Take your i-phone on a train journey of discovery

Handheld Learning Project – Where will your journey take you?

Take a train journey;

Aim – investigation of places, spaces and people

Objectives – complete an interactive map that would help people decide where to get off the train for leisure, work, school etc.

Differentiation/extension – Audience variation – peers (journey to school and opportunity for transition projects with Secondary schools helping plan journeys for year 6 pupils) tourists, EAL visitors and residents . Different maps or overlays for different themes i.e sport, leisure etc.

Overview – Pupils are grouped into pairs or small team and given a flip or i-phone, a train timetable and a map.

They will be asked to complete an interactive map for the journey that they will take having to get off the train at a minimum of 6 stations. At these six points the students will be allowed to go no further than a 5 minute walk from the station to capture images, videos and sounds that would give other passengers an idea of what they could do if they got of the train at this station. This information would be added to a digital map perhaps My Maps on Google Earth so that the next passenger could use the handheld device, log onto the map and then at each station look at the interactive media pop up that would tell them what there is to do in that place.

Added to the challenge would be that the students only have the time between trains at each station – ie if the trains run through the station every 15 minutes then the students would only have 10 minutes to collect data at each station. Rather than seeing this as a hinderance this would encourage the students to think about only using the necessary information, thus developing analytical skills to select appropriate resources.

There are many ways to adapt this project

· Encouraging students to complete the task for journeys to school – thinking about safe places to cross the road, alternative routes etc.

· Completing the task for people with English as a second language and so need to focus more on visual images to convey information

· Audience variation - how the maps may change if the audience was different – local people, tourists, adults, children

· Transition work – year 7 and 6 students working together in the summer term to look at how the new students to the school can get there on the first day etc...