Mapping out the North

GEOGRAPHICAL information systems are among the most diabolically complex areas of computer imaging - yet the schools system in Northern Ireland has decided to put it into the hands of children.

In a unique collaborative effort, the Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland (OSNI) has worked with the Northern Educational Library Boards and their teacher advisory groups to produce an educational CD Rom set that teaches students about geographical information systems (GIS) and also gives them hands on experience with Arc View, a leading commercial GIS package.

The Northern Irish curriculum requires that GIS be taught in schools, where it makes an appearance during lessons on geography. However, even teachers find the subject baffling, especially as it requires a certain ease with computers.

"Most teachers feel very inadequate in talking about GIS. I think you'll find teachers going to this CD Rom first," says Jennifer Mussen, deputy head of a Northern Irish high school and chair of the geography panel for the library boards. "This is the ideal medium for showing people what GIS is."

The user friendly CD Rom was about two years in the making, from the point when the idea was initially mooted, to the final stages of test driving it with groups of teenage visitors to the Belfast Ordnance Survey offices.

The result is a CD Rom in two parts, full of information with hypertext links and plenty of interactivity, but with a minimum of distracting music or animation.

The first part teaches the basic concepts and terminology of GIS and explains maps, their origins, and mapmaking. As the CD is aimed at students from age 11 through to upper A Level, information is of varying complexity.

One segment offers a simply animated adventure of cartoon characters trying to get from A to B using a map of the Belfast region. At a more complex level the CD contains the full text of the book Map Making In Ireland, jointly published by OSNI and their southern counterparts, the Ordnance Survey of Ireland.

The various sections on maps convert abstractions into reality. For example, to learn about grid referencing and odd terms like "northings" and "castings" (not exactly your average 16 year old's street vocabulary), users get a grid map of Belfast and figure out how to use such reference points themselves.

In a segment on map makers' symbols, users can click on both rural and urban symbols on a map of the North and up comes a picture of the real thing being represented a bridge over the Bann in Coleraine or a church or roadside car park. Such lessons are followed by question and answer quizzes for revision.

"It's a teacher's tool as well," says Andrew McClenaghan of OSNI, part of the four member design team. (Other members were Brian Galloway, Kevin Donnan and Catherine McIlvine.) A special "teacher's notes" word processing section allows teachers to tailor lessons to their classes: "They can set up different work sheets," he says. There's also a calculator built in - to do population density calculations, for example.

The second part of the CDRom will undoubtedly entrance students. "We're letting them into a fully functioning GIS," says McClenaghan. Using this section, students can complete projects required by the 1990 curriculum. It has the GIS Arc View 1.0, and two Arc View applications which fully conform to A Level projects on "settlement" and "Ward Level Census".

However, users can first test the GIS waters by running a ScreenCam automated introduction to the features of ArcView. Watching it run, Mussen says with satisfaction: "This is what you cannot create using looseleaf paper.

The real innovation, from the curricular point of view, is that students can use local information Mom Northern Ireland, contained in files of information from the 1995 census.

"Before, students would know all about Birmingham, or know all about ethnic diversity in Coventry, but here they have their home information," says Mussen. "It's the first Irish based resource notes McClenaghan.

The CD Rom also makes ward census information more accessible. "Previously a teacher would have had to order a disk from the census at £5 per small area, and that runs away with your resources, says Mussen. Alternatively, students had to go to the regional town hall and copy out the required information by hand.

OSNI has already had enquiries from businesses interested in acquiring this easy introduction to GIS. "We're very keen to market this beyond schools, as an educational resource in general," says McClenaghan.

"We're ahead of the field," adds Mussen. "There isn't anything like it across the water."