The Digimap for Schools service has reached a new milestone with 1,000 secondary schools now signed up.
The latest achievement, for the popular mapping system, gives hundreds of thousands of pupils across Great Britain access to the latest Ordnance Survey (OS) digital data, including the most detailed maps of the nation through OS MasterMap.
Digimap for Schools, developed by EDINA at the University of Edinburgh, is available to all schools in Great Britain. In addition to the 1,000 secondary schools, over 1450 primary schools are also signed up to the service.
Elaine Owen, Schools Manager at OS, comments: “To reach 1,000 secondary school subscribers for Digimap for Schools is fantastic. This now means that over a quarter of secondary schools in England and nearly a half of all secondary schools in Scotland are using the service to support lessons across a range of subjects.
“We are continually looking at ways to improve the service and have invested in a number of updates and modifications over the last two years. The introduction of historic mapping layers, from 1890s and 1950s, is proving very popular and brings another element to the service, enabling teachers and pupils to overlay the historic maps over current mapping and compare changes in the landscape.”
The secondary school which became the one thousandth subscriber was Chilton Trinity School from Bridgwater in Somerset. Miss Sophie Carruthers, a Geography teacher at Chilton Trinity School added: “I subscribed as I am setting up the Duke of Edinburgh at Chilton Trinity and having used Digimap for Schools last year, at a previous school, I know how useful it is for mapping routes. In addition to this I teach Geography and we had limited resources for including GIS in our curriculum – Digimap for Schools will be a great addition to the classroom.”
Peter Burnhill, Director of EDINA in Information Services at the University of Edinburgh, says: “My colleagues are rightly very proud of having created Digimap for Schools by working very closely with OS. This milestone highlights the value of an easy-to-use way to access Britain’s best maps online for use across the curriculum, as the case studies prove. It also serves as a way maker for more schools to take the trial service and join in during 2016.”
Digimap for Schools ensures that teachers and students can access OS maps as defined in the National Curriculum. The website also has an extensive bank of resources across the key stages to help teachers bring geography to life. The OS Education Team has recently added a new set of resources for the historic maps layer that is generously provided by the National Library of Scotland.
Digimap for Schools was launched in 2010. The annual subscription costs just £69 for a primary school and up to £144 for a secondary school. Once signed up to the service, pupils and teachers using Digimap for Schools can create, save and print maps at A4 and A3 size.
To give the service a free trial, visit the EDINA website.
