GIS-ready background mapping data for schools

EDINA has partnered with Ordnance Survey to deliver Digimap for Schools MapStream to schools, to encourage the take-up of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) technology as a useful teaching tool in the classroom.

GIS appears in both the English and Welsh National Curriculum and the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence but is under-utilised by teachers, with pupils beginning their tertiary education unaware of the broad applicability of spatial analysis.

MapStream is a live stream of Ordnance Survey digital mapping products at a range of scales, from small-scale regional and road-style maps right down to the most detailed Ordnance Survey mapping product showing building outlines.

Subscribing to the map streaming service relieves schools of data management and storage issues, and gives access to the whole of GB contemporary background mapping.

MapStream is different from the flagship Digimap for Schools offering in having no user interface. It is a machine-to-machine web service, which requires schools to have software to access and use the service.

It is attractive to those schools that want to carry out spatial analysis more advanced than the simpler online mapping available within Digimap for Schools.

Mark Smith, Head of Science Faculty at The Grammar School at Leeds, views the service favourably:

“For many schools, the advent of stable, reliable open-source packages such as QGIS has dramatically changed the situation for teachers wishing to give their pupils free hands-on experience of real GIS, as opposed to digital mapping or Google Earth.

“The increasing availability of accessible spatial data has coincided with the maturation of open-source software, making this the ideal time for schools to reconsider introducing GIS, but without some of the barriers such as cost and data acquisition that may have previously put them off.

“Launching MapStream for schools now is very timely.”

• mapstream.edina.ac.uk