The Ordnance Survey Education team have a section of our website designed to be used by children who are interested in learning more about maps and geography.
As well as teaching resources, there are some good geography games and more information about Digimap for Schools which is our online tool offering a wide range of mapping at a range of scale and designed to be used in schools.
So today, because it’s Friday, we are asking ‘are you smarter than a ten year old’? Try today’s geography related crossword and see just how much you know about mapping and the countryside.
Let us know how you get on. If you’ve got the chance, time yourself and let us know how quickly you can do it!
GeoVation winner’s Mission:Explore announced their support for a new GeoVation Challenge and a brand new Ordnance Survey ‘Viewpoint’ reward, both aimed at supporting children, families and schools in using geography in innovative ways.
They were announced during a presentation at the BETT Show on Saturday 14 January by Alan Parkinson from Mission:Explore. The GeoVation challenge will ask children to identify a food related problem in their community, think of a solution and come up with a plan for executing it. The best plans that also make use of Ordnance Survey mapping can win a slice of funding to help turn them into a reality. Children in Key Stages 2, 3 and 4 can enter by doing a series of three GeoVation missions on Mission:Explore to win a GeoVation badge and then completing an entry form.
Continue reading 'Launching a GeoVation challenge on Mission:Explore'»
A guest post by Ordnance Survey’s Richard Cully
Too often the combination of short winter days and tv are way too easy an option. Sometimes you just need to get off the sofa – so recently I walked the river path between Beaulieu and Bucklers Hard in Hampshire. I had the luck of it being one of those beautiful crisp sunny days that can briefly turn January from a month to be ‘got through’ into a pleasure; the sudden lift of colour in the bark of seemingly lifeless branches as the sun hits them is glorious.
Both the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu with the new James Bond 50 years exhibit and Buckler’s Hard and its maritime heritage centre are great places to explore. Whether you start at the tiny village of Buckler’s Hard (as I did) or 2 miles away at Beaulieu there is something to do at your destination.
Having once built some of the Royal Navy’s greatest wooden ships, Buckler’s Hard is now a museum and with its one street set wide enough to roll tree trunks down to the river bank, it sits timelessly in the south Hampshire countryside.
The Master Builder hotel overlooks the start of the path to Beaulieu and was where I met friends over a coffee before setting off on our walk. The sunshine had bought people out for the day and cyclists and walkers were taking a wide berth as three-year-olds in flowery wellies took great delight in repeatedly jumping in the remnants of drying puddles.
Continue reading 'A relaxing and refreshing amble in the New Forest'»
We’ve recently added a new video to our official Ordnance Survey channel on YouTube. It’s an introduction to underwriting using geographic information (GI).
With so much uncertainty in such a highly competitive marketplace, insurers rely on accurate intelligence to stay ahead. Intelligence to help them reduce fraud, plan for contingencies or help comply with legislation like Solvency II. Our GI is used extensively to accurately underwrite profitable business the industry relies on. It enables businesses to pinpoint individual addresses and assess risk rather than banding up properties into postcodes and assessing the risk for a group of properties. Used in this way our data makes a difference to the bottom line, identifying 25% more properties that had previously may have been too high a risk to underwrite.
Continue reading 'Highlighting the benefits of GI data for the financial sector'»
Getting started on that new year fitness regime can seem a bit daunting sometimes. Or even if you do kick-start your fitness, things can tail off quite quickly. One of the best ways to keep fit is to make your activity a part of your daily routine – and there’s no better way to do this than with your favourite furry friend.
If you’ve got a dog, a daily walk will benefit you both – a brisk walk can burn over 100 calories per mile for you and with estimates that 50% of UK dogs are overweight, it could benefit your pet too.
Even in urban areas, it’s easy to get out and walk with your dog. There are a wealth of sites with walking information or to help you find a local route. You could try http://walkit.com/.
On the weekend, or if you’ve got the time for a longer walk, I came across this site for the Top 21 Dog Walks in the UK. The walks range from 30 minutes to over two hours, so can suit all levels of fitness – for you and your pooch. Locations include rural and urban walks, from Thieves Wood in Nottinghamshire to Portsmouth seafront in Hampshire.
Of course, if you’re out and about walking with your dog, you do need to be a responsible dog owner and the Top 21 Dog Walks site also has a good section on top tips to follow and links to the Countryside Code.
Where are your favourite spots to walk your pets – rural or urban? Let us know on the blog.
The flying season for 2012 won’t be getting started for another month or so, and when it does, our Flying Unit will be taking off from their new home at East Midlands airport. In the meantime, we have plenty of aerial imagery databanked to give you a birds eye view of places across Great Britain.
Rugby fans amongst you will be only too aware that the RBS Six Nations championship kicks off in a fortnight. While many of you will have been lucky enough to visit our home nation’s stadiums – would you recognise one from the air? Our Flying Unit are often over sporting venues as part of their daily job, capturing the changes in our environment ready to be added to our geographic data and made available for our customers.
The stadium below will be in use during the tournament. As my home stadium, I recognised it instantly (although I’m afraid to say I’ve only been there for music events and never for sports)! We captured the image in April last year – can you name the stadium?
Continue reading 'Where are we?'»
Three local authorities have recently been recognised for excellence in street naming! Yes, really, there are awards for these things!
The ‘National Gazeteers Exemplar Awards’ were presented at the ‘Everything Happens Somewhere’ Conference and Exhibition which was hosted by ourfriends at GeoPlace and at which Ordnance Survey were a sponsor.
So, boring, but descriptive names such as High Street, Station Road, Park Road, Church Street and London Road are probably a thing of the past as local authorities come up with relevant and interesting new street names.
Colchester Borough Council was the overall winner for its naming of fourteen new streets in the development of a site which was formerly the home of Woods of Colchester – a major producer of industrial fans and motors. As a former ‘Export Company of the Year’ and one of the borough’s largest employees at the time, all the street names used in the site have a connection with industrial fans or a feature of the former factory including;
- Aerofoil Grove
- Engineers Square
- Propelair Way
- Axial Drive
- Turbine Road
- Fan Avenue
- Turbine Avenue
Continue reading 'On the street where you live!'»
Guest post by Ordnance Survey’s Gwyn Hughes-Jones
The Kingdom of Fife is an often overlooked part of Scotland for walking, but it
is a beautiful corner of Scotland, with loads of walks to enjoy. This 10 mile
walk follows part of the Fife Coastal Path from Tentsmuir Sands to Tayport
and then back through Morton Lochs National Nature Reserve and Tentsmuir
Forest. The relevant map is OS Explorer 371 or OS Landranger 59.
The walk starts at the car park in Tentsmuir Forest (there is a £2 parking
charge; toilet facilities are available during summer months). Head East out of
the car park following a series of small paths through the dunes towards the
sea. The next 5km follow the coast along Tentsmuir Sands – keep an eye out
for the tide!. As you head up to Tentsmuir Point look out for seals and
wintering wildfowl. Tentsmuir is one of the few places on the east coast of
Scotland where both grey and common seals can be seen together. It is also
a great place to spot birds: Eider ducks, pink-footed geese, bar-tailed godwits,
grey plovers and scoters can all be spotted here at the right time of year.
Follow the coast round to the left at Tentsmuir Point.
Continue reading 'Fife – coastal walk with plenty of opportunity to spot wildlife'»
Route of the Week, Uncategorized
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bird spotting, coastal walk, Fife, Morton Lochs National Natuire REservce, nature walk, ospreys, Tayport, Tentsmuir Forest, Tentsmuir Point, walk, wildlife
In a survey last year, users told us that they were keen to hear more about the innovative ways in which Ordnance Survey data is being used. So, in response, we are delighted to welcome you to the first of our Innovation newsletters, designed to give you the most up-to-date news about our Innovation initiatives – OS OpenData, OS OpenSpace and GeoVation.
Since the launch of OS OpenData, we have seen OS Street View and OS VectorMap District become the most popular datasets for download. Users have ranged from councils to developers of games on Facebook! There’s more about this and other OS OpenSpace developments in the newsletter (PDF).
We are focused on widening access to our data and supporting innovation to create new economic and social value for Great Britain. Since we launched OS OpenData in 2010, we’ve been encouraging developers to create and develop new applications using our data.
Our GeoVation programme looks to encourage the use of geography to address specific needs through a series of focused challenges. It’s a place where communities, innovative thinkers, geographic data, skills and expertise can get together for the benefit of communities and their needs. You can read about the new challenges in this newsletter and remind yourself of previous challenges and some of their winners.
We’re also extremely pleased to have delivered our 10 000th API key for OS OpenSpace. We launched it in January 2008, to enable developers to develop innovative ways of displaying information based on our maps. On average there are over 1 million downloads each day and I July last year, we delivered our one billionth tile download – quite a milestone.
If you’d like to subscribe to the newsletter to make sure you don’t miss out next time, let us know at blog@ordnancesurvey.co.uk
GI explained, OS OpenData, OS OpenSpace, Uncategorized
| Develops, Geovation, innovation inititaves, innovative, Maps for Apps, newsletter, OS OpenData, OS OpenSpace
Last week (and over the weekend) our Education team have been manning an exhibition stand at Olympia in London, taking the opportunity to talk to teachers about geography, mapping, GI and our Digimap for Schools application which provides access to a wide range of mapping and tools to pupils in schools across Great Britain.
BETT is the leading event for education technology, giving up to 30,000 visitors the opportunity to try out the technology and bringing together some of the teaching community for four days of discussions and testing!
This year, the show was opened by Michael Gove making an important announcement about ‘radically revamping’ the ICT curriculum which received widespread media coverage so there was a buzz around the exhibition stands as technology development was clearly an important government focus.
Continue reading 'BETT …you love Digimap for Schools!'»
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