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- EDUCATION DAY

EARTH – UK Launch - Education Day

The World's Largest Atlas-Earth - all 580 pages and 30Kg of it - was launched in the UK in Brackley at the end of November over 4 days. The first day was Media Day with entry by invitation only and we were honoured to have the renowned Botanist and Environmentalist David Bellamy in attendance who, having written the foreword for Earth, was keen to attend. A nicer person you couldn't wish to meet! The Thursday and Saturday were open for the Public to attend and on the Friday we held an Education Day.

Five Brackley Schools attended with 10 students from each school having a one hour workshop on how to produce a map. Each was given an A3 aerial photograph of Brackley plus a sheet of tracing paper and a selection of coloured pencils. Mary Spence, MBE, Immediate Past President of the British Cartographic Society, then gave them 5 minutes worth of her considerable knowledge, explaining how we would identify features on the map and then trace them, starting with roads before adding other features such as drainage in appropriate colours, i.e. blue in the case of drainage. We asked them to identify their school, then their house to help them understand what they were looking at. After about half an hour, Chloe Smith, age 7, who had won the Junior Map Maker Award for 2008 then explained how she drew the map that won her award and that by using her imagination, she took a map based on her favourite place (Centre Parcs) and turned it into what she would like to see there.

We took this theme and asked the pupils to add on the map things that they would like to see in Brackley. This brought in some brilliant ideas including Ski Slopes, Toy Shops, Cadbury World, Zoos/Wildlife Parks, Karting and BMX tracks, F1 Racing Circuit (to rival neighbouring Silverstone presumably!), the sea and beach (coming anyway with the rising sea level as was explained!) McDonalds, Pyramids and many more!

Added excitement came with the arrival of the BBC TV film crew to record the event with Brackley Junior School which went out on the 6.30 news making stars of some of the children!

Global Mapping's Alan Smith and Mary Spence then judged each of the schools giving emphasis to the cartographic element rather than the imagination of the children, awarding a first and second place with the winner getting a globe and the runner up a box magnifying glass. The remaining children all received a magnifying glass with each getting a certificate.

All the entries were then put on display in Brackley Town Hall for the public to visit and the Brackley Mayor, Councillor Kevin Dixon, was asked to judge the 5 winning maps giving the emphasis to imagination over cartography. This was a very tough decision but finally by the narrowest of margins Hannah Baker from Waynflete Infants School was adjudged the overall winner winning a globe for her school and an atlas and certificate for herself which were presented at her School Assembly.

The whole event was a great success with all children really showing a great interest in cartography and concentrating hard on producing their maps. Teachers from every school, without exception, said how quiet the children were - a sign that they were engrossed in the activity. Certainly, from Global Mapping's point of view, we all enjoyed the day immensely. It really was very rewarding and we are looking to repeating the exercise in the future.