Using Digimap for Schools to get your school started with Walk a Mile
Elaine Wylie, Head Teacher at St Ninian’s Primary School in Stirling, was awarded Teacher of the Year
at the Pride of Britain Awards 2015 for initiating a simple yet effective approach to tackling poor fitness
amongst children at her school – making her pupils run a mile every day. For years now all pupils at St
Ninians primary have walked or run a mile each day. Despite the rise in childhood obesity across the
UK, none of the children at the school are overweight. The daily mile has done so much to improve the
children’s fitness, behaviour and concentration in lessons that primary schools and nurseries are taking
up the initiative across Britain. Your school can too!
Want to introduce the Walk a Mile initiative to your school?
Don’t know what’s within a mile of your school?
Ideally want to follow a circular route without crossing too many busy roads?
Let Digimap for Schools do the work for you! Use Digimap for Schools to help identify several possible
routes before heading out on a recce! Or of course simply measure the perimeter of your playground
or playing fields and make a fun maths exercise with your pupils working out how many times round the
perimeter make a mile!
Step 1.
Enter your school postcode
Step 7.
If you still can’t see the full extent of your circle, pan
around the map using the pan arrows
Step 8.
Now you have a feel for what is half a mile from your
school you can start plotting a few sample routes to
Step 2.
and from school to make your mile!
Select the buffer tool from the annotations tool bar
Step 9.
Select the free hand line tool, click where you’d like to
start and drag along your route. Once back at your
Step 3.
destination unclick to finish
Enter a radius of 0.5 miles
Step 10.
Use the Add Measure Label tool to check the length
of your plotted route. Click once anywhere on your
line and remember to select Miles!
Step 4.
Click on the centre of your school
Step 5.
Revealed are the paths/roads/parks/shops that fall
within half a mile of your school
Step 6.
Step 11.
Repeat the above to create alternative routes. (To
change the colour of your plotted route, select the
If you can’t see the full extent of your circle, click on
Outline colour palette and chose a different colour
the maximize your map window button
before you start plotting)
digimapforschools.edina.ac.uk
Step 12.
Use the Text Label or Text Box tool to add labels to
your routes
Step 13.
Maybe add a few markers around the route to identify
key points of interest using the Add Marker tool
Step 14.
Now create your map (remember if you’ve used the
Want to inform your pupils’
parents about the routes you’ll be
following to Walk a Mile? There
are many ways to do this:
- Create a pdf and email the map
- Print out the map and send home with your pupils
- Insert a jpg of the map into your weekly/monthly newsletter
- Add a jpg of the map to your school web site
Make Map Bigger button you’ll need to click it once
more to Make Map Smaller and reveal the Print
options):
choose paper size and orientation
-
give your map a title
-
add your name
-
choose pdf or jpg for output type
Before you go ahead and Make Printable Map it’s
worth checking that all the information you want will
appear on the map output. To do this tick Show Print
Extent to review the extent of your map. Unlock this
extent to enable you to reposition the centre of the
map.
Photo © Sandy Buchanan
Step 15.
-
Want to ask your pupils to annotate their walk? Why
not Save a Map showing the route they’ve taken then
ask your pupils to Open the Saved Map and use the
annotation tools to annotate it with their experiences
of the walk e.g add text saying e.g. their favourite part
of the walk, the steepest slope, even upload a photo if
you’ve taken a few photos on the way. Here’s the sort
of map you could produce for your colleagues to start
the discussion of selecting a suitable route:
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