Year Six Blog

About 12/13 years ago a number of places in The Lakes were hit by the dry summer, with significant drops in water levels in some lakes and rivers.

You could always do comparisons of those areas hit by the dry and by the floods.

Did the drought change any of the tourism trade?

You’ve probably already thought of this, but could you look at some of the locations of bridges damaged in recent floods? Will have a big impact on travel plans for local people and tourists for quite some time. If they’ve already got favourite places marked, could they see if these are affected? Could be the start of a very topical bit of tourist info. Also lots of news stories about this to link to.

How about map reading with respect to how you get from A to B and the difference losing a bridge could make to getting to work?

Once you have done that you could compare that to losing a bridge in Manchester?

How important is private transport to the community? How about public transport? How about walking?

Question: Is the price of fuel higher or lower in the Lake District?

Following on from the question about public transport you could compare the availability of public transport in the Lake District and in your own area. It might also be interesting to compare the summer and winter timetables in the Lake District and think about the impact this has for people who live in both areas.

You might be able to investigate how public transport providers have responded to the floods eg I understand an emergency rail station has been opened

Another thought: how about looking at google maps and working out how to get from one town to another. Then look at the terrain tab on the same map and see if they change their mind. Finally, see if they can find pictures along the route from various sources. Tony from Lakelandcam.co.uk has some amazing pictures. Now see if they change their mind.

One idea is using Power Point, insert a map on slide one of the Lake District, choose a small image of a set of binoculars and place these over the areas that poeple told you were their favourite places. Find pictures of that place and hyperlink them to that set of binoclars and hey presto, you have an interactive map!

Simple ideas such as:

Measuring distances between places in a straight line and then by road and then by walking.

Detail favourite places and investigate the difference weather would make to tourism there

Draw ‘over’ or ’round’ routes and compare distances. Estimate times for the routes using standard road/walk/climb tables

Do virtual risk assessments on planned routes

Following on from the suggestions about transport adn route selection above, you could identify two points on the map and invite the children to select the routes they ought to take between them if they were travelling by car, by bike and by foot. Their decisions would need to be argued for. Using Google Maps to identify the distances of these various routes, there’s some useful little research, mapreading and maths challenges you could set to ask the children to predict how long those various journeys might take.

Nice concept – I think I should have a bit of a play with this sort of thing myself.

How about a map showing where essential services (pharmacists, shops with late opening times) or advice centres are located, with telephone number, website and opening hours information incorporated. For tourism, how about photos not just of the target destination but of the roads leading in to it, a bit like a stop-motion ‘this is what it will look like if you travel from X to Y’.

I’d also like something that is, by design, permanently unfinished so that it is always being updated (perhaps by people uploading geotagged data from mobile phones etc). Is there scope to add audio information (‘…and on your left you’ll see..’) to the location points?

I’ve enjoyed recording and sharing, via an iPhone app, routes of favourite walks and there’s also the opportunity to download others’. The app I use (Geotagging) allows you to take photos en route, keyword tag and geotag them so that they’re linked to the points along the journey, and visible to others.

Another nice use of mapping is by the Amazon Conservation Team who’ve done something that goes by the name “Participatory ethnographic mapping: mapping indigenous lands” creating, jointly with local people, “a “risk” map that identifies areas within the mapped region that either are currently threatened or are at greatest risk of harm from external actors.”

Website here http://www.amazonteam.org/index.php/193/Participatory_Ethnographic_Mapping_Mapping_Indigenous_Lands or there’s a video describing the project here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxBb2FOj9×4