http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Wish you were here?
Alan Parkinson
BTec Travel and Tourism
teaching resource
College
© Crown Copyright and Database Right 2014. Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence)
This is one of a series of teaching resources for use with Digimap for Colleges. For more details about
this service, visit http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Introduction
The BTec Level1/Level 2 First Diploma in Travel and Tourism, and the BTec Level 1 Diploma in
Introduction to the Travel and Tourism Industry both involve students in a great deal of research to
develop their general understanding of the industry, and in particular the tourist attractions of the
UK.
These materials are specifically designed to support the teaching of BTec First Travel and Tourism,
and in particular Unit 2: UK Travel and Tourism Destinations
The focus of this unit being on the UK offers plenty of scope for using Digimap for Colleges to map
the outcomes, and also make use of digital mapping, and the tools as part of the classwork and
coursework that is produced by students. Maps can also be used to reinforce the importance of
location when studying these places, which is a strong element of the specification here.
Ideas are provided for the first 6 lessons of the draft scheme of work provided to accompany the
specification. This will provide some inspiration for using Digimap for Colleges, which can be
adapted for the remaining lessons, and also for some of the other relevant units. There is a wealth of
Geography and opportunities evident within the specification and the suggested activities.
The table below identifies some of the opportunities for using Digimap for Colleges to teach
particular sections of the specification. The focus is on the first part of the module.
Lesson Unit Content
UK Tourism categories
1
Capital Cities
2
Seaside Resorts
3
Countryside areas such
as National Parks and
AONBs
4
Cultural and/or historic
Possible activities involving
Digimap
Call out UK destinations that have
been visited and categorise them.
Revise the location of the capital
cities of the UK countries.
Discuss seaside resorts that have
been visited by students – build up
a map to show these.
Explore the characteristics of
resorts and produce a ‘blueprint’
for the perfect seaside resort.
Discover current and historic piers
if historic maps are available.
Identify the National Parks and
how they are shown on an OS
map.
Research one National Park and
AONB, and produce a poster
highlighting their key features and
what they offer visitors, including
maps.
Learn locations of National Parks.
Explore what ‘culture’ means in
Notes
Include a short introduction to
Digimap for Colleges as part of
the course.
Investigate resorts on each of the
coasts of the UK
Research Seaside Awards and
criteria for their selection. Create
a map of beaches which could be
involved, and reasons for their
inclusion.
Could also explore the potential
for London as a National Park.
Consider the images that are
used for the NP logos and why
were they were chosen.
Use Flickr slideshow.
Explore key cultural locations on
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
destinations
5
UK gateway airports and
UK seaports
6
Road and air travel
this context.
Discuss the importance of
destinations to overseas visitors,
and why they are of interest. Plan
a coach tour and itinerary.
Define the term ‘gateway’ and
discuss airport ID codes. Mapping
airports and seaports.
Identify road and railway networks
on maps – symbols that are used.
Identify hubs.
Create railway maps for main
hubs.
Creating a cultural tour using the
train as method of transport.
the usual ‘circuit’ for overseas
visitors.
Could ask for maps of at least
three scales for this activity.
FlightRadar 24 can be used to
view flights in real time and
assess how busy particular
airports are.
This visualisation:
http://contrailz.com/11_9_b0bt_z3 provides a visual image for
London airports.
Could explore the disused
railways of the UK and how they
are now used – sometimes for
tourist purposes.
Pinterest images of historic
railway posters compared to
current marketing for tourist
purposes.
Preparation for teaching these lessons
Introduce students to the use of Digimap for Colleges, and download the User Guide from the
resources section of the website if appropriate.
Assemble supporting resources for the teaching of this series of lessons, which could include access
to images, hard copies of booklets and leaflets from a Tourist Information Centre, brochures, guide
books and internet access. Students and teachers could also be asked in advance to source postcards
and other supporting materials.
Digimap for Colleges Activities
Ideas are provided for the first 6 lessons of the draft scheme of work provided to accompany the
specification. This will provide some inspiration for using Digimap for Colleges, which can be
adapted for the remaining lessons, and also for some of the other relevant units.
Lesson 1
Students are expected to know about UK travel and tourism destinations and gateways. Identify
capital cities of UK countries e.g. London, Edinburgh, Belfast, Cardiff
As students call out places they have visited within the UK, a list should be collated by the teacher,
and these can be categorised into different groups, perhaps at the same time. Discussions on the
types of attraction that are being listed may happen before this takes place e.g. historic, scenic or
coastal. Use Digimap to ‘visit’ one or more of the capital cities in the UK, and compare them in terms
of their tourist attractions.
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Groups should then be asked to create a categorised map for a particular type of attraction, using
Digimap for Colleges, which can then be generated as a PDF map, and given an appropriate title.
These can used to prompt discussions on the distribution of particular types of attractions, and
whether there are patterns to this.
A display board of appropriate maps could also be produced for the classroom wall as the unit
progresses. The ongoing reinforcement of location will be particularly helpful for this unit, and this is
a strength of using Digimap for Colleges regularly.
Students are expected to know about attractions local to their particular location.
Discussion questions:


What local attractions are there ?
What do we mean by local? How far away from our current location could still be
classed as local? Where are the other TiCs in the area?
Use Digimap for Colleges to explore the local area. You could set a buffer of a particular length
around the school for this. Buffers are created using the icon from the Annotations tools menu. Here
is a buffer that has been created to identify a five mile distance from the popular resort of Salcombe
in Devon.
© Crown Copyright and Database Right 2014. Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence)
On Ordnance Survey maps, tourist related symbols are shown in blue, and a separate section of the
key is provided for these.
Students could use this key to produce an index of how ‘touristy’ the local area is compared to other
nearby towns and villages.
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
How is the local area described in the main tourist guides to the UK such as Lonely Planet and Rough
Guide?
Lesson 2
Students are expected to know about seaside resorts on the E, S and W coasts e.g. Weston-superMare, Brighton, Scarborough
Seaside resorts are the focus for the start of this lesson. Teachers could identify a number of seaside
resorts and create maps first. Students could then be asked to look for similarities between the
resorts that are suggested.
Use the Seaside Resorts presentation (PPT) to support this method of introducing the resorts.
Identify a number of other coastal resorts that students have visited within the UK, and ask similar
questions.
Use a series of maps of explore the nature of these resorts and add labels to show comments on
what people thought of some of the resorts that are being explored.
Seaside Awards are also mentioned in the specification
Students could be allocated a resort which has the Seaside Award, and use Digimap for Colleges and
annotation tools to identify evidence for particular tourist facilities which are expected of a resort
that has this particular accreditation.
The list of 2014 holders of the Seaside Award and Blue Flags are shown here:
http://www.keepbritaintidy.org/blueflagseasideawards2014/1362
One additional ‘fun’ activity could be to use the annotation tools to add any obvious clues as to the
identity of a seaside location to a map that is lacking its name, and ask students to identify them.
Blackpool has some fairly obvious features which won’t necessarily be obvious on the map.
Extension activity 1: Recipe for a Resort
Imagine putting together a ‘recipe’ for a seaside resort ?
What would the ingredients be, and how would they need to be combined to create the resort. How
would you ‘serve up’ the results of your recipe? Set this as a creative / literacy task.
e.g. Take one pier, and stretch it out over the sea.
Serve with lashings of rain on Bank Holiday Monday…
Use the Recipe for a Seaside Resort sheet (PDF) to plan your ideas
Extension activity 2: Peering at piers
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Piers used to be much more common than they are now. Many resorts had a pier as a promenade,
and to host additional entertainment, such as theatres and amusement arcades. Some have
succumbed to flames, most recently Eastbourne pier in August 2014.
Use Digimap for Colleges to identify those resorts that have piers, and print them off at the same
map scale to compare them. Which piers are the longest in the UK?
Here is a list of some resorts with piers: http://www.piers.org.uk/pierpages/NPS0regionssurv.html
See the Mystery Pier activity at the end of the document
Extension activity 3: “Answers on a postcard”
Using old seaside postcards or railway posters from UK resorts (these can easily be found online at
sites like Pinterest) try to match the locations to the map, and perhaps identify the locations where
the images in the postcard may have been taken. Here is an example image from Pinterest of
Brighton pier, for example:
http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/2d/22/23/2d22232a86401741a65fb6ba74cb9ab6.jpg
Small images of the postcards can be added to Digimap using the Annotations toolbar. It’s a good
idea to resize the images before adding them.
Details of how to add photos are provided in the Digimap user guide, but are summarised below:
Adding a photograph to Digimap for Colleges
Open the annotation tool bar and select the ‘add an image’ tool.
Click on the map where you want the picture to appear, a dialogue box will open:
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Browse to the selected file. Use the Move Feature option to position the image correctly if it
obscures some important detail. Select the four headed arrow and click on the photograph. You will
be able to move it around on the map. To relocate the pin, click on the pin and both the photograph
and the pin will move. De-select the arrow when you are happy with the new location.
Lesson 3
Students are expected to know the names of the National Parks of England and Wales, and National
Scenic areas in Scotland, along with researching at least one AONB
There are 15 National Parks in England and Wales, and 40 National Scenic Areas in Scotland.
Learning these will take some repetition and study, which Digimap for Colleges can assist with.
Identify the locations of the main National Parks on a larger map of the UK. How are these areas
marked on OS maps?
The boundary of the parks is always shown, although the symbol varies.
On 1: 50 000 maps, it is a yellow continuous stripe.
The edge of the Peak District near Sheffield is shown to the right, for example:
On 1: 25 000 maps, it is a dis-continuous pink stripe.
© Crown Copyright and Database Right 2014. Ordnance Survey (Digimap Licence)
Consider the definition of a National Park as shown below. The Environment Act 1995 revised the
original legislation and set out two statutory purposes for National Parks in England and Wales:
1. Conserve and enhance the natural beauty, wildlife and cultural heritage
2. Promote opportunities for the understanding and enjoyment of the special qualities of
National Parks by the Public
When National Parks carry out these purposes they also have the duty to:
3. Seek to foster the economic and social well being of local communities within the National Parks
Look for the following symbols, which connect with the idea of natural beauty, wildlife and cultural
heritage:
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
AONBs are more numerous, and are designated for similar reasons:
An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) is an area outside a National Park that is considered
by Natural England to be of such outstanding natural beauty that it should be designated for the
purpose of conserving and enhancing natural beauty.
Natural England is responsible for the designation of AONBs. Local authorities can propose an area
for consideration by Natural England as a potential AONB but it is Natural England who decide
whether to take it forward.
Students could explore their local area and put together a bid for it to become an AONB, and use the
annotation tools to identify supporting evidence.
The production of a poster could be one outcome from this lesson. Students could create a series of
map details to add to the poster. The poster should incorporate these maps, or be a map itself.
Students could be introduced to websites such as Big Huge Labs, or apps such as Over and Phoster.
Rights of Way
There are new rules for access to land in National Parks, and these could be explored with students.
Extension Activity: Honeypots
National Parks usually have particular villages, which attract lots of visitors, because of the presence
of a landscape or buildings of historical or cultural interest.
Use the mapping to explore honeypots and identify some common characteristics that they might
have:
e.g. Castleton in the Peak District, Lyndhurst in the New Forest, Wroxham in the Norfolk Broads
Lesson 4
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Students are expected to know a range of cultural and historical locations in the UK, and be able to
plan a coach tour for USA holiday-makers that connects them together
Cultural and historic destinations offer a range of attractions to visitors, particularly those from
overseas. The itinerary for Japanese, American or, increasingly Chinese visitors is a bit of a whistlestop tour, and can include some or all of the following places:
London – iconic places in the city
Stratford upon Avon – Shakespeare
Stonehenge
Edinburgh – castle, tattoo, fringe, whisky
Cambridge – university
York – historic buildings, Minster
Liverpool – The Beatles, Ferry across the Mersey
Dublin – irish genealogy
Students should be asked to imagine a group of American visitors, who are on a coach tour. Identify
and plan a route which they could take, using appropriate scales of mapping on Digimap. Remember
that there is road-atlas scale mapping available as well as the larger map scales.
The next UK City of Culture will be Hull, in 2017: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts25008856 - the previous one was Londonderry.
Why not explore Hull: a city that is not often mentioned, and identify the cultural potential.
Lesson 5
Students are expected to define the term ‘gateway’ airport and be familiar with the important UK
airports and seaports. ID codes for airports should be known.
Gateway airports are those which are used as the main entry points for international flights. You
could use: www.world-airport-codes.com to identify these, or take them from a Top 20 list by
passengers.
Which airports have student used in the past? Can they remember the codes on their luggage tags?
Airport runways are quite easy to spot from the air on mapping – can students explain the direction
that the runways are facing?
The buffer tool could be used to explore the potential impact of noise generated by an airport. The
buffer tool will work along a line.
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
The Contrailz tool: http://contrailz.com/11_9_b0bt_-z3 shows the routes taken from major London
airports, so students could identify areas affected.
A final gateway that might be worth mentioning is the Channel Tunnel. You could ask students to
locate the entrance to the tunnel and measure how far the train runs underground before it reaches
the English Channel, using the measuring tool.
Lesson 6
Students are expected to recognise main road and railway hubs, and the network that they serve,
and identify main railway stations.
Roads and railways are marked on all OS maps. The keys for 1: 25 000 and 1: 50 000 maps can be
obtained when viewing them. At lower zoom levels, ‘road atlas’ style mapping is provided in Digimap
for Colleges, which will be helpful for the activities in this lesson.
Access the relevant keys for maps to show how roads and railways are shown. Explore the location
of the main railway stations in towns and cities. Are they often located in similar areas?
e.g. 1: 50 000
Many railways in the UK were lost during the ‘Beeching’ cuts in the 1960s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeching_cuts
Some of these are now used for other purposes. Large scale mapping could be used to try to retrace
the route of a ‘lost’ railway line, and perhaps produce a plan to resurrect the line. There has been a
long running campaign to reinstate many local lines – there may be one near you.
Railway journeys have not always taken place in the same way and from the same stations as now.
Some of the current railway hubs are larger than they used to be. Use historical mapping to explore
the changing fortunes of stations like Crewe.
One interesting activity would be to look at the location of the major railway stations in London and
look at their location relative to the actual centre of the city, and the current ‘edge’ of the city.
The marketing of railways is another interesting area that could be explored. Pinterest could once
again be used to source vintage railway posters, such as the classic ‘Metroland’ posters, or those of
the London Underground. Link this to the suggested activity of planning a cultural and historical tour
using the railway as a form of transport.
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
References
It is worth accessing a range of tourist-related books as background reading for students, such as
Rough and Lonely Planet Guides to the UK.
Piers
Current: http://www.piers.org.uk/pierpages/NPS0regionssurv.html and lost (can you find them with
the Historic slider?): http://www.piers.org.uk/pierpages/NPS0regionslost.html
National Parks
The Greater London National Park* is an idea which has been developed recently by Daniel RavenEllison: http://www.greaterlondonnationalpark.org.uk/
Scottish National Scenic Areas (NSAs): http://www.snh.gov.uk/protecting-scotlandsnature/protected-areas/national-designations/nsa/
Pinterest
A Pinterest board of images for this resource has been created, and will be added to periodically:
http://www.pinterest.com/geoblogs/digimap-btec-travel-and-tourism/
Sign up to Pinterest to create your own ‘mood boards’.
Airports
Guardian datablog with details on the world’s largest airports
http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2012/may/04/world-top-100-airports
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Appendix: Mystery Pier Activity
Source: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2013/11/enter-our-piers-quiz/
http://digimapforcolleges.edina.ac.uk
Answers
1. Clacton-on-Sea
2. Brighton
3. Llandudno
4. Ryde
5. Cromer
6. Blackpool (North Pier)
7. Bangor
8. Mumbles
Shared on the Ordnance Survey Blog: http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/blog/2013/11/enter-ourpiers-quiz/
©EDINA at the University of Edinburgh 2014
This work is licensed under a Create Commons Attribution-Non Commercial Licence