Comments (0)

By viv, 16 November, 2011 8:30 am

We are really excited and pleased to be supporting National Geographic Education this Geography Awareness Week with our GeoVation, Mission:Explore. We’ve worked closely with them to create a series of missions that challenge children to go on adventures in their communities, explore their backyards and take action on issues that they care about. Young explorers can unlock points and collect online badges for the efforts. All the details of how you can take can be found on their website at www.geographyawarenessweek.org and the resources will be useful well beyond this week.

As part of this work I’ve been getting email alerts when newspapers, blogs and other media channels mention Geography Awareness Week. It’s exciting to see so many reports that focus on our creative and experiential approach to exploring local communities, but far too many have included and resorted back to the pub quiz style ‘name the capital’ quizzes that mask the opportunities of geography.

I personally find it infuriating that travel has become divorced from geography in the minds of so many people. Travel is usually a gulf away from geography section in book shops (if there is one). This is despite travel being arguably the biggest possible opportunity for the geography community to engage the wider public with the subject in an entertaining and enjoyable way. Exploration and travel are one of the physical manifestations of geographical enquiry and it’s time we reclaimed them. I believe making the explicit link between travel and geography will help to bring new life to geography, demonstrate that it is not just about factual knowledge building and reshape the way the public understands the subject.

The question is, how?

Daniel Raven-Ellison, Mission:Explore

Comments (0)

By viv, 22 September, 2011 8:00 am

Did you know that today is World Carfree day and an opportunity to leave the car at home and walk, take a bus, train or cycle? All this can help to highlight congestion on our roads, pollution from exhaust fumes and the threat of dangerous climate change caused by cars.

Some of the winners of our‘How can we improve transport in Britain?’ GeoVation Challenge have some great ideas and tools for alternative ways to travel.

If you’re cycling,  Cyclestreets have a great journey planner.  Their website and mobile apps use OS Street View® map data from the OS OpenData™ datasets as well as  OpenStreetMap options for route planning.

Public interest in the London Cycle Map Campaign is growing with nearly 1500 signatures but they need 100,000 signatures in order for a petition to be debated in the House of Commons. So if you think Simon Parker’s London ‘Tube Map’ for cyclist is  a great idea  – sign the petition now!

Mission:Explore are working closely with Sustrans and Arla to create challenges and activities called ‘missions’ along parts of the cycle network to encourage families and new users to get out and cycle on the National Cycle Network

If you have problems travelling on public transport, why not report it on FixMyTransport a site for public transport users to report problems and get them fixed!

AccessAdvisr, another of our winners are busy building their proof of concept for a new website and smartphone app that intends to improve the quality and richness of information about accessible transport networks.

And if you really need to take the car, have you heard about liftshare week (3^rd – 7^th October 2011)?  liftshare Week is the UK-wide event which aims to encourage more people to discover the benefits of car-sharing.

What maps or apps do you use to help you to leave the car at home and plan your cycle, walk or journey by public transport?

Comments (0)

By viv, 19 August, 2011 8:00 am

Mission:Explore, one of our GeoVation Challenge winners, have been busy planning missions to encourage children and families to use the National Cycle Network and lots of other exciting stuff too.  Below, Daniel from Mission:Explore tells us more about it.

Things are moving along quickly here at Mission:Explore and we are very excited about the coming year. Winning the support of GeoVation, Ideas in Transit and the University of West England means a brand new Mission:Explore website with lots of beautiful and new functionality.

We won GeoVation funding to improve transport in Britain and specifically the National Cycle Network. Working closely with Sustrans and Arla we are creating challenges and activities that we call ‘missions’ along parts of the cycle network. When people discover these missions (online or through stickers in the landscape) they will be able to win points and earn badges. We will be experimenting to see how this kind of ‘gamification’ can create new uses and users of this important piece of infrastructure. We are very pleased to have Charles Musselwhite, a social psychologist from the University of West England, researching our work and helping us to make this project a success.

Unlike the current Mission:Explore, on the new platform users will have accounts, explorer blogs, leader boards and many other enhanced features.
Mission:Explore will be relaunched as www.MissionExplore.Net this September. We are delighted that National Geographic Education are using the platform to encourage another kind of behaviour change. The US based organisation are using MissionExplore.Net as their central campaigning tool for Geography Awareness Week . The site will be launching with 20 missions (take a look here ) which encourage children, teachers and families to explore their local communities and earn online Mapping, Storytelling, Photography and Take Action! badges. Taking place in November Geography Awareness Week aims to draw attention to the importance of ’geo-literacy, ensuring that people make well reasoned decisions about our nation’s economic competitiveness, national security, environmental sustainability, and the livability of our communities in the 21st century’. We are recently back from the National Conference for Geographic Education in Portland (Oregon) where we trained Geography Awareness Week coordinators in making the best use of Mission:Explore.

Moving forward we will be announcing a new pricing plan in which third sector organisations can create and manage their own ‘channel’ and missions on MissionExplore.Net from just £25 for 1 mission. They can also purchase a ‘white label’ version of the platform for their own use. Any charity or public sector organisation that places an order before the launch of MissionExplore.Net in September will enjoy a 15% discount on any selected plan.

For further details contact Daniel at daniel@thegeographycollective.co.uk.

Comments (0)

By viv, 1 December, 2010 8:53 am

Last year’s GeoVation Challenge Award winners, Mission:Explore, are offering mapping organisations the chance to create bespoke sponsored activities – find out more below.

We are offering 3 mapping organisations the opportunity to create bespoke sponsored activities on our Mission:Explore website and iPhone app for free. The winners will be able to locate their challenge in multiple locations across the UK.

Mission:Explore currently includes over 1,000 missions. There are location specific missions like ‘Share tee with the Queen‘ and anywhere missions like ‘Flash dance!‘ which is sponsored by National Geographic Education as part of Geography Awareness Week.

Missions can be located anywhere in the world and appear as sponsored by our parnters. Each mission usually costs £99 a year (much less on an ‘unlimited’ plan) and includes a bespoke activity, your logo, a link, some words about who you are and a waterproof sticker.

Above is an example from Ed Stafford and here is one from The Workshop in central London.

To win:

1. Chose a single type of place (park, square, footpath, trig-point etc.) where your mission(s) will appear. You need to know where these places are.
2. How many of these types of places would you like to locate the missions?
3. Suggest between 1 and 5 missions that you would like to appear in this type of place. Keep these to 200 characters or less.

2. Email your idea to hello@missionexplore.co.uk before 10 December 2010. We will then choose up to 3 winners based on how good the missions are, where they would be located and how capable they are of locating them.

The winning organisations will have their missions on www.missionexplore.co.uk and the iPhone app for at least 1 year.

That’s it. Any mapping/G.I.S. expert or organisation can enter. We will be looking for mission ideas that fit in with how we do things, other than that you can suggest what you like and enter as many times as you like. Our decision is final and we reserve the right to do anything we want. Good luck!