Wayfinders from the future

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found here.  Don’t forget to make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• This activity is best delivered after your group have learned about reading different kinds of maps and tried route planning.
• Speak to any keen navigators in your group the week before, and see if they’d be willing to help lead this activity by talking about their preferred method of navigation in this session. It may help them to bring in a device that they’d use for this form of navigation. Remind them that they’re responsible for personal property, and they should handle the devices with care, especially if it’s delicate and expensive.
• The people leading the activity should familiarise themselves with current navigation methods used in hillwalking. This should take into account the use of both digital and printed maps. The Ordnance Survey blog is a great place to find out more about the development of this topic over the past 10 years.
• If doing research, the people leading the activity should look at the practical applications of navigation equipment. It’d be helpful if they could demonstrate some basic route planning on an OS map and some kind of digital mapping or GPS technology. OS Locate is one such tool that could be helpful. It’s a free smartphone app that gives your grid reference and elevation.
• The Mapping your adventure activity would be a good warm up activity for this session, as it looks at basic route planning techniques using OS maps and compasses.
• You could look at some historical navigation methods in preparation for this session. After all, history teaches us what might happen in the future. How about mentioning the common belief that Vikings used crystals, known as ‘sunstones’, to help them find the sun in cloudy weather and to navigate the seas?

Run the activity

1. Have everyone sit in a circle or close together. The people leading the activity, including the navigation experts in the group, should take turns introducing the different methods of navigation. They could use both printed maps and digital maps/devices.
2. Allow the equipment to be carefully examined by everyone in the group, and allow people to ask questions about each method and how the different devices work.
3. Everyone should discuss the pros and cons of each method and device, and think about how each of them might be useful in different conditions and scenarios.
4. When everyone’s examined the devices, make sure that they’re given back to their respective owners. Now, give the group the following brief:
   
   ‘You’re navigators who’ve travelled back 20 years in time. It’s your job to share the inventions that you’ve made in the future that help you when you’re out on a hike. Rumour has it that your new navigational developments are helping us all to save the planet each time we head out for a walk. Can you share how this is being made possible?’
5. Everyone should now split into small groups to think together about what’s next in the world of navigation and to draw up their ideas to present to everyone. You should allow roughly 15 minutes for everyone to form their ideas. It could be a new invention, new navigation technique or anything else that they may think of!
   
   Those with internet access could use the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals for inspiration. They could think about ways that ways of navigation, such as digital mapping, can help people enjoy the environment in more responsible ways. A smartphone app, for instance, could generate notifications with eco tips or point out eco-projects nearby.
6. Give everyone large sheets of paper and pens to scribble down their ideas. If groups wish to make sketches of their designs, allow them time to do this. The people leading the activity should move between the groups to ask questions about their inventions and making sure everyone in the group has a role in the idea-generation process.
7. When everyone’s ready, have all the groups come together. Each group should take turns to present their idea to everyone else.
   
   Groups could choose to nominate someone to do this if some people don’t wish to speak in front of everyone.
8. Allow the audience to ask each group questions about their invention, including how it works, what it does and what it might look like.
   
   Try to keep this light-hearted!
9. Everyone should think about conventional route-planning and how it can be modernised with current technology. For instance, consider how route cards could be made clearer and more compact.