VideosMaesmarchog Community Primary School
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The Heritage Officer of the Dulais Valley Partnership secured a grant from the Communities First Trust Fund to run a Schools Heritage Trail Project. The project ran from September 2008 to March 2009 and involved working with all 4 Primary Schools in the Dulais Valley. The aim of the project was to create an appreciation of the full and varied heritage of the Dulais Valley.
The children from Years 5/6 of Creunant Primary School, Maesmarchog Community Primary School, Ysgol Gymraeg Blaendulais and Blaendulais Primary School used Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to way-mark sites of interest, before taking digital photographs and MP3 sound recordings, and finally using mapping software to produce 3D interactive heritage trails. The schools now have their own village heritage trails produced by the children, which will be available on their websites and on DVD.
The project ran for 4 weeks in each school with 1-hour sessions. The first session looked at heritage and the local area where the children discussed and choose sites of interest. They then plotted the sites onto a paper map and created a trail. The second session looked at the technology that we used including GPS, digital cameras, MP3 and mapping software. The children then plotted their trails onto the mapping software and uploaded into the GPS units. The third session was the actual fieldwork. The children were split into groups of 4 or 5 and worked together to create their trails. The final session back in the classroom is where we created the 3D interactive Heritage Trails as movie flyover images.
A launch party was held on 6 July 2009 at Seven Sisters Community Centre and gathered together children from the four local Primary Schools with a presentation of the Heritage Trails created by the children. The GPS units and other navigation goodies, including Memory Map software, a compass, OS Maps and aquapacs, were presented to each school attending the event.
The schools project provided an ideal opportunity to involve the younger members of our communities, and the way they have embraced the project shows that heritage really is for everybody. The children all enjoyed it, and they did a fantastic job in creating the trails, and in the process they learnt a whole lot more about the history of the valley.
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