Author Archives: Carol

Printing PDF maps from Chrome

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Recently, we have received a couple of reports from users experiencing issues when printing PDF maps using Chrome web browser.  Unfortunately, the map watermark and any semi transparent annotations are being printed a solid filled features.  We have discovered that this occurs when the PDF is viewed and printed from within the Chrome browser, using Chrome’s in built PDF plugin.

We have investigated this problem and discovered that the bug is with Chrome not Digimap for Schools. The problem only happens on Windows computers in the most recent version of Chrome (34.0.1847) which was released at the end of April.

For users with Chrome, we recommend the following workaround:

– create your printable map as normal and allow it to open with your web browser. When the map opens within the browser, rather than clicking the file name to open, click the arrow and choose ‘Open with system viewer’.  Providing Adobe Reader is installed on your machine, the map will open in Adobe Reader which will print the map correctly.

Screen Shot 2014-05-13 at 17.35.22

You can also download the map as a file to your computer, and then open it directly with Adobe Reader.

If you need any assistance with opening your PDF map, please contact the EDINA helpdesk on edina@ed.ac.uk or 0131 650 3302.

Webinar video now available

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On the 2nd April, we held a short webinar for new users to Digimap for Schools, and anyone wishing to brush up on tools available in the service.  We also looked at the newly released historic mapping.

To view a recording of the webinar, please click on the link below.  This will play the video within your browser.

http://digimapforschools.edina.ac.uk/Resources/videos/webinars/2ndapril.mp4

If you have any suggestions for future webinar topics, please get in touch and let us know.

 

Historic maps in Digimap for Schools reveal landscape changes

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Eagle eyed Digimap for Schools users will surely have noticed a few changes to the homepage and interface this morning, this is because we have just added historic maps from the 1890s to the service.

This exciting new addition allows  you to view a map of your school, street or anywhere in Great Britain in the 1890s.

These beautiful Ordnance Survey maps published between 1895 and 1899 as the Revised New Series in England and Wales and the 2nd Edition in Scotland, provide an additional rich learning resource and context for exploring how the landscape has changed in the last 120 years.

To view a historic map of your school, street or anywhere in Great Britain, use the new historic map slider (beside the pan arrows) to fade the current OS map and reveal the historic map underneath.

slider_blog

Drag the historic slider to reveal the 1890s maps.

The historic maps have been scanned from original paper maps and made available courtesy of the National Library of Scotland.

Learning resources with ideas for using these wonderful maps across all stages and  curriculum areas are in development and will be available soon.

LAST FEW PLACES: Science for Society: New Developments in Physical Geography – 24-29th July 2014

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FREE summer course for mid-career specialist secondary geography teachers

Based at the University of Southampton, this course provides an opportunity to gain hands-on experience with the latest technology for data collection and analysis, coupled with an insight into how geographical information is relied upon by industry business and government for visualisation, problem solving and decision making. Places will be filled as valid applications are received, so we recommend that you apply soon.

• 20 places available
• Based at the University of Southampton
• Field day in the New Forest
• Full day visit to Met Office, Exeter
• Full day visit to Ordnance Survey, Southampton
• Gala dinner with all Science for Society teachers at Goldsmith’s Hall, London
• All tuition, accommodation, food and travel during the course provided. (Delegates fund their own travel costs from home to Southampton).

To apply, visit the Goldsmith’s website:

www.thegoldsmiths.co.uk/charity-education/education/science-for-society-courses/

And download the Science for Society application form.

Mapping Robert Burns

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With tomorrow marking the anniversary of the birth of Scotland’s Bard, I thought I’d put together a quick wee map marking some of the key places from Burns’ life.

Based upon some of the places mentioned on the Visit Scotland website, I plotted and labelled some of the locations using Digimap for Schools.

There’s a wealth of information available online about all the different places Burns’ lived and visited, and places that appeared in or inspired his poems.

Other Burns related things that you could map include locations of streets and places named after Burns, or perhaps locations of Burns’ statues – there’s a lot of them around the country!  Remember you can upload photos, either your own or images found online, to your map in Digimap for Schools as well.

So get mapping, a great way to add another dimension to Burns related teaching resources.

Robert Burns map

 

Enhanced buffer tool, now it does lines too!

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This morning, we released a wee enhancement to Digimap for Schools to extend the functionality of the buffer tool.  You’ve been able to buffer points, creating circles of a fixed size, for a while now but users immediately wanted to be able to buffer lines as well.  We’ve now enhanced the buffer tool to include buffering of lines.  This enables you to enclose a digitised line with a polygon.  The buffered polygon is created by specifying a distance from the line to use.  The resulting buffer shows all areas within that distance from the line.

Buffering lines is very useful when investigating various subjects such as seeing which areas will be effected by the development of new road, plotting exclusion zones along rivers and ecological corridors or investigating areas that would be effected by a flooded river.

Go and have a play, it is easy to use and great fun!

Christmas is coming early, user guide posted to all subscribing schools.

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The Education team at Ordnance Survey have been working hard over the last few months to produce a comprehensive Digimap for Schools User Guide.  Over the next week, all subscribing schools will receive a printed copy of the new user guide.  This will give you detailed instructions on how to use Digimap for Schools.

You can access a digital version of the user guide online at: http://digimapforschools.edina.ac.uk/Resources/allstages/userguider.pdf

Also included with the user guide being posted out, is a Christmas quiz, which your pupils can try.  They will need to identify certain places throughout GB and find the grid references and counties where they are located.   It’s suitable for all ages.

Give the quiz a try and please let us know how you and your pupils get on!

Country outlines map now available

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You may have noticed that we have made a wee tweak to the GB level map view in Digimap for Schools, and have added simple country outlines for the countries of the UK. The idea of this change, is to provide a simple resource for younger pupils to learn, identify and then annotate on the map UK countries and their capital cities.

Pupils can create their own maps, adding annotations to label the countries and cities, to test their knowledge!

GB view level with country outlines

 

Creating river cross profiles with Digimap for Schools

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Perse Upper School geography department posted a great video on YouTube this week demonstrating how to use Digimap for Schools to create river cross section profiles.   A fun traditional mapping exercise, the advantage of using Digimap for Schools is that you can easily follow the length of a river to profile the different sections, and profile any river in the country due to having GB wide maps.

Using Digimap for Schools and Excel makes it much quicker and easier than the old way of using a paper map, pencil, ruler and graph paper!

Click here to view the embedded video.

 

 

 

New enhancements – now you can delete maps and preview prints

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New enhancements released!

This morning we released a new version of Digimap for Schools which includes a couple of great new features, this email highlights what is new, and where to find out more information and help.

Print Preview Extent – one feature that many teachers have requested is the ability to preview the area of a map to be printed, before hitting the print button.  Now you can with the Print Preview Extent function!  In the Print Options panel, you will find two new checkboxes.  Clicking on the Show Print Extent box, will display a shaded rectangle over the screen map to show the extent of the area that will be printed.  You can easily reposition the extent if you’re not quite happy with it.

Delete saved maps – Teachers and pupils love the ability to save maps but the list of saved maps for your school can grow very long.  To help manage the list, we’ve added the ability to delete maps, using the Map Manager tool.

Map Manager icon – open the Map Manager via the new icon on the tool bar.

In order to minimise the risk of saved maps being accidentally deleted, a PIN is required to access this tool.  Primary contacts will have received an email today with your school’s Map Manager PIN.  Please contact the EDINA Helpdesk at edina@ed.ac.uk if you have not received your PIN.

We love to hear your feedback, so please let us know what you think of these new enhancements.