Exploring the Coast by Hand Seeing Where Pupils Have Visited

KS2 Investigating Coasts with Eye2eye Britain

Among the places shown by Eye2eye Britain’s 11,500 mapped-out panoramas and photos is a unique coverage of mainland Britain’s coast – the entire coast photographed at places around 10 miles apart or closer. This coverage is useful for nearly all the classroom (non field-study) sections of this study unit. Sections of the coast can be toured automatically or explored by hand, specific coastal processes and features found and viewed, and images and map sections copied into schoolwork for projects such as the study unit’s newspaper report and holiday brochure activities. At KS2 pupils can manage all these activities working in groups or individually, but some – especially the introductory touring and exploring of a section of coast – are very effective for whole class teaching on a whiteboard.

Exploring the coast by hand – seeing where pupils have visited

1) If this is the first time you’ve used Eye2eye Britain for a project, get to know its main controls and what they can do for you. When Eye2eye Britain starts and its music has finished, if a Help window isn’t already showing, press F1 to show it. Text in this window (which can be printed if wanted) should help you get going. Teachers: you may want to help pupils get started.

2) To see anywhere in Britain, leave the control screen’s Go To tabbed page showing and click on the map to the right in the area you’re interested in. This moves you to the more detailed explore screen map. Double-click on any of the dots on the map – beside the coast or inland – to see views there.

3) Ask pupils the names of places they have visited by the coast. To see a place starting from its name, in the control screen click the Go To tab to display the Go To page. Click on the text box below Or enter a placename and Go then type the name of a chosen town or city, then click the Go button. As in step 2) above this moves you to the more detailed explore screen map, but this time also flashes the dot of the place you have chosen – near the centre of the part of the map shown. Press the space bar to see views of your chosen place.

4) To explore just coastal sites, in the control screen click the Tour tab, then the Coast panel among those that appear (on the left, near the top). Yellow dots now twinkle on the map of Britain to the right wherever there’s a photo found by your selection. Click on the map near the coast to move into the exploring map - which now highlights all your found panoramas and photos by leaving active red and yellow dots where they are, switching all others off and browning them out.

This activity (and the automatic tour below) helps to achieve the following learning objective from this study unit:

Identify coastal areas on a map.

How to take an automatic round-coast tour

1)Choose the part of Britain’s coast you want to tour. A clockwise trip right round mainland Britain takes about 6 hours at standard speed, so is too long for one lesson! You can click to choose to start the trip anywhere – eg to tour round East Anglia in one lesson, Wales another.

2)Click the control screen’s Slideshow tab, then on the page displayed click the Round-Coast Trip panel. Set options such as whether to display captions below images (recommended) and speed in the Options box below. Click on the map to the right to start the show at your chosen point.

3)If you want to stop the round-coast tour to discuss something of interest, click the ‘video stop’ button to the bottom right of the photos. Press space to view the photos at the place you have stopped. To restart the tour, click the Eye2eye logo button to the bottom left of the screen to return to the control screen, then click the map to restart the tour at that point.

How to see examples of the erosion and deposition processes

1)Both of these processes are best seen by a two-stage search. On the control screen, first click the Tour tab, then the Coast panel among those that appear (on the left, near the top).

2)Still on the control screen, click the Search tab to show the page where you find images by searching their captions for keywords. Click New search, then into the top two text boxes type erosionORcrumbl to see erosion (note the ‘e’ is missed from crumble to match both crumble and crumbling). Tick the Only search in last found set box – which restricts your search to the coastal set you found in step 1) - then click the Search button to do the search. To find examples of deposition, use the words creekORquicksand for this step.

3)Yellow dots now twinkle on the map of Britain to the right wherever there’s an image in your found set. Click on the map to move into the exploring map - which now highlights all your found places by leaving active red or yellow dots where they are, switching all others off and browning them out.

4)Double-click on any active red (where there are panoramas) or yellow dot on the explore map to see views there. Single-click on each image to see the next, then return to the map.

How to see examples of coastal features

A two stage search similar to that for seeing processes above finds examples of many coastal features. This works well when at step 2) below you search for:

stack – to see sea stacks

sand – to see sandy beaches

shingl ORpebbl – to see pebble beaches (note ‘e’ deliberately missed off both words)

cliff – to see cliffs

cave – to see caves

arch - to see sea arches

1)All of these features are best seen by a two-stage search. On the control screen, first click the Tour tab, then the Coast panel among those that appear (on the left, near the top). Don’t forget to do this for each search.

2)Still on the control screen, click the Search tab to show the page where you find photos by searching their captions for keywords. Click New search, then into the top left box type your keyword such as stack. Tick the Only search in last found set box – which restricts your search to the coastal set you found in step 1) - then click the Search button to do the search.

4)Double-click on any active red (where there are panoramas) or yellow dot on the explore map to see views there. Single-click on each photo to see the next, then return to the map.

5)To copy an image to your work, right-click on the photo/panorama you want, select Copy Image / Copy View of Panorama, then use the same menu again to minimise Eye2eye Britain so you can see the application you want to paste the photo into. Click Eye2eye Britain’s Taskbar icon to return to Eye2eye Britain. Copying a map section is the same – scroll the exploring map to display the part you want, right-click on it and select Copy Map.

Two other features the study unit suggests looking for – bays and headlands – can be found in the above way, but are also obvious from the map – you can simply explore the coast by hand, clicking on bays and headlands for views.

Use this activity to achieve the following learning objective from this study unit:

Identify coastal features using maps, atlases and photographs.
Have some understanding of headland features and stages of erosion.

Written projects – Topical human activity & erosion, Holiday brochure

The study unit suggests both these topics for pupils to write about. Both can be helped by using Eye2eye Britain as a source of photos and maps to copy into schoolwork – following the steps 1) to 5) above to locate and copy images as wanted.

A good example of a topical coastal erosion problem to write about is just to the West of Eastbourne. To see it in Eye2eye Britain, double-click on Eastbourne’s dot and click until you see the relevant panorama standing below the cliff. This is located just next to Eastbourne at a tiny place called Birling Gap. To find out more, use a search engine on the internet to search for Birling Gap in the UK only. Lots of material about the fierce debate comes up!

Use these activities to achieve the following learning objective from this study unit:

Understand the impact humans may have on the coastal environment.
Use maps and secondary sources to research and describe an area of coast suitable for a particular type of holiday.

Other Projects with Eye2eye Britain

Eye2eye Britain is a versatile resource for many parts of the curriculum, for use by a wide range of age and ability (users of 6 years and up of average ability can use the software themselves, all ages benefit from whiteboard use). The ‘recipes’ above for investigating the coast are some of a huge number of possible ways of selecting and using its material. For more suggestions, see the other Eye2eye Britain projects on our website , and also the teaching notes that are included in the Eye2eye Britain paperwork. Having seen some of these suggestions, we hope you will start to invent your own ‘recipes’ for more projects.

Schools with valid current school site licences for Eye2eye Britain (“Licensed Schools”) may distribute this document freely on paper or electronically (eg in their VLE or portal) to their staff and pupils (“Authorised Users”), provided they always distribute it complete with this copyright message.