1. 21st Century Fieldwork Nick Lapthorn
Head of Centre – Juniper Hall Field Centre

2. A new dawn? (or just the same old stuff)
GIS and NEW TECHNOLOGIES
Qualitative
Quantitative
Primary
Secondary
RESEARCH

3. 20th Century
Fieldwork?
STYLES
21st Century
Fieldwork?
LOCATIONS

4. Examples of types of new fieldwork
Studentification
Clone towns
Sustainable transport
Eco/carbon footprints
Use and miss-use of green spaces
Re-branding the 24hr city
Stakeholder views
Energy audits
Right to roam
Place checklists
Mobility pathways
Food miles
Activity patterns
Exciting new opportunities
Weather-watch
Exclusion by gender / age
Lifestyle analysis
Catchment management
Shoreline management
Impression maps
Sustainable communities
Ecological value
Think maps
Flood-risk determination
Roof hydrographs
Tourism profiles
Place profiles

5. How to make the most of the new changes?
Less need to measure in minute detail.
Holistic and topical studies.
Greater opportunity for ‘qualitative’ approaches.
Greater relevance of topics to everyday situations.

6. Becoming a geographical researcher
Find data
Select and Sort
Synthesise and Analyse
Record and Report

7. Books – including standard A’Level texts
Lots of choice

8. Articles – the ‘big 6’ Range of articles newspapers GeoFile online
Guardian & Independent
Range of articles
newspapers
GeoFactsheet
GeoNews Review
Geographical ‘dossier’
Geography Review

9. Remember to use their websites
Further Journals
Remember to use their websites

10. Getting additional help
Try the exam boards

11. The World Wide Web

12. Probably the best geography websites - CENSUS

13. Probably the best geography websites: Fieldwork - OTHERS
Google Books Search
Google Scholar

14. Blogs and forums (also newspapers / editorials)

15. ‘Miro’ – video search and saving software (freeware)

16. On the web…always consider
Who published the information
Organisation/Agency/Individual
Who wrote the information
Expert or interested individual?
The age of the material
Why the material exists
Academic research/Special interest groups

17. Web evaluation checklist?

18.   Library vs internet Library Internet
Has helpful staff to help you find things. Organised!
Provides free access to print and paper copies of items, e.g. journals
Archived information available
Doesn’t always have what you want
Not always up to date copies
Closes after hours
Cant always take out reference copies
Nearly all in written form
Internet
Open all hours
Provides access to global resources, e.g. newspaper from India
Complete multimedia experience
Updated information
Two way communication
No universal system of cataloguing and organising resources
Anyone can publish things
May have to pay for internet time
May have to pay for some resources

19. Exploring Ethnographic Opportunity
A picture tells a 1000 words?
All about participant observation: “people writing”

20. Ethnographic fieldwork
Oral Histories
Direct participant observation (movements and flows) – covert or overt?
Focus groups
Personal video (extended) interviews
Diary of an event, e.g. city food festival
Keep personal observations in a field note book / diary

21. Imagery Price Prediction: High – Med – Low
Actual Average Price (approx): £___________

22. Imagery Price Prediction: High – Med – Low
Actual Average Price (approx): £___________

23. Denotation-Connotation Annotation-Implication
Gold lettering in TNR, British Racing green
Sophisticated, high quality, traditional
The denotation of this example is a red rose with a green stem. The connotation is that it is a symbol of passion and love - this is what the rose represents.
What if all the shops in the street were like this? Who would(n’t) come?
Curved facade to allow more display space

24. Article in Geography Review: March 2007
What is GIS ?
“GIS has the ability to store, retrieve, manipulate and analyse a range of spatially related data”
The user can:
ask questions of data related to the map
search for patterns and distributions
investigate the underlying relationships between different sets of data
Article in Geography Review: March 2007
Definition of what GIS is – rememebr it means different things to different people.

25. Potential benefits of GIS
Spatial Understanding
Enquiry learning
Identifying relationships
Vocational element
Motivation

26. Continuums FREE EXPENSIVE EASY TO USE COMPLICATED BASIC SOPHISTICATED
Often web based
EASY TO USE
COMPLICATED
BASIC
SOPHISTICATED
Sometimes a ‘cut-down’ version

27. Progression in GIS DIGITAL MAPPING (eg. Anquet, Memory Map)
MAPPING LAYERS (eg Magic, Census, Google Earth)
INTEROGATIVE GIS
(eg Aegis, ArcInfo)

28. Rand of GIS software – on the spectrum

29. Google Local
Free, web-based GIS (very simple). Some limited interrogation of underlying data, i.e. location details of banks in Shrewsbury (can be asked).

30. More from Google Maps
Becoming more sophisticated, now 3D virtual ‘immersions’, but still not true GIS, i.e. cannot ‘see’ the database which underlies this.

31. Google maps - manipulation
Google maps can be manipulated to show fieldwork surveys – you have to be logged in to use this feature

32. Explore geo-tagged photos on a map - Flickr
Flickr.com to view geo-tagged photos, i.e. images that are spatially referenced. Can give you an idea about ‘place’ and ‘image’. Students can upload their own images; also way of enhancing pre-and post fieldwork value.

33. Panoramio
Another example of a geo-tagged viewed

36. Screen shot from Google Erath
Screen shot from Google Erath. Resolution is improving all the time for remote areas. Can manipulate through use of own overlays.

39. Environment Agency

40. High end – ARC GIS
Very powerful, but potentially complex to use. Paid-for, expensive site licence for a school. Training required to use product. Would be difficult to get students engaged in such a complex piece of software.

41. Other sources GA GTIP Page
GA GIS section

42. Other sources
RGS GIS Page
RGS GIS pages

43. Ordnance Survey
Other useful resources from the OS education team

44. GIS
WWW
Topic/Content
Research

45. A new dawn?