Mapping Space Through Sounds and Noises – An Innovative Approach for Geography Education

International audienceThis paper aims at describing different school projects pertaining to noise and sound recordings for spatial analysis, in France. Students, from primary to upper secondary school, used location-based mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones to record data during fieldwork courses and to map their localities. The projects address the issues of (1) the relationship between the body and a nearby space for primary students and secondary students and (2) the question of soundscapes (SCHAFFER 1992), i.e an acoustic environment by which we hear the full set of sounds of the space where we are, as a basis for the analysis of urban spaces. These experiments allow a better understanding of space navigation for individuals and space modeling with visual and symbolic data. In this paper, we also address the question of the effectiveness of location-based mobile devices for educational purposes. Moreover, these experiments offer new perspectives for spatial analysis within an educational context