EDINA opening up Digimap for Schools to 1 million more pupils

A press release from the Ordnance Survey.

I've worked with Ordnance Survey and EDINA for many years.

Ordnance Survey (OS) will reach out to 1,800 primary and secondary schools serving some of the most deprived areas of Great Britain to offer a free education resource for the teaching of geography.

Digimap for Schools was launched just over 15 years ago in partnership between OS and EDINA, at The University of Edinburgh. It is a flagship digital platform that provides interactive mapping tools for the teaching of geography, and other core education areas, in primary and secondary schools. It helps pupils and teachers develop digital and data skills, and explore modern and historical maps as well as aerial imagery. 

Around one-sixth of schools in England - more than 18 million pupils - have used the service since 2020.

The new offer means Digimap for Schools will reach more than one million schoolchildren in the most deprived areas across Britain, alongside three million who currently have access to the service. A programme of training will also be offered to educators, alongside the development of a new network of practising teachers to provide effective teaching support.

Free access to Digimap for Schools was previously sponsored by the government for schools rated Ofsted 3 or 4. This year, the eligibility criteria has been widened to include 1,800 schools in the lowest 8% of deprived areas in England and, for the first time, in Scotland and Wales. This will include cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Cardiff, and Glasgow. 

The new offer has been secured by Government Digital Service, under the Public Sector Geospatial Agreement.

"It is fundamental that we support the effective teaching of geography in schools, building confidence when using interactive mapping tools, and fostering critical technical skills to grow our future geographers. We are delighted to announce the extension of Digimap for Schools to those with the greatest need in England, Scotland, and Wales. We encourage headteachers to take advantage of this offer and introduce Digimap for Schools into their classrooms this year."

Nick Bolton, Chief Executive of Ordnance Survey

© Crown copyright and database rights. Ordnance Survey 2026
Secondary school pupils working with Digimap for Schools

“Geography plays an important role in helping young people understand the world around them. Our members tell us that digital tools like Digimap for Schools are invaluable for geography teachers to enrich the curriculum learning experience and put data analysis directly into the hands of pupils. We welcome this initiative for schools in deprived areas, as well as the expansion into Scotland and Wales, and encourage all eligible schools to sign-up."

Steve Brace, Chief Executive of the Geographical Association

Digimap for Schools is aligned with the national curricula across Great Britain and enables students aged five to 16 and above to understand and investigate their world while gaining crucial digital and data skills. It is supported by access to a huge library of free learning resources, also available in Welsh, that are designed to aid teaching and support teachers in preparing impactful and interesting lessons, as well as allowing for student-led self-study. 

OS recently published an impact report on its commitment to lifelong learning in geography and geospatial. It also collaborates closely with organisations such as the Royal Geographical Society and the Geographical Association on a wide range of activities including the teaching of geography in schools, educational outcomes, and promoting geography.

Headteachers of eligible schools will be directly contacted about the new offer in the next month. For further information about the Digimap for Schools free access scheme visit: https://digimapforschools.edina.ac.uk/about/imd/.

Vouchercloud: top tourist destinations

Vouchercloud has produced a map to show the top tourist destination in each country in the world.

This is a large map - click on the map following the link to see the whole thing and download it if you want a copy.

SAGT Conference 2014

Good to see the conference programme and booking form for October's SAGT Conference is now up on the website.
I've been attending since 2005, and it's one of the highlights of the year.
This year, there are plenty of workshops on the conference theme of MAPS and APPS.

Even if you're not an SAGT member, you should really get yourself up to Perth for the event (it's during the half term holiday) and great value for money.
Download the documents now and take a look.
Here are the details of my seminar:

If you're coming along, you could also choose to see Steve Dunn and Mark Smith from the Grammar School at Leeds talking about their use of ArcGIS Online, or Dan Moncrieff from the FSC, or Jamie Buchanan Dunlop, or several other speakers... all of them leading interesting sessions.
Add in two keynotes, an exhibition and some good food and you have the makings of a great day of CPD...

LondonMapper

“Our aim is to provide unbiased information about London's social, environmental and economic issues.

“These maps are like fancy pie charts, and if something is twice the size of something else it is obvious. We just want to spark a debate about the differences in one big city.”

Professor Danny Dorling

London called me on Thursday this week, and I went down to the RGS to meet with Ben Hennig.

Ben and I are working on some educational materials for a project called LondonMapper - a website which officially launched today, funded by the Trust for London.
The educational materials are being funded by an Innovative Geography Teaching grant that we have been awarded by the Royal Geographical Society.

Ben's maps will be familiar to many from his work on WorldMapper with Danny Dorling and others from Sheffield University.
Ben now works at the University of Oxford, still with Danny Dorling, and LondonMapper is one of several exciting projects that he is working on.

The site got a lot of early publicity and was featured in quite a few of the newspapers today.
- the Guardian
- Daily Mail
- the Independent
for example...

Explore the data on this Guardian Datablog page, which includes the hedgehog map and peregrine falcon map created along with Daniel Raven Ellison as part of the Greater London National Park project

The site will be expanded in the next few weeks with a whole tranche of new maps.

By the end of the summer term, there will also be a teaching resource which I will have created. The bones of the resources already exist, and I will be working on that over half term.

Also keep an eye out for further London Mapping resources that I'll be creating in the Summer term.

ArcGIS Online Story Maps

A useful blog post here to explain how to download the MAP STORY TOUR template and start to use it with ArcGIS Online.

It's not a straightforward procedure, but this post by Rupert Essinger takes you through it nice and clearly.
I'll perhaps give it a go, to check that it works before using it with colleagues at a course at the end of the week...

Digimap for Schools MapStream resources

At the start of the year I finished off a project with EDINA, who operate the Digimap for Schools MapStream service, in association with the Ordnance Survey.
This is a little like the Digimap for Schools tool, but without the tools...
Subscribers to MapStream will find that they have access to the Ordnance Survey's mapping at the same scale as Digimap, but the difference is that they stream them into their own GIS software using a WMS (web mapping service) - this works with open-source options such as Quantum GIS, but also ArcGIS and even Google Earth (I was amazed when I first saw this in action...)

One advantage of this option is that the maps are streamed to your GIS as an extra layer, so there is no data storage / installation issue. Having said that, you need a reliable and fairly fast internet connection if you want the maps of course. The cost is much cheaper than Digimap, but you need to use the tools in your GIS client, rather than the ones provided by Digimap. This may require extra time on training how to use your chosen GIS package.

If you head over to the site, you will now find that there are the first of what will be a series of educational materials for teachers, available for free download. These are particularly designed for subscribers to the MapStream service.
I wrote the materials, the cover of one is pictured to the right....
Check them out.
Subscription is just £35 a year for a primary school and £50 for a secondary school.

I will be referring to this, as well as other mapping options in my GA CPD days which will take place in Birmingham at the end of May and London at the start of June.

Fieldwork

If you're interested in fieldwork and technology and you've not already bookmarked this site you need to. I've blogged about it before...
Enhancing Fieldwork Learning has a range of useful posts on the value of mobile devices for fieldwork.
The latest additions relate to the use of iPads for education in fieldwork.

I am currently researching fieldwork apps too, for a book I am co-writing.

Earlier today I had a play with FIELD PAPERS. This site uses Open Street Maps for the base mapping. The idea is that you can choose an area, and print off a paper map at an appropriate scale.
These paper maps are taken out into the field and can be annotated, and then 'scanned' back in using a digital photograph.

Each page of the printout has a QR code. This helps the alignment of the annotated version which can then be uploaded.

They contain some marks for lining up and identifying the location, and matching it with the maps on the website.

Finally on the theme of fieldwork learning, I'm going to be exploring a local river valley at the end of the month in the company of Sarah Taigel (@_happymapper on Twitter) and some other volunteers. Sarah is doing some research at UEA on GIS work. The work is summarised on the Communicating Landscape Futures website.

We will be exploring the catchment of the Gaywood River, which I used to live within a hundred yards of for about ten years. For more on the Gaywood Valley, you should follow @Gaywood Valley

All of this will feed into my book, due out in 2013.

I am also grateful to Mark Howell for posting some ideas on COASTAL FIELDWORK on his blog. Some really useful ideas here too.

Remember: "geography without fieldwork is like science without experiments...."

Mapping tool - Sketch-a-map from ESRI

A nice mapping tool produced by / for the ESRI Education community , which offers a range of base maps, and tools to draw on top of the base map to create a personal map. I liked the text tool, which allows labels to be placed by clicking on the map.

 The finished map can then be saved or printed.
Another option for map creation.

Try it out