May 22 2008
GPS in two short sessions at Creslane
I got my first post-degree chance to teach geocaching by returning to my student teaching classroom. I had two short sessions to complete the treasure hunt. The first session I chose teams each with a leader, gps operator, facilitator, and clue reader. We covered the basic background information needed to complete the treasure hunt: GPS operation, accuracy, use of clues, boundaries of seach area, what the caches look like. The second session we went outside and found the caches I had placed on school grounds. The students engaged their cooperation skills in finding the caches. The team leader organized the members and directed much of the action. The GPS operators had their teams huddling around the units and then led the team within the margin of error proximity to each cache. Then the clue readers read the clue out loud so that all team members could search for the cache itself. Reading the clues provides all the students with an opportunity to do some critical thinking. The clues are not just instant pointers to the cache location. Some are poems and some are a little cryptic and take decoding to discover the actual location. The team facilitators keep everyone on task and searching throughout the course.
The sessions were very successful and many of the students learned new skills and did some great thinking to find the caches. Students cooperated within the teams toward a common goal. I enjoyed the opportunity to take the adult material I am familiar with and re-work it for the students. I am also glad to use the Pacific GPS units. I loaded all the waypoints on all five units within minutes using TOPO software. The same thing can be accomplished with GPS BABEL.
I look forward to the summer classes at the Science Factory
