Win a Steve Backshall school visit with #wildlifemap competition

The new #wildlife competition is open to any school in Great Britain with primary-aged children. To enter, schools will need to use Digimap for Schools to create a map annotated with photos and text showing signs of wildlife around their school.

Elaine Owen, OS Schools Sector Manager, said: “We are confident that the competition will appeal to schools and we are looking forward to seeing some amazing wildlife maps. It is the ideal time of year to start exploring the outdoors and through Digimap for Schools children can quickly and easily record their findings. Our experience is that pupils find Digimap for Schools easy to use so I can’t wait to see all the competition entries.”

Schools are being asked to submit their maps to Ordnance Survey. The maps will be judged by an expert panel with the lucky winning school bagging a visit from Steve Backshall, wildlife presenter, naturalist and all-around adventurer.

“Wildlife is all about us, in city, town and countryside”, said Peter Burnhill, Director of EDINA at the University of Edinburgh. “And this competition is a great opportunity to use Digimap for Schools to put your school on an Ordnance Survey map in the way you would wish it to be seen.”

If your school isn’t a current subscriber to Digimap for Schools, you won’t miss out, you can register for 30 days free access to the service. Digimap for Schools allows full access to Ordnance Survey mapping of all scales including detailed large scale maps, plus the historical maps from 1890s and 1950s. During the free trial schools can make as many maps as they like, making it an ideal time to tackle some map skills work in geography or to explore old maps of the school area for history. All schools have to do is register at the Digimap for Schools Wildlife Competition site.

The closing date for the competition is 10 June 2016.

While the grand prize is Steve Backshall visiting the winning school to speak at assembly and taking the winning class on a wildlife walk, there are other prizes up for grabs too. For each week of the competition, two schools who have tweeted the most interesting individual photo with the hashtag #wildlifemap will be sent a bonus prize of a book signed by Steve Backshall. Start sharing your pupils’ efforts now for the chance to win.