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Maps In The New Program


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This weekend I am going to teach my Webelos 1's and 2's how to read topo maps, understand utm coordinates to find positions on maps, and then use that to do some geocaching.

 

I was wondering if these skills will translate to anything in the new program?  I know it will be fun for the boys.  Geocaching without gps units is a great skill imho. 

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Reading ANY map is a great skill nowadays. Get a paper map and look how it connects to other maps.

 

When I taught Map and compass at CSDC, I would hang up the following and make the connection for them: a two dimensional

representation of a three dimensional reality....

A National Geographic "Map of the Universe", here's our "Local Group", (to next map) LIGHT YEARS!! vs KILOMETERS!! vs METERS?FEET!! here's our Galaxy, the "Milky Way", here's our star the SUN with it's little orbiting planets, (to next map) here's our Solar System, planets, comets,

asteroids, etc....

(next is a globe) this is a three dimensional representation of our three dimensional world. Hard to

tuck into a pocket, so we invented a "projection": (next map, a Mollweide projection vs a Mercator projection. What's the

difference?), unwrap the surface of the Earth and make it flat. (next map) Political or physical? Boundaries or mountains? (next map) Here's the USA. Lots of states. Change of SCALE! READ THE KEY! SYMBOLS! (change map) Here's Maryland. (change map) New closer ?bigger? scale, here's our County. (new map here we are at our town area... and (new map) Here we are at our Campsite! I hand out the campsite map (copy of NGS topo) and we do a compass course and pace out lines . They get to keep the compass (50cents from Oriental Trading) and topo copy.

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One of our parents works for USGS so I got full size plotted topo maps at 1:24,000 scale.  I have most of the other things on your list to help explain how everything relates to the real world.  I have the UTM coordinates for several locations on the campsite so I will go through the firering UTM coordinate so we understand how to find it.  Then I will have them use the map to create a coordinate and we will use a phone GPS to walk there and see how close we get.  

 

Finally, I will hand them utm coordinates and let them figure out where they need to go.  at each location will be a prize of some kind.  

 

I am hoping for the best :-)

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Personally I find that the ability to understand geographic features from a topographic map is one of the most valuable map reading skills. Takes some practice though. 

 

 

The key to staying oriented on a hike is to be constantly checking every map feature against the features you observe in the world.  I almost always know within a hundred feet or so of my location on a map.  It's fairly rare that I need to pull out a compass,  since a topo map usually has so many visual features that can be used to identify your location.

 

It's trickier when I'm out boating,  especially in fog.  That's when compass and piloting skills really count!

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Personally I find that the ability to understand geographic features from a topographic map is one of the most valuable map reading skills. Takes some practice though. 

 

 

The key to staying oriented on a hike is to be constantly checking every map feature against the features you observe in the world.  I almost always know within a hundred feet or so of my location on a map.  It's fairly rare that I need to pull out a compass,  since a topo map usually has so many visual features that can be used to identify your location.

 

It's trickier when I'm out boating,  especially in fog.  That's when compass and piloting skills really count!

Or you are in Texas and the topology is fairly flat :-)

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One excersize that I enjoy doing is marking an unsuspecting volunteer's fist with contour lines.

 

The Map and Compass belt loop and pin: still part of the program?

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One excersize that I enjoy doing is marking an unsuspecting volunteer's fist with contour lines.

 

The Map and Compass belt loop and pin: still part of the program?

Love that idea :-)

 

no, the loops and pins went away.

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Love that idea :-)

 

no, the loops and pins went away.

 

Well, although the pins and loops gone (in spite of all indications to the contrary on scouting.org), hopefully the content will turn up in one of the sylllabi ... maybe under STEM?

 

Another effective (albiet time-consuming) demonstration, is to trace the topography of your campground onto poster board: one contour at a time, cut out the pieces, and stack them! Then you have your 3-D jigsaw puzzle! There are tricks to containing the cost of this excersize (e.g., one board for even contours -- like the concentric contors defined by 200' and 400' lines, the other for odd ones -- contours defining 300' and 500'), but you wind up working with flimzy pieces. For this age, it's best to just use 5-10 evenly spaced contours for a given area.  It'll consume about three pieces of board for roughly the same area.

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Get a local surveyor to come out with his optical transit/ theodolite and rod and let the Scouts watch the ground vary in

altitude as they walk the rod around....

 

Surveying Merit Badge!

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I once made a topographic map as part of a surveying class. Pretty neat.

 

 

We took the vertical angle and azimuth (X,Y and Z) and distance of various points we wanted to map.

 

From that information,  we could identify the X and Y coordinates and the elevation of those points.

 

From that you could make a straight line estimate of the elevation of any intermediate point,  and plot the topographic lines.

 

It's amazing how much information you could infer from a limited number of points, and by and large they were reasonably accurate for a lot of purposes.

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I once made a topographic map as part of a surveying class. Pretty neat.

 

 

We took the vertical angle and azimuth (X,Y and Z) and distance of various points we wanted to map.

 

From that information,  we could identify the X and Y coordinates and the elevation of those points.

 

From that you could make a straight line estimate of the elevation of any intermediate point,  and plot the topographic lines.

 

It's amazing how much information you could infer from a limited number of points, and by and large they were reasonably accurate for a lot of purposes.

 

Might not work for the Webs (never tried). But a couple years ago for my older scouts I gave them a "reverse orienteering course" where they identified all of the new features that weren't there when the map was made, then used triangulation with their compasses to place them on the map.

 

With a very current map, you could go place controls the night before, and the boys will have to find them and put their location on their copy of the map. As soon as they find five they return to camp. Their map gets scored by the error (i.e. total distance of their marks from true).

 

You could make it challenging by clocking their time searching and adding it to their error. Hide lots of controls and let them go out on multiple forays. Insane, but in a fun sort of way.

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For cubs and even younger Boy Scouts, I've found that a hand-drawn map of their immediate surroundings is very helpful. Being able to say, "here's the picnic table we're sitting at, there's the fire ring, here's your tent and here's my tent," makes it real -- the kids see the relationship between the map and the physical geography. Next step is to show them what it is to orient a map. You say, "we're at the picnic tables and the fire ring is off to the left" but the fire ring is to the right. You then show them how to orient the map so now the fire right to the right both in reality and on the map.

 

Little light bulbs go off all over the place.

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Well we did it and the Webelos really liked it.  The coolest part was that I had them find a location on the map and create the UTM coordinate for it.  We used handyGPS app on the phones and we walked there.  Of course we went through the brush and trees and ended up finiding out spot on the road.  They asked why didn't we just take the road :-)  I asked them that same question back.  They had a map.  Even though we talked about using the ma\p for terrain and roads they didn't get it until we actually searched for a place.

 

After that I had them use the phones(gps's) to find caches I setup around camp.  That was a hit.

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