gis at the high arcal school
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GIS at The High Arcal School. Year 7 Improving the School Grounds. Context. By the end of a series of lessons pupils will: know why school grounds need improving understand how school grounds can be improved - PowerPoint PPT PresentationTRANSCRIPT
GIS at The High Arcal School
Year 7 Improving the School Grounds
Context
•A fieldwork -based project running for many years
• Part of a planned series of lessons,assessed at the end
•Involves a cross-curricular element such as literacy (writing for a purpose, numeracy)
• By the end of a series of lessons pupils will:
know why school grounds need improving
understand how school grounds can be improved
be able to plan, to scale, an area of the school grounds showing and justifying changes
• aim in July was to replace use of paper maps so that pupils can use GIS to show show changes to part of the school grounds
• also to actively integrate other ICT aspects into the sequence of lessons: use of PAINT to show “before” and “after” images; use of EXCEL to work within a budget of £2,000; use of resources based on our departmental website
The area to be improved
Lesson 1 Class based
Brainstorm why school grounds need improving
Watch Learning through Landscapes video
Revisit why school grounds need improving
Homework: letter to Headmaster aiming to convince him that money should be spent on improvements
Lesson 2 Visit school grounds (fieldwork)
What has been improved already, where and why?
Homework: page for a magazine aimed at young people showing how High Arcal’s grounds have improved
Lesson 3 Planning for the future: draft plan of improvements
Homework: get price information for benches, fencing, bins etc
Lesson 5 GIS
In ICT room, work in pairs, using detailed instructions to produce a digital map (using drag and drop symbols)
Compare “before” and “after” images (spot the difference)
Have a go at manipulating the aerial digital image to show their changes (no-one got this far!)
Lesson 4 Fieldwork
Using draft plans visit area to be improved and revise plans; cost up in draft form within £2,000 budget
How did it go?
Far better than expected: usual hiccups with missing mice otherwise a valuable experience. Pupils navigated the system easily, most got on to the “before” and “after” image comparison.
Tips:
Only named work to be printed
No printing off until told
Stay in seats whilst work is printing off
Difficulties:
Scale and resizing symbols
Not leaving a gap between elements of the post code (easily rectified)
Advantages of GIS over paper-based maps:
Speed
Neatness
WOW factor
Pupil motivation
Next…….
Year 9 Sustainable Development project
“How might the negative environmental impacts of the High Arcal estate best be reduced?”