Celebrating our city - Digital map with pop ups

Handheld learning Investigating our City.....

Overview: Using devices students investigate local areas to find clusters of information, about their local area, overlaying maps with sounds images and movies that show how the area is perceived to children and young people. The picture of the neighbourhood that is built up will then be uploaded into a larger data base so that a whole city picture or digital collage can be developed. The large digital collage of the city will then be used as a presentation and celebration of learning with handheld technologies at the e-safety launch in February.

Tie Ins:

Possibly use the screens and table top at Campion

Every child matters and community cohesion

E-Safety

Creative teaching and learning

Further Thinking:

3 schools per day would use i-phones and flip videos to collect and investigate data from their local area. Each school would be working as an individual unit in the field. Collecting images sounds and video that represents themes from within their neighbourhood. Different schools could be given different foci to look at i.e. Religion; Cultural Diversity; Leisure etc. On completion of the day the schools would have presentations, made by the young people that can be further used in school and assessed. But the information would also be uploaded into a central store that would begin to build up a large media rich collage of the city that all the schools will have contributed to.

Imagine a large outline map of the city, that when you touch it in given areas pops appear that show the perception of that neighbourhood from a young person’s point of view.

The pop ups would also show what the areas where like at different times of the day, and then as an extension task for the older and more able students they will have also created a digital package to show what the same neighbourhood looked like in the past and then have done a simple voice piece to describe their personal aspirations for what the area might be like in the future. This would mean that for each area of the city there would not only be a present day collage but a pop up for the past and the future.

The digital collage would initially be used to celebrate the teaching and learning that can be achieved in the field with handheld devices and launched at the e-safety launch in February to highlight the benefits of using handheld technology responsibly rather than not at all.

This project could be linked not only into History, Geography and PSHE but also to RE, English, ICT and Science. Equally there are opportunities for 14-19 diplomas to get involved with the Creative media and digital diploma students looking at ways to present the information and making films etc to enhance the learning that is taking place.

For the diagrams to enhance this thinking see written notes, -they show how the pop ups would work on the map of the city..