROMS. The journey began with accessing Ordnance Survey (OS) tiles which OS have made freeiy available to departments of their iocai authority. The chaiienge then became how to view and manipulate these maps and find a Geographic Information Systems package which could be used with pupils across all of the key stages meaningfully. During this period we discovered that a number of Local Authority departments and many national companies use MapInfo Pro in their day to day work and so the experience of using this software could potentially improve employment chances.

At the Leaming Lighthouse we made the decision to invest in Maplnfo Pro and later we secured funding to procure a 3 year licence which allowed every school in the local authority to use the package. Since then, this licence has been renewed and we now have many years experience of using Pro with students. The software has been used with children as young as 7 years old (Year 3) and with many older students to support their GCSE, AS and A level coursework. Students are able to manipulate OS maps, drawn maps, data, images and video seamlessly through various zoom ranges. All the data, images and video can be referenced to a particular location on the map by the use of hotlinks. For older students data collected can be interrogated to produce choropleth maps, clot maps with distance decay indicators and proportional symbol maps.

Amongst many school projects aimed at students and children as young as 7 years old, are the following:

Primary work (7 to 11 year olds)

First steps in GIS Experiment with cartography and visualisation of the landscape (Scale & recognition of location [by photo and knowledge], symbols, routes and distance measurement)

My route to the Swimming Baths

Working with teachers from two different primary schools workspaces were set up around a familiar area for the children (7 to 8 year olds) from each school. Three routes were designed (Routes A, B & C), from their school to a well-known location such as the local swimming baths. When the students came to visit the ClC they learned, using MapInfo Pro, where the UK is in the world and using the zoom controls they were able to zoom into their own locality. Here they discovered local city and town names that they recognised and finally they found their school.

The three routes were either a direct route to the swimming baths as you might travel in a car (Route A), a route which could only be used if walking or cycling (Route B) or a more scenic, longer route (Route C). Pupils used the Layer Control to select individual routes to work on. Along these routes, at each junction, there were a number of hotspots. These hotspots showed the correct way to turn, the incorrect way to turn and at more complex junctions a short video which showed a wide sweep around the area. The children plotted each correct route using an editable cosmetic layer and measured them one by one using the ruler tool. They annotated the map to indicate whether it was a car route, scenic route or path which could only be taken by walking or on a bicycle. This exercise allowed the children to experience the scale of maps, symbols and where in the world they go to school. It also gave them the opportunity to follow a route on a map as if they were walking around their own familiar locality.

Letter Detectives

During an after school club 7 year old pupils created their own workspace based around their school area. They set up a trail for letter Detectives who picked up the post from school via a hotlink to a number of word documents. These documents contained clues to follow a route on the map to a secret location. During the club sessions the pupils recognised that the map was a method of recording local changes over a period of time. Staff at the school had taken video footage of the local technical college being demolished and that too was added to the map as a hotlink. An old map of 1874 was registered to overlay the OS maps which meant that the pupils could discover other changes to the area which had happened over a period of time.

Our Locality, Then & Now

Year 5 children (9 to 10 years old) from a local primary school visited the Learning Lighthouse CLC on a number of occasions whilst studying the Victorian period. They wanted to plot the changes to the area surrounding their school over a period of time, over a series of maps both old and new. The local estate, covering 15 acres, was built just after World War Two and now has a population of around 8500. The population in 1901 was 140 and as far back as 1801 was 52. Pupils dressed up in the costumes of Victorians and used our blue/green screen recording fadlities to record themselves in short videos in front of Victorian images. They geographically referenced images from the past next to images of today and also included hotlinks of some of their own research work in PowerPoints and Word Documents.

Port Sunlight, A Model Village

Local primary pupils regularly visit Port Sunlight as part of their local studies. Port Sunlight is a model village created and built by Lord Leverhulme (an English Industrialist) in 1888. With the help of teachers, a workspace was created to geographically reference images both old and new on OS and aerial maps. Video clips were also included which illustrate some of the main areas of the village. Using these images the children (aged 10) could compare life many years ago with life today and using overlaid old maps how the surrounding area has changed. The children used the workspace to discover what the land looked like before the foundation of the model village and why Lord Leverhulme chose to build his village there. They were then set a task, on a fictitious character, in which they were asked to create an itinerary for a, Mr Cyril Patterson, his wife and two children, who were visiting England for two weeks. In the task Mr Patterson wanted to find out more about his uncle, George, who was killed in action during World War Two, lived in Port Sunlight and worked at the Lever Soap factory before he was called up. Using the GIS workspace the pupils explored the village and set up a tour for Mr Patterson to include the buildings he might visit and what information he may find there about George.

Secondary work (11 -18 year olds)

Interpretation of change

Land usage/Geography/Local History - Wallasey Village. Y9 Students (13 to 14 year olds) from a local secondary school prepared a workspace where they appended tables of each of 5 areas that they had been investigating into one table. Every building was sorted into type i.e. residential, shops, services, transport and leisure. Visitors to the area were interviewed; the responses were collated and added to the workspace and illustrated using graphs e.g. frequency of visit, gender, where goods were purchased, journey time, transportation method and so on. A comparison of buildings in the locality was also made using images from the past and modern images taken from identical locations. Some of the results were quite fascinating.

Planning for change/redevelopment- New Brighton. A GIS workspace was created around a local, potential area for regeneration. The students were asked to consider which public amenities were lacking in their locality e.g. shops, restaurants, supermarkets, hotels and even ice rinks. Thirteen potential regeneration sites were identified, located and drawn on the map. The students worked out the area (in sq km) and ease of transport access for each site and taking location into consideration, decided what amenity could be located there in the regeneration programme. For each suggestion they were asked to give their reasons. The students considered noise light and pollution nuisance for local residents and as this was a coastal area proximity to other existing amenities, shoreline, tides ... etc.

Interrogation and presentation

Pressures on the physical environment - an analysis of the area around Betws-y-coed, Gwynedd, situated in the Snowdonia National Park - An investigation to test the idea that: Betws-y-coed displays many of the features of a sustainably managed tourist honeypot. A GIS MapInfo workspace designed to test this theory was created for GCSE students (15 to 16 year olds) to supplement their coursework. The workspace contained many photographs illustrating the impact of tourism and the sympathetic way this naturally attractive area has been adapted to cope with such high Visitor numbers. The students created detailed land use surveys maps with legend and choropleth maps showing which regions of the United Kingdom visitors came from. They also created more complex dot maps showing distance decay data, as the people who lived closer to the town tended to visit more often than those people who lived further away. The students finally produced a proportional symbol map which showed the number of days people stayed in Betws-y-coed and the number of people visiting from each region, illustrating the further away people lived, the fewer times they visited the area, but the longer they stayed. Students also plotted all the National Parks in the United Kingdom and showed accessibility to them by adding the national motorway infrastructure.

Mapping Biodiversity

A GIS workspace for Wirral species has also been established. Using MapInfo Pro students (from 11 to 15 years old) worked to establish a huge database of over 160 species found during a summer school. Each species was linked to html factfiles and geocoded map locations. This workspace will enable students to interrogate the database to visually pinpoint, on Ordnance Survey maps of Wirral, specific species and their level of distribution on Wirral. As part of the summer school four Wirral sixth form students worked alongside the young people to develop their own skills in using the fieldwork equipment and MapInfo Pro software as part of their Nuffield Bursary. These students then worked with the Wirral Ranger Service during the summer holiday to survey the rare and significant species of flora within the North Wirral Coastal Park.

The Future

The Learning Lighthouse CLC is now turning its attention to even younger users of GIS. A workspace is currently being prepared (with the kind permission of the Geographical Association) for children from KS1 (5 to 7 years old) to embark on a virtual world tour, experiencing the cultures of various areas around the globe, for instance South America and India. Images and puzzles have been hotlinked from each country the children visit. They will also have access to an interactive mapping table which allows for the projection of maps and GIS software on to a horizontal surface.

Further secondary school projects will be developed and MapInfo Pro will be utilised as part of the provision for the new Diplomas which will be offered in the local authority from September 09. In particular, MapInfo Pro may be used in the Construction Built Environment and Retail Diplomas. West Wirral Works CLC, another CLC on Wirral, has purchased a 3D Printer and we are collaborating with them to develop materials which allow 3D terrain printing using vrml files (Virtual Reality Modelling Language) as part of wider, collaborative projects. No doubt, this application will take our teaching and learning using GIS in Wirral to another dimension!