This is a post about work Ive recently completed for BSG. (Bournemouth School for Girls) By request the P.E Staff reached me to update a subject they have been teaching for some time using old resourses, and wanted to refresh. Fortuitously they asked me at a time when I’m also working with the local providers of a fantastic APP for Orienteering that we have been trialling in Alexandra Park Poole. ATech media make the software and website to power a set of Permanent course plaques that have been installed at BSG. This will be the first Dorset School to really bring Orienteering up to date using the following methods.
Firstly I made a new map using the OCAD software, which is specific to the colours and symbol sets used for Orienteering, (see below) I then surveyed for a set of control points that Students can navigate between giving a total run distance of about 1.75 miles. After obtaining permissions I installed a set of Oriento plaques with the help of the Site Manager. Using a smartphone or a school tablet with the Oriento App they can scan the QR codes shown here on courses selected by the P.E Staff. The simplest method is to just offer a Score activity, where they have to visit all 20 controls in the fastest possible time.
This is a great fun way whereby the variations are endless, route choice, avoiding dead ends and repeat running are all part of scoring well. Teachers will keep the Start/ Finish plaques so they can start the competition from as many different places as they want, and there will be a leaderboard where all runs recorded will appear- so as to provide the racing standards future students can aspire to.
Heres a set of the plaques. The bottom picture shows the size in comparison with a credit card. 
A map excerpt, Permission has to be sought of course for use this is private property. Ive just included these to show the type of mapping you can expect from me. So exciting times looking forward to testing this and seeing the leaderboards grow as students at the school use it and enjoy the maprunning around whole schools site. Do you have a site this might work on? Do get in touch if I can help.
