Nature Discovery Map Scotland

Coming soon: an exciting new toolkit for schools that supports Learning for Sustainability 

The Nature Discovery Map Scotland (NDMS) is designed to engage and empower students to maximise their school grounds and improve them for nature and climate resilience. This interactive mapping toolkit has been co-designed with teachers to help support Learning for Sustainability (LfS). This versatile toolkit can be used in many ways and on many levels to allow your primary or secondary school to:

• Discover what nature you have in your school grounds and local community
• Audit your school grounds for nature and sustainability
• Add these features to the national map
• Compare your school grounds to other schools locally and nationally
• Support awards and other established school initiatives such as Eco-schools, the LEAF Programme and Climate Ready School Grounds
• Empower your school to make nature and climate-positive changes to your school grounds and beyond
• Generally support outdoor learning and LfS across the Curriculum

What will young people get from using the toolkit?

• Practical and knowledge-based skills through biodiversity and climate action
• Digital skills and STEM learning through geospatial mapping
• Real world and outdoor learning opportunities

Where has this idea come from?

The development of the toolkit has been supported by the Scottish Government. It is one of the actions in the Learning for Sustainability Action Plan proposed on curriculum, culture, community and campus that can help transform your school into a Sustainable Learning Setting by 2030. 

The idea for the toolkit originally arose from the UK Nature Park commitment made at COP 26, held in Glasgow in 2021, to develop a resource for students to record, learn about, and help enhance the contribution of school grounds to biodiversity and climate change adaptation. 

Working with a number of primary, secondary and ASN teachers and pupils, we ran a pilot project to develop the Nature Park concept in Scotland, in autumn 2022 to spring 2023 a Drawing on the pilot work, a finalised toolkit has now been developed for roll-out as a national resource for all schools.  

This exciting resource will help pupils to explore biodiversity in and around education settings and consider how positive change could be made for nature.  It helps to build the skills of our future leaders and innovators as well as helping them to be a part of improving their local environment, an important step in reducing eco-anxiety and increasing young people’s connection with nature.

Want to find out more?

The plan is for the Nature Discovery Map Scotland to be ready for a soft launch in the new academic year – keep an eye on this webpage for updates on the launch or - if you have a specific question or simply want to know more about the toolkit now - get in touch. 

As with other digital resources, it is possible your local authority may need to undertake a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA) in order to access some of the resources in the toolkit. If you are interested in using the toolkit it is therefore important that you discuss this with your local authority LfS &/or digital literacy lead or ask them to get in touch with us at [email protected].