December 15, 2011 / Eric Schudiske /

New Teacher Tools: Geocaching and Education

educationblog#1 — Louie Bliss and Foxfire working the Geocaching Booth

Teachers say geocaching can be a powerful learning tool that involves critical thinking, hands-on learning and active engagement.

Over the past few years, geocaching has become more commonly used in the world of education. Now Geocaching.com offers more help to teachers who incorporate geocaching in the classroom. Geocaching.com just released a Geocaching and Education page to provide educators with a range of useful resources. Geocaching.com employees, known as Lackeys, are also attending education conventions to spread the word about geocaching in the classroom.

Teachers have traditionally created their own material to incorporate geocaching into geography, math, science, history, English, and physical education curricula. The passion to use the activity in school has become so great that we over at Groundspeak are now actively partnering with teachers to better support geocaching and education.

Just this past week, Lackeys smelly_kelly, Foxfire, Louie Bliss, Katie-b, and bethany_b attended the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) Convention in Seattle, Washington. The conference featured more than 50 booths and hosted more than 3,000 attendees. The Geocaching.com booth proved to be a great success as geocachers and non-cachers alike stopped by to learn about the activity and how it can be used as a teaching tool.

education booth 014 — Geocaching and Education

Those working the booth were pleased with the number of teachers already using geocaching in their classrooms. It was equally encouraging to see how many teachers plan on incorporating geocaching into future lessons.

According to Lackey Louie Bliss, “people were really impressed that we have a brand new section dedicated to Geocaching and Education. Most people had heard of geocaching and done it themselves, but many had never thought to teach it to students. They walked away really excited to try it.”

Lackey’s found that both students and teachers are using geocaching to teach a variety of subjects. “We had a number of science teachers discuss how they plan to co-teach with social studies or geography teachers,” said Louie Bliss.

educationblog#2 — smelly_kelly and Louie Bliss with a 10-foot astronaut

Check out the education forums if you are interested in posting questions, ideas, sharing curriculum, and more. The forums are a fabulous way for teachers to learn from one another and for Groundspeak to learn from teachers.

Resources available on the Geocaching and Education page include educational screencasts, geocaching videos, a link to the Intro to Geocaching PowerPoint Presentation, and a link to the education forums.

December 12, 2011 / Eric Schudiske /

49 and Holding the Cache – A Gold Miner’s Delight GC202RG GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – December 12, 2011

The iconic village of Pella, Iowa in the United States boasts a quaint downtown, a working wind mill and the geocache with the most Favorite Points in the entire state. ’49 and Holding the Cache – A Gold Miner’s Delight’ (GC202RG) has more than 100 Favorite Points. jstrout & cjandbj created and placed the cache in 2009. The special instructions on the difficulty 2.5, terrain 1 geocache page are written as a poem:

A GOLD MINER’S DELIGHT
NO NEED FOR A SHOVEL
NO NEED FOR A MULE
NO NEED FOR ANY SPECIAL TOOL
A NICE ALL WEATHER PARK AND GRAB

The creative cache draws adventure seekers from around the region. Geocachers often choose ’49 and Hold the Cache’ to celebrate milestone finds. Cachers log about the challenge of the hide and the unique cache container.

pella iowa 2 — Celebrating milestones at the geocache

A geocacher who logged this cache writes, “To say this is the best geocache I’ve ever seen would be an understatement. This is mind-bogglingly fantastic! The creativity, work, money, craftsmanship, and awesomeness that has been put into this cache is just plain amazing… I’ve seen and made a few pretty darn cool caches, but this one takes the cake.”

Check out this Geocaching.com Presents video to see inside the cache. The video was shot with cache owner permission. You can see the “49 and Holding Cache” at 1:00 into the video.

[vsw id=”AhuX7N8b3xw” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the globe. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on the Latitude 47 blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com. If you’ d like to nominate a Geocache of the Week, send an email with your name, comments, the name of the geocache and the GC code to pr@groundspeak.com.

December 8, 2011 / Eric Schudiske /

December Featured Geocacher of the Month Nominees – Add Your Comments

The nominees for the December featured “Geocacher of the Month” hail from three different countries. But they collectively represent the best of the geocaching community: being helpful, innovative, and creative. Now it’s your turn to help select one of them as December’s “Geocacher of the Month.”

Write a comment on this blog post about which of these three geocachers you feel should be the “Geocacher of the Month.” Those whose nominees were not recognized here are encouraged to submit their nominations again next month.

Last month, Rokman4 was chosen as the November Featured Geocacher of the Month. Rokman4 is well known for helping to create the first ever geocaching training ground and for going out of his way to help geocachers in need. Congratulations again to Rokman4 and all those nominated in November.

Some testimonials have been edited for length.

AbbeyAckbar

Nominated by Cashub, “AbbeyAckbar have gathered people for such events as: WWFM VIII – Dublin, Ireland and a mega huge International Geocaching Day (IGD)01: CITO Burrow Beach, Dublin, Ireland and later that day another event: IGD01: Dublin, Ireland and recently 11.11.11 – It’s all about the numbers They are great planners, everything is always under control with them. It’s AbbeyAckbar who organizes the best events in Dublin, who are always willing to help any newbies, and who make things happen in Ireland. Their caches have the most amazing containers, and are very tricky, making another cache find an unbelievably fun experience!”

ElectroQTed

Nominated by geocite and PTBL, “He is always happy to lend a helping hand when you have a hard cache that you haven’t found. ElectroQTed takes his time to walk around the room to meet fellow cachers old and new and have a talk. He has been to a lot of events where he does speeches on geocaching. He is also at all of the CITOs that we have in the Waterloo Region of Canada and has helped plant many trees. Ted has helped organize numerous of the events that have occurred in southern Ontario. Ted has been caching well before a lot of people probably even knew what geocaching was. He has been caching since June 15, 2003 and has over 7400 finds. Ted is one of the first geocachers in the Waterloo Region and this past summer was in our local paper talking about the sport of geocaching. ElectroQTed is a good roll model for the geocaching community.”

Jeremy

Nominated by LoudmouthLee, “Jeremy is responsible for the vast majority of caches in the Queens borough of New York City. As well, he has taken time out of his busy schedule to help a lowly geo-newbie like me to get involved in the caching community, giving me great advice when I need it, and offering to help always. I know for sure that I’m not the only newbie who Jeremy has helped. I just know his kindness is peerless and he is a fantastic representation to what geocaching is all about.”

Comment below to tell us who you think should be the featured December “Geocacher of the Month.” A panel of Lackeys will use your comments to help decide which geocacher is awarded the honor. Each featured “Geocacher of the Month” will receive an exclusive special edition featured ”Geocacher of the Month” Geocoin along with a Geocacher of the Month hat and a certificate acknowledging their contributions signed by two of the founders of Geocaching.com. We will be accepting comments for December’s award through Monday the 26th.

If you know an outstanding geocacher who should be the Featured Geocacher of the Month, send an email to geocacherofthemonth@groundspeak.com.

Every nomination must meet the following requirements:

Please include your name, the name of your nominee, their username, at least one picture of the nominee and a description (500 or fewer words) explaining why he or she deserves to be the Geocacher of the Month. Please inform your nominee that you’ve submitted them for the award. Nominations for the January Geocacher of the Month must be received by January 3rd.

Once we have received all of the nominations, we will choose the top candidates and post them on the blog. You will then get a chance to champion your favorite. Our goal is to involve the entire geocaching community in this process so we might learn from each other.

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