Climbing where she shouldn’t, swimming where others wouldn’t, and music so loud it’s usually described by her parents as sounding like “a catfight in a bomb factory”.
Dislikes:
Stopping, sitting down, sleeping, resting, or ‘taking it easy’. She isn’t keen on food that can’t be consumed in ‘Power Bar’ form, and she’s also not too fond of rules. Any of them.
Bio:
Maddison Williams has broken seven bones in her life – but she’s also climbed eight mountains, so as far as she’s concerned, she’s winning by one. If she’s not scaling a cliff face, you’ll find Maddy in the sea; she loves all things aquatic, from sharks to shellfish; dolphins to dumbo octopi. On the rare occasion she’s on flat ground, skating is her preferred method of getting around. She also enjoys dying her hair to suit her mood, and wearing stick-on tattoos to panic her parents.
Likely to say things like:
“Cuts and bruises are just the signs of a good time – and broken bones usually mean you should have jumped higher.”
Character Spotlight ‘AOLS’
Introducing The Association of Ontario Land Surveyors special characters Geo and GeePS!
Company Name – Association of Ontario Land Surveyors (AOLS)
Location – the AOLS office is in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with members located throughout the province. You can find the firm of an Ontario Land Surveyor athttps://www.aols.org/find-a-surveyor
Why did you get involved in Get Kids into Survey? I am being introduced to several careers while in high school. Few people know about careers in surveying, so I’m learning about surveying and sharing what I learn with others.
What do you do? I am in a co-op placement program with a survey company. They have this cool GPS receiver named “GeePS”, who not only works with me to gather my location data but gives me information about surveying. Sometimes GeePS and I need to do a little research such as making sure that satellites are sending us the correct data.
How long have you been in the Survey Industry?I have been in land surveying for a short period as a student. GeePS says the AOLS was established in 1892 and that it is a self-governing association, responsible for the licensing and governance of professional land surveyors, in accordance with the Surveyors Act. The AOLS has a responsibility to ensure that the public interest comes first.
How did you get into the Industry? I learned about surveying from an Ontario Land Surveyor who came to our school to talk about what surveyors do.
Funny Fact about you: I love today’s technology, but sometimes, and you won’t believe this, I like to go off the grid and pretend I’m one of those pioneer surveyors with only an old Gunter’s chain and compass.
Favourite piece of kit and why? That’s a tough question, because there are so many cool tools in a surveyor’s toolbox and the technology is always changing. My smartphone is my favourite. Connected to the internet, it helps me communicate and make decisions all day long, giving my exact location and direction while letting me take photos and video.
Favourite Survey technique and why? I like all survey techniques because I can help the surveyors who are working on different kinds of projects. I can get data from GeePS to make a map!
How did you choose the character and what does he/she/it represent? GeePS needed a partner, so members of the AOLS imagined what my generation might look like working with GeePS, and here I am!
Where did you study? Over the years I’ve studied a few courses, my most recent course I’ve completed Is the TSA Surveying Course, in which I achieved a Distinction. I have also carried out short courses as well as completing two courses at Barnsley College relating to Construction Management as well as Surveying.
What are the requirements to be a surveyor in your area? As I’m sure you’re aware, there aren’t many requirements! You have to like working outdoors in all weathers, as well as having field based knowledge. There are courses where you are able to become a member of professional bodies and this ultimately leads to a “Chartered Land Surveyor”.
How did you get into surveying? I fell into surveying from leaving Sixth Form College and I haven’t looked back since. Every day at work presents different challenges, as well as different people to meet and greet. Within Surveying, there are great opportunities to network with people in the same professions; we all know one another!
How long have you been in the industry? I have been within the surveying industry for 7 years now and still wake up each morning excited to see what the day will have in store… oh how the years have flown by!
Are you part of any associations or organisations you would like us to mention? I am an Associate Member of RICS and a Technical member of CICES.
Why do you want to be a GKiS Brand Ambassador? I have experienced first hand how difficult it is for young people to make an informed decision, as well as know what the best route into their chosen career path is. I have a desire to help assist and provide a good understanding of how wide ranging the surveying profession is to young people, and how there is almost certainly a fit for most people within!
Why is it important for kids to know about surveying and the wider geospatial industry? The geospatial industry is an ever growing sector of work. Whilst new software and hardware make the task in hand more intuitive and easier to understand, there’s still no beating a “boots on the ground” approach. The skill, knowledge and expertise of surveyors is always required, and hopefully by generating a greater awareness of the profession we will develop and locate the surveyors of the future.
What are you going to do as an ambassador for GKiS? I will help to spread the word of the geospatial industry as well as the surveying profession through as many avenues as possible. I have friends who are teachers of ages from primary all the way up to college lecturers; I hope this will assist me to inspire as many young people into joining the industry as possible.
What are your hobbies? Being a surveyor, I naturally enjoy being outdoors! I like hiking, mountain biking, camping, caving and the occasional trip out on a kayak (but not in the winter!).
If you/your company had a GKiS character, what would it be? I’d say most likely some form of transformer… I’d travel the length and breadth of the world transforming into the correct tool for the job upon arrival to site!
What poster or resource would you like to see next from GKiS? I’d love to see a resource or poster which shows not only the wide range of job sites surveyors work on, and the equipment we use, but how the data looks in a field to finish aspect. When I first entered the profession I was in awe with the visual aspects of completed drawings and coloured pointcloud data!
If you are interested about being an Ambassador for GKiS please click here, or if you are a company looking to support the development of Resources please visit here.
Meet the Squad: Kwame
Name:
Kwame Orumo
Age:
11.62 Years Old
Specialist Areas:
Ancient History and Advanced Maths
Likes:
Bowties, underground exploration, English Breakfast Tea, and anything over 3000 years old.
Dislikes:
Unbalanced equations, unsolved Rubik’s Cubes, running low on calculators.
Bio:
Kwame Orumo has an IQ that is exactly 12.91 times his age as a recurring decimal, which is his way of saying that he’s extremely intelligent. He has a habit of wearing out calculators; he’s already on his third one this week. He can solve a Rubik’s cube in less than thirty seconds, mainly because he doesn’t like them to be ‘untidy’, and he is obsessed with all things ancient and buried. While he usually lives by the ‘Three B’s’: bowtie, belt and braces, you are just as likely to find Kwame armpit deep in dirt at an archaeological dig, as you are to catch him sat in his favourite wingback chair, with a steaming brew, a stack of biccies, and a mound of mega-hard mathematical equations to solve.
Likely to say things like:
“I came here to drink tea, eat biscuits, and discover the world’s greatest hidden treasures… and I’ve just dunked my last Hobnob.”
Ambassador Spotlight ‘Timothy Hawthorne’
In today’s Ambassador Spotlight, we discover a little more about our Brand Ambassador Timothy Hawthorne from Florida, USA.
If you are not a surveyor, what do you do? I am an associate professor of GIS at University of Central Florida in Orlando, Florida. I also am the Founding Director Citizen Science GIS and GeoBus.
How long have you been in the industry? I have been in the GIS/geospatial technology industry since 2003.
Are you part of any associations or organisations you would like us to mention? American Association of Geographers
Why do you want to be a GKiS Brand Ambassador? I believe in supporting and inspiring science’s next generation through hands-on educational opportunities. I am inspired by the global reach and positive energy of this GKiS community, and wanted to a part of the great work happening around the globe.
Why is it important for kids to know about surveying and the wider geospatial industry? So they recognize early that it is an in-demand, useful and highly rewarding career field in which they can thrive and contribute to the study of some of the most challenging environmental and social issues of our time. I was a student who entered my college years having no idea GIS and geography were a career option. I was hooked after my first Intro to the Power of Maps course in my sophomore year. Luckily I happened upon that course, it changed my trajectory and life path.
What are you going to do as an ambassador for GKiS? I am going to support global education and interest in geospatial technologies through our GeoBus program, the US’s first GeoBus to drive geospatial technologies in a repurposed 40 foot city bus with a solar-powered learning lab to K-12 schools and community centers. And I hope to work with others in the industry to develop a global GeoBus network to support our industry and science’s next generation.
What are your hobbies? In my spare time I love to travel, go to the beach and snorkel with my kids, wife and friends. I also love building Lego sets with my kids.
If you/your company had a GKiS character, what would it be? A drone operator for sure. We love flying drones, especially in coastal environments near islands and reefs.
What poster or resource would you like to see next from GKiS? A drone and surveying crew exploring reefs around the world with kids helping.
If you are interested in becoming a Sponsor or a Brand Ambassador for GKiS please follow the links provided.
Interesting Articles, February Edition
For more information about how to get involved with Get Kids into Survey please visit our Sponsorship Page or Brand Ambassador Page. If you have some interesting information that you think would fit in our future blogs please email them to learn@getkidsintosurvey.com
How you can use OS (Ordnance Survey) data to create a Tolkien-inspired map…
Have a go at creating your own ‘My Favourite Square’ project by following the instructions on this blog. You can even frame your finished piece!
A great activity to have a go at with your family. Have a go!
Dorchester rescue-drone pilot inspires young engineers
“Gemma Alcock runs Skybound Rescue which specialises in flying drones to save lives.
Now, she’s joined STEAM school (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) hosting a series of talks about robotics for children between 9-14 years old.” People like Gemma are so important for the future, helping inspire young people, especially as they can resonate with her about her experiences at school being similar.
Find out more about Gemma and her STEAM talks here (target age 9-14 years old) and why science does not have to be your forte in order to go into the technology industry: Steam School (steam-school.com)
How the geospatial industry is involved in the exciting self-drive future!
How are the connected and automated mobility (CAM) and automated driving systems (ADS) being developed? This highly complex and modern technology is soon going to be upon us, would you let technology take over your wheel? Learn more about the two possible approaches for this technology on the blog here.
Land Surveying Is A Great Profession, But Why Don’t Young People Know That?
“As any professional land surveyor knows, we are a part of a great profession. It offers tremendous variety, the chance to work outdoors, the opportunity to apply math and geography skills in the real world, and the satisfaction of contributing something of lasting value and importance.”
According to the Princeton Review, “. . . surveying job opportunities are expected to increase by more than 20 percent in the next ten years.” That’s a pretty solid reason to get into surveying from looking at that one statistic… find out the other reasons and how to go about it by visiting POB’s Blog here.
Our resources at GKiS may be beneficial too so please visit our Resources page for Posters, Lesson Plans, Quizzes, and Colouring Sheets!
We always knew we wanted to create a comic book for the industry and so in 2019 we set out to find ourselves the perfect writer for the job. We just so happened across Mat, our brilliant writer, teacher and friend. Mat Sullivan not only writes children’s novels but he also writes curriculum for teachers and is in fact a teacher himself in Manchester, England. Elly first presented Mat with the idea for the comic describing this future world, a world without surveyors; “I didn’t just want a story about surveyors and their jobs, I wanted a bit of a shock factor. We tend not to make change happen until we are faced with a disaster of sorts, and so if I could show this future world of despair, perhaps then people would really see how important surveyors and the geospatial industry is, and maybe just maybe start creating change for our future generation”. Mat took this idea and created what you know now as the Geo Squad comic book. If you haven’t read it yet, take a sneak peak at the first chapter here.
So, where’s it heading?
As some keen readers will know, the first three chapters were published in Point of Beginning and Civil Engineering Surveying Magazines. We also published the first chapter in the Nevada Traverse, CAL Surveyor and Florida Surveyor Magazine as well as National Geographic Kids UK, Australia and New Zealand.
We are saving the final two chapters for our comic book release on May 17th 2021.
Let’s set the scene…
‘It’s Careers Day at West Park High School. Four friends stand in the sports hall, surrounded on all sides by stalls promoting some of the worst, most tedious, most brain-achingly boring jobs it’s possible for a human being to endure. The more of these stalls that the gang passes, the further their faces fall. Is this really what grown-up life has in store for them? Maddison Williams does not want to manage middle managers for a living; she’d much rather be a glacier-surfing, base-jumping shark wrangler! Setsuko Tanaka is on the lookout for the extra-terrestrial bio-science stand, but all she can find is someone advertising a job in human resources; a man so bored with his own life that he is sleeping at his table, open-mouthed and catching flies. Kwame Orumo wants to be an extreme archaeologist, and Miles Darwood has his sights set on the drone racing leagues, but all the foursome can see are paths to lives behind beige desks, wearing beige pants, drinking beige tea…
…That is, until they spot something strange in the corner of the hall: a table, unmanned, with no signs and no information, upon which lies four strange-looking headsets and nothing more. Intrigued, the friends approach, lifting up and inspecting these out-of-place objects. The gloomy guy on the Photocopier Technicians stand informs the group that people have been trying the headsets all day, and they don’t work. But, just as he starts to talk to them about the most boring job on Earth, the headsets suddenly flash into life. As the gang inspect the visors, turning them over in their hands and peering inside, they begin to wonder why these strange pieces of tech would start working now, just as they picked them up. Wonder soon turns to intrigue; intrigue becomes an irresistible curiosity, and before you know it, all four are wearing the mysterious headsets.
What they see shocks them more than the science skeleton sat at the GymClean Sweat Removal company stand. They see Middletown, their town, thirty years into the future – and it’s an awful sight to behold. Derelict towers collapse onto each other like drunken dominos. Cracked and twisted roads weave dangerously over, around, and even through crumbling buildings. Giant cracks and cavernous craters in the concrete streets threaten to swallow civilians whole, and the churning red sky above is filled with thick, choking smog.
This must be a figment of someone’s twisted imagination, right? The gang convince themselves that the awful images they are seeing can’t be real… until a strange, cloaked figure suddenly appears to tell them that what they are seeing is no-one’s imagined atrocity; it is real.
The comic revolves around a group of school kids turned super-surveyors called the GeoSquad. We wanted to highlight the importance of surveyors, so what better way than showing what a world would be like WITHOUT them in it!?! This way GeoSquad go on multiple adventures applying themselves to different roles in order to save their city. Surveyors are the heroes of our story with all different types and jobs demonstrated.
Have a read to find out more when it gets published in May. Sign up to our newsletter for updates
How can you get involved?
We require sponsors of Activity Pages for the Comic Book. We currently have a few spaces remaining, please see if any of these activities take your fancy. Or design your own game:
Find the Difference
Using sections of the exploration posters, subtly altered, this would encourage children to take a close reading of the posters and to really look at all the action and activity that is going
Totally True or Fully False!
Here, sponsor representatives in cartoon form would present their craziest stories from survey sites. Some would be true, some might be partly true but with a key detail dramatically altered, and some might be completely made up! This would be a good way to drive traffic back to the website, as the true/false reveals and the real stories could be hosted on there, perhaps with links to appropriate coverage of the unbelievable finds / events covered in the true stories.
Word search and Cryptic Clue Challenge
A traditional word search with a twist! The found words would stack up horizontally, one below the other, and one vertical line of characters from each word would spell out a special word – perhaps a password that allows the reader access to a protected page on the website where a special surveyor Easter egg (electronic special treat!) could be found. There would also be a glossary for the found words that would help young readers to better understand key geospatial terms.
Massive Measures
This page would comprise a multiple choice quiz based on heights, lengths, depths and other measures taken during extreme survey missions. The focus here would be on the wow factor in each example, showing how surveyors work at extremes, how vast the measurements that they take can be, and how they work all over the world, in all environments and conditions.
Mega Machines
On one side of this page would be a vertical row of images of survey vehicles / robots, and on the other side would be another vertical row of images of extreme / hazardous locations. They would all be mixed up, and the Last Surveyor would present the reader with the challenge to link the correct robot or vehicle with the setting in which it would be used. For example, a robotic serpent would be linked to an underwater setting; a drone would be used to survey the damage caused by forest fires, etc.
Keep an eye out for GeoSquads Character Profile blogs coming over the next few weeks. Learn more about the main stars of the comic, their likes, dislikes and a small introductory biography…
Location – London, United Kingdom (we also have offices in the US and Australia and we have staff and distributors in over 40 countries)
Why did you get involved in Get Kids into Survey? We love the idea of supporting kids with career exploration. Children are often only aware of a small number of occupations that they are exposed to on a daily basis, so learning about different types of career paths is great to spark interests and passions at an early age. At Senceive we wanted to help promote the surveying and monitoring industry to the next generation of young engineers and surveyors and help kids get excited and learn what our technology can do!
What do you do? At Senceive we design and manufacture wireless condition monitoring technology. Our sensors monitor railway track, buildings, tunnels, bridges and more for the slightest movements, and can send out alerts to engineers to check for potential problems or dangers. Our sensors are used in some of the world’s most complex and potentially dangerous environments. They are easy to install and once in place, surveyors and engineers can access movement data from their computers or tablets, so they don’t have to go to site. These sensors help keep the assets they are monitoring safe, as well as the people who use them.
How long have you been in the Survey Industry? Senceive Ltd was established in 2005 and pioneered the use of intelligent wireless condition monitoring in civil engineering and rail applications.
How did you get into the Industry? Highly skilled engineers started research in 2001 in the labs of University College London (UCL), one of the UK’s leading engineering universities. Ever since then we’ve been committed to providing surveyors with tools to gather vital information without having to go to site.
Funny Fact about the company/Sammy the spider– Spiders are found in every continent except Antarctica, just like our Senceive sensors.
Favourite piece of kit and why? Triaxial tilt sensor – this tiny sensor can be mounted in moments to any structure, at any angle and will tell its owner what is happening for the next 10 years or more.
Favourite Survey technique and why? Many laser-based survey methods are natural partners for our wireless monitoring technology. Automated total stations, for example, provide precise, absolute measurement from specific locations, whereas remote monitoring systems can cover wide areas providing a snapshot every few minutes.
Your website: www.senceive.com
How did you choose the character and what does he/she/it represent? Mean to you?
Sammy the spider has two types of webs (wireless platforms), his green (FlatMeshTM) webs collect movement data on his green webs once every minute! These sensors are super smart – they can send data to their neighbours, and the system will still work if some parts of it are damaged!
Sammy collects movement data on his blue (GeoWANTM) webs, his long-range webs – once every hour. These sensors can be really far away – up to 15 km – and they will still work to get Sammy the movement data that he needs!
With his webs, he is able to sense the smallest changes in his surroundings. If Sammy notices these movements are too big or not right, he is able to tell engineers so they can go check for potential dangers. Sammy is helping to keep the structures, transportation systems, and the people who use them safe.
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Where did you study? 
If you are interested about being an Ambassador for GKiS please click 
If you are not a surveyor, what do you do? 
Why do you want to be a GKiS Brand Ambassador? 
If you/your company had a GKiS character, what would it be? 
“Gemma Alcock runs Skybound Rescue which specialises in flying drones to save lives.
We always knew we wanted to create a comic book for the industry and so in 2019 we set out to find ourselves the perfect writer for the job. We just so happened across Mat, our brilliant writer, teacher and friend. 
We require sponsors of Activity Pages for the Comic Book. We currently have a few spaces remaining, please see if any of these activities take your fancy. Or design your own game:
