Young Geographers Project - Bradley Stoke Community School
This material was contributed by Tony Battista.
Mediascape: exploring personal geographies at KS2 & 3 through virtual fieldwork
Age Group: Year 7 (to be developed as a transition project with Y6)
Selection of Content: I chose to write up this work as it is a fantastic opportunity to develop the use of ICT either in a cross-phase project or in KS2/KS3 separately. It makes use of some hi tech equipment and the students get the chance to express their personal geographies in a safe secure environment without having to leave the school grounds.
The real beauty of this project is that it will complement real fieldwork by allowing students to actually do a local study in their area without leaving the premises. Of course, part of the fun is going out from school, but when you see the students out on the field experiencing their mediascapes of the local area it's almost as good as actually going there!
Each project is also transferable so technically they could be recalibrated to be used in any location in the world!
TEACHING & LEARNING ACTIVITIES
Aim: To create a unique and personalised interactive piece of fieldwork (mediascape) on the school grounds using digital equipment (digital video camera, digital camera, music, sound files, text based material and mediascape software).
View the PowerPoint photo gallery below to discover the activities the students took part in.
To watch this presentation online click the image to move on to the next slide or use the navigation controls on the right. You can download the PowerPoint Presentation below.
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Evaluation
This cannot be completed until the work is done. Student and staff evaluations will be submitted.
Further Developments
The information given about the project should stimulate a plethora of ways to develop this work. One way of moving the project forward would be to make a virtual tour of the human and physical geography of a selected country using a map of the country and the students' mediascapes on their PDAs. The only limit to this work is the imagination of the teachers and students who want to undertake it.
The school is a new secondary school in Bradley Stoke in south Gloucestershire on the northern edge of Bristol. We are expanding year on year and are about to embark on KS4 courses. We currently have three year groups with approximately 600 students. This should go up to about 1000 when we are full and we should also have a sixth form centre built ready for our first cohort to use in 2011.
