LightintheWoods

After publishing this post on Geocaching in the Saskatchewan Outdoor & Environmental Association’s Fall Newsletter, Envisage, I was contacted by a middle years teacher who wanted more information.  Together, Paul & I exchanged email with the hope to bring teachers together for a Saturday morning workshop.  Our winter weather turned frigid and the workshop hasn’t materialized yet.  In preparation for this meetup, and for future reference I gathered resources on geocaching and compiled them on the wiki, GeoCachewithKyle.

Frustrated with the weather and having a hankering to try winter geocaching, I decided to spend time in the forests, and on the trails, of Duck Mountain Provincial Park with my brother.  Searching for caches in the winter certainly proved difficult and I had a few key learnings from the experience that I need to share.  I hadn’t adequately prepared the information from www.geocaching.com. I did write down the coordinates correctly and the name of the cache but in most instances I neglected to write down the clues or specific details. Next time I will put more time into this front end of this process.  I was naive to think we wouldn’t need the Google Map printout, which would have been handy at times.  Having only previously cached in non-wooded areas I was unable to foresee the affects the trees would have on the GPS reading; had I been thinking, I would have packed a compass to back up my conscious and negate the fear that we may be walking in circles.  Had I better prepared the trip we would of had a much higher success rate than 1 out of 4 caches. With all this being said, it was certainly fun to skidoo the trails, high step through thick snow, tramp across frozen marshes and enjoy the sounds of the forest.

I made a short clip of our experiences that day.

Give it a watch.

This video also highlights a few more things folks should consider about geocaching.  Both safety and ‘leave no trace’ principles are a concern at different intervals of the experience. At one point I slip and fall, and other point shows us nearly mow over a young sampling.  Reflecting on the experience brings these issues to light. These two principles must be at the forefront of planning such an outdoor excursion.

September is a fantastic time of the year to try geocaching. The weather in Saskatchewan isn’t too hot or too cold. Autumn’s birth is on the horizon and by the third week we begin to see the leaves changing colour. The setting is almost perfect for an outdoor classroom.  Fortunately for me, I have been assigned to sub in grade 6/7 room for the last couple weeks. Prior to my arrival, the class had spent time refreshing their mapping skills and discussing location. Immediately, I saw this as excellent opportunity to experiment with GPS and geocaching to reinforce learning about direction, location and coordinates. Having never owned a Global Position System (GPS) unit, I had only a basic idea of how they worked but recognized the potential for learning.

Before we began to use the units outdoors, I knew we had to spend time discussing coordinates and distance until we all had a firm grasp on the concepts. Then we talked about how GPS units use 3 of 24 satellites circling the earth to triangulate our position and are then able to send exact coordinates of our location to the GPS unit.  To complete the overview we had a short study of the units interface. This helped to better understand the 5 different buttons, the 5 different screens and become aware of the vocabulary involved with marking or finding the coordinates of a location.

We used the GPS units in our outdoor classroom three times.

Our first outdoor experience took place on a Wednesday, in the school yard, where I had marked the coordinates of landmarks (soccer goalpost, the slide, a lightpole).  I gave the coordinates of the landmarks to the students, who in turn input the digits into the GPS units. The students were then asked to find which locations the coordinates were for. Each student found each of the locations, but mostly because they followed those walking in front of them.

Back in the classroom we debriefed. I fired up the projector and loaded Google Maps. On the satellite view of the maps we found Sunningdale School in Moose Jaw. I typed in the first coordinate for the goalpost and the students watch as the Google marker landed there.  I then asked “which direction the marker would go if the western coordinate was increased?” and “what if the Northern coordinate decreased?” and so on. We reinforced the concept of longitude and latitude.

The following Friday, we embarked on our second outdoor adventure.  Pairs of students were asked to mark 5 coordinates/landmarks for another pair. Once the locations were marked in the GPS unit, the students swapped units and went exploring to find the unknown destinations.  At this point I could hear students working together and making guesses as to which landmark the coordinates would take them to. They were all running, trying to find the best landmark and appeared extremely involved in the activity.

Upon returning to the classroom we discussed and watched a short introductory video on the growing outdoor sport of Geocaching.  We talked about guidelines and the ethics of the sport. About different types of caches and the types of “treasures” swapped when a cache is found. Then, to reinforce guidelines for geocaching, we recited the GeoCreed, (shared with me by another Grade 6 teacher in Victoria, BC, named Jan Smith).

On Monday morning one of the Gr.6 students appeared in the doorway before the bell. He told me of his Saturday adventure Geocaching.  He had signed up an account on geocaching.com, where he found numerous listings of geocaches. Each listing shows a map of the approximate area in which the cache is located and gives a hint as to the location.  Without a GPS unit, this student printed the map, hopped on his bike and went out geocaching. He came in early that Monday to explain how and where he found his first THREE geocaches. He went on to explain that after he found the caches, he logged back into geocaching.com and posted to the discussion board for each cache to show he had been there and note what he swapped. He was beaming with pride. The class was enthralled with this boy’s story and could not wait to find their own cache.

The next morning we set off to find the cache that I had hid the night before.  After hiding the cache in a park near the school, I hid 9 clues with coordinates for the next stops along the route.  The class worked together to find each of the clues in sequence and utilized their mapping skills to find the shortest route to the next destination.  The students learned that even though the GPS points the way to the coordinate’s location, sometimes houses would get in the way and they couldn’t go the way of the crow.  Upon finding each clue the students intensity grew, they reached a point where they knew the direction just from me reading the coordinates. By the last few clues they could have gone on without the device. They found the cache and thoroughly enjoyed the lollypops and pride that came with completing this challenging task.

There have been talks of continuing this outdoor pursuit in collaboration with a class from a nearby school if time allows.  We may plant a cache of items for them and email instructions for finding it. Then in turn they would take the container, swap items and plant the cache for us.  Following the activity, students from each class would correspond about their adventures to find the caches, explain to each other why they left and took the items they did. Ultimately, the students would benefit from interacting and building community with another group of students engaged in a fun learning experience.

Live blogging from our Digital Internship Project

Here are some sites he shared. I will add links and descriptions later.

9:00 – Alec shows us some tools from a brainstorm list

• Chacha - Live online Search
  
• Skreemer - Music Search
• Google Sketchup -
• Remember the Milk – Remember tasks through online tasks. Idea to share assignments and reminders with students.
• Gmail accounts for students and teachers – Couros Blog – Watch the Jing Cast

• Dandelife – Lifecast – Student Biography Projects – Personal Time Lines
• Slideshare – share powerpoints – Add audio with slidecast
• Gliffy – Online Drawing Tools
• QiZiQ – Online study help. Created by 15 year old
• Dynamic Images
• FD’s Flickr Page – Motivational posters
• Let them sing it for you
• Edutopia. Great source of ideas for teachers.

9:45 – A short explanation of Creative Commons. Re-useable content, crediting

10:00 - Dean Shareski is getting us Geocaching. I have looked forward to this presentation for some time.

geocaching.com

Dean is going to share how geocaching is applicable in a variety of ways. Technology doesn’t have to be sedentary. Anecdotes of GPS in dogs, senile grandparents, agriculture (GPS in tractors), prior to 2000 the satellites were only used for military use.

video from howstuffworks.com

video Simpsons on Google Earth

video – geocaching on UNC-TV

What is GeoCaching. Hidden Caches like a treasure hunt. Multi-cache sites, Dozens of forms of geocaching. Scratching the surface of how we can use it in the classroom.

People are starting to use GPS for all sorts of businesses and hobbies.

How to: look up on web, get coordinates, find location with a GPS

10:20 Getting Ready to go outside. Passing out devices to go over interface. Looking at geocaching.com
viewing the online map, clues and cordinates. Finding the location on Google Earth. Read the logs of other people that went looking for the cache to make sure of existence of the cache.

Fun way for students to learn coordinates, longitude, latitude. Need to learn more about mapping marked points. I will need to spend some time geocaching and thinking about classroom implementation before I get students going.

More to come.  This is something I want to learn more about