Geocaching in Education... at Burton, KS
First off - you may ask - what is Geochaching?
It is.... "The recreational activity of hunting for and finding a hidden object by means of GPS coordinates posted on a website" or in this case, GPS locations set by the teachers for their students to find the clues.
Here's a snippet about Geocaches from Wikipedia...
"Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use aGlobal Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (tupperware or similar) or ammo boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek," sharing many aspects withbenchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, andwaymarking.
These teachers mentioned that in the school they observed at Burton, KS, the 3rd grade teacher did an activity with Geocaching that involved science and the 5th grade class did an activity that invovled explorers. It was mentioned that the 5th grade activity was especially cool because the students felt like they were explorers :)
The teachers planned everything and figured out where they were going to hide the clues and took the GPS out, and made different routes for the students - using "easy GPS.com" free software
- I checked out this website and it does offer free GPS software that seems easy to use.
There is also a link on this website about Geocaching with GeoBuddy which sounds like it could apply to students.. or be used in the classroom. However, it does cost, unlike the other aspect of the website.
The teachers being interviewed mention that it's important that people know what a wavepoint is - apparently it's the destination you're heading to, where the clues were hidden for the students.
Ideas at where to start:
google using "GPS in education"
I found some cool ideas such as .....
-this article about it http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6463503.html, which in itself contains several links about geocaching...
-this is the official Geocaching website http://www.geocaching.com/
Here are some other neat websites:
http://www.terracaching.com/
http://www.navicache.com/
http://www.terraclues.com/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
http://roxannnys.pbworks.com/w/page/6883465/Using-GPS's-and-Geocaching-in-the-Classroom
Recommend it? and Why? using GPS
-it helps the learner that is kinesthetic in their opinions
-Benefits
More Ideas on how to use it in the classroom
Awesome blog about geocaching
Geocaching for kids
Overall, I found this an interesting topic as I didn't know much about it. I have friends that have told me briefly about Geocaching before, but I never really understood all it entailed and the fact that it can be used to engage students in their learning is awesome!
Also, there are a ton of websites out there about this topic, so just start googling away and you'll find several!
This blog also has a great review of using it... http://delightfullearning.blogspot.com/2009/09/educaching-review.html
and a resource called Educaching
First off - you may ask - what is Geochaching?
It is.... "The recreational activity of hunting for and finding a hidden object by means of GPS coordinates posted on a website" or in this case, GPS locations set by the teachers for their students to find the clues.
Here's a snippet about Geocaches from Wikipedia...
"Geocaching is an outdoor sporting activity in which the participants use aGlobal Positioning System (GPS) receiver or other navigational techniques to hide and seek containers, called "geocaches" or "caches", anywhere in the world. A typical cache is a small waterproof container containing a logbook where the geocacher enters the date they found it and signs it with their established code name. Larger containers such as plastic storage containers (tupperware or similar) or ammo boxes can also contain items for trading, usually toys or trinkets of little value. Geocaching is often described as a "game of high-tech hide and seek," sharing many aspects withbenchmarking, trigpointing, orienteering, treasure-hunting, letterboxing, andwaymarking.
Geocaches are currently placed in over 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.[1] After 10 years of activity there are almost 1.3 million active geocaches published on variouswebsites. There are over 5 million geocachers worldwide."
These teachers mentioned that in the school they observed at Burton, KS, the 3rd grade teacher did an activity with Geocaching that involved science and the 5th grade class did an activity that invovled explorers. It was mentioned that the 5th grade activity was especially cool because the students felt like they were explorers :)
The teachers planned everything and figured out where they were going to hide the clues and took the GPS out, and made different routes for the students - using "easy GPS.com" free software
- I checked out this website and it does offer free GPS software that seems easy to use.
There is also a link on this website about Geocaching with GeoBuddy which sounds like it could apply to students.. or be used in the classroom. However, it does cost, unlike the other aspect of the website.
The teachers being interviewed mention that it's important that people know what a wavepoint is - apparently it's the destination you're heading to, where the clues were hidden for the students.
Ideas at where to start:
google using "GPS in education"
I found some cool ideas such as .....
-this article about it http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6463503.html, which in itself contains several links about geocaching...
-this is the official Geocaching website http://www.geocaching.com/
Here are some other neat websites:
http://www.terracaching.com/
http://www.navicache.com/
http://www.terraclues.com/Default.aspx?AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1
http://roxannnys.pbworks.com/w/page/6883465/Using-GPS's-and-Geocaching-in-the-Classroom
Recommend it? and Why? using GPS
-it helps the learner that is kinesthetic in their opinions
-Benefits
More Ideas on how to use it in the classroom
Awesome blog about geocaching
Geocaching for kids
Overall, I found this an interesting topic as I didn't know much about it. I have friends that have told me briefly about Geocaching before, but I never really understood all it entailed and the fact that it can be used to engage students in their learning is awesome!
Also, there are a ton of websites out there about this topic, so just start googling away and you'll find several!
This blog also has a great review of using it... http://delightfullearning.blogspot.com/2009/09/educaching-review.html
and a resource called Educaching
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