/ Adela B /

Geocaching Finds Its Way To the Classroom

By: Kara Bonilla

West Mercer Elementary Students geocaching

Teachers for all grade levels have begun to use the location-based treasure hunting adventure of geocaching as a teaching tool. Teachers say students learning through geocaching enjoy benefits far beyond learning outside of a classroom setting; geocaching makes learning more enjoyable and creates unforgettable learning opportunities for students.

Ellis Reyes, a fifth grade teacher at West Mercer Elementary in Washington, USA, has been using geocaching in the classroom for the past two years. He integrates the activity into several subjects.

Ellis hides different types of geocaches for his students to find on campus and in nearby local parks. One of his favorite ways to utilize geocaching involves using multi-step puzzle caches to teach math. Ellis calls this “GEO-metry Caching.”

A lesson involving geocaching in Ellis’s classroom tasks students to use several sets of skills, especially problem solving and advanced math skills.

Ellis says the students are excited to explore geocaching in school, “The kids love using geocaching to learn. It’s about solving puzzles and creative thinking, and getting out of the classroom, what’s better than that?”

With other subjects, such as language arts, Trackables come in handy for Ellis’ class. The students drop their own Trackables in geocaches close to school. They then follow each Trackable’s movements as a class. Ellis has each student create a background story for their personal Trackable. When the Trackable makes a stop, Ellis has his students add more to the story. Soon, the students develop a narrative about the Trackables journey.

Students develop the required skills in the curriculum and learn critical thinking and spatial concepts with the combination of geocaching and additional lesson planning.

A "GEO-metry" lesson plan from Ellis Reyes

Fourth grade teacher Eva La Mar has had a portion of her classes dedicated to teaching geocaching for the past eight years. At Riverbend Elementary in Oregon, USA, Eva teaches the various tools students need to go geocaching, including directional knowledge, the concepts of latitude and longitude and how GPS signals work.

“I love the sport, the exercise, the thinking that is involved.  Seeing students motivated and connecting with learning is what education is all about.  This is real-life learning.”

Eva also incorporates geocaching into other fourth grade studies. Geology being a fourth grade topic, EarthCaches fit perfectly into her lesson plan. Through EarthCaching and other variations of geocaching, studying the Oregon Trail becomes very real to students. The geocaches students find as a class show the many stops along the trail, helping them understand the concept of “trail-blazing.” Eva’s students love geocaching so much, she says, that most of them have turned geocaching into a family affair. This last year, Eva held a geocaching field trip that both students and parents attended.

Use of geocaching as a teaching tool has become very popular. There are already books and web pages dedicated to geocaching and education, making it easy for teachers to integrate geocaching into their classrooms.

Groundspeak is actively working on a project to create easier ways for all teachers to use geocaching in their classrooms and to share their experiences and work with other educators. There’s even a geocaching guidebook for teachers.

Watch this video of students learning through geocaching:

[youtube]8jVS_vDLHec[/youtube]

 

/ Eric Schudiske /

Geocaching in Ten Countries in One Day

Norman Roth (Norman.R), Dominik Weiss (Zweisamkite) Max Welteken (myGe0cache)

Planning is what Max Welteken (myGe0cache)  does for a living. He’s a delivery manager at a software development company in Europe. Max also gets bored doing things in what he calls a “normal or easy way.”

An idea that was neither boring nor easy struck Max recently. He wanted to log geocaches in ten countries in less and 24 hours.

Max says, “I saw the 10/24 attempt as a big project (which it was) where a lot of planning in advance was required. I spent almost a full week on fine planning the optimal route through all the 10 different countries.”

But Max knew the adventure needed co-conspirators. Max contacted two geocaching buddies, Norman Roth (Norman.R) and Dominik Weiss (Zweisamkite).

Once the team was set, Max finished his planning. He says, “I contacted all owners before we started to find out if there were any problems with the caches that might delay us on the trip. In the very beginning, we didn’t even know for sure if our goal was feasible at all, but after some iterations of planning with the Groundspeak beta map we came to the conclusion, that it´s possible to do the drive in approx. 16 hrs. PLUS the time we would need to find the caches.”

Max's route to find geocaches in 10 countries in less than 24 hours

But Max wanted to ensure the cache run didn’t sacrifice beautiful scenery for the sake of speed. The group even planned to take three vacation days to ensure the optimal time to beat traffic on their epic journey.

Max says, “What was important for us from the beginning was that we didn’t want to spend all this time and money only to see some “drive by” caches on the highways but nice and even scenic places. That made planning even more complex because we reviewed every single cache before we built it into our travel-route.”

Contacting the cache owners paid off. Some cache owners met the team along the way.  Cache owner Buck_DK actually helped launch the caching adventure a few hours before the caching run began. “The friendly owners of the first cache in Denmark invited us to meet them some hours before midnight. We had dinner.”

The team of three geocachers ended up logging more than 25 caches in ten countries (Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, France, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria and Italy).  However the trip did not take them 24 hours. They finished the cache run in just 21 hours. Max writes, “Looking back everything worked out perfect, during the almost 30hrs drive nonstop we only had 30min of traffic jam in the city center of Zürich.”

Max (MyGe0cache) - Dominik (Zweisamkite) - Benny (Buck_DK) and owner of GC2F78F - Benny´s wife Liselottea (Liselottea) - Norman (Norman.R)

Max has four pieces advice for those considering challenging themselves. He says:

1) You’ll need, “Some crazy minds (like myself 😉 to even consider doing something like this in the first place”

2) “Plan everything once, twice and once again! Print out everything even if you take notebooks/phones/GPS with you.”

3) “Go with at least with three people on a trip like this, as you will have to drive NON-Stop for more than a day. You will have to be able to sleep in the car no matter how uncomfortable it is.”

4) “Take good friends with you, not just anybody you know. After some hours the enthusiasm changes into a bad mood when everyone is exhausted and tired. During these hours you need to be a team of friends that restores the motivation again so everyone is partying once you reach the final cache.”

Watch this video to see the team in action –

[vsw id=”pqYjXgA04wY” source=”youtube” width=”425″ height=”344″ autoplay=”no”]
 

/ Eric Schudiske

Groundspeak Weekly Newsletter – August 3, 2011

Geocaching Block Party: August 20, 2011

The Geocaching Block Party is just over two weeks away! The prizes have arrived at HQ, the t-shirts are ordered and the weather’s going to be great (if we have anything to say about it). If you are joining us for the party, you can find a map and a schedule of the day’s activities on the cache page.

We recommend that those participating in the Geocaching Adventure Courses bring their GPS device and its corresponding download cable so that we can load course coordinates onto your device. We will have a few cables on hand, but it is safest to bring your own just in case we don’t have the type that you need.

We also want to see your most creative cache containers! Have you turned a bike into a cache container or created a cache that can only be opened by a team of geocachers singing “Happy Birthday?” People will be showcasing their best cache containers in the meet-up lounge from 1:30-2 pm. If your cache has already been placed in the wild, please come by the lounge to talk about it. Hopefully you will inspire other geocachers with your creativity! If you have a collection of Trackables, bring those to the party as well. Trackables will be shared in the meet-up lounge from 12-1 pm.

Attendees at the Block Party will receive a special icon, which is now up on the Event Cache page. If you are not able to make it this year, we encourage you to find a geocaching event in your area so that you can celebrate the first International Geocaching Day with your fellow geocachers! You will have the chance to obtain the Block Party icon again on August 18, 2012 – the second International Geocaching Day.

Benefits of Adding Home Coordinates

Please enter your home coordinates so we can provide information on new geocaches and geocaching events near you.

/ Eric Schudiske /

An inside look at the latest GPS Satellite Upgrade

U.S. GPS Satellite 2F-2

Beau Backus, or GeoBeau, is a geocacher who works in the satellite industry. He joined Geocaching.com representatives on a tour of the Boeing satellite manufacturing plant near Los Angeles, California. He says we are witnessing GPS evolve at a rapid pace: “We are really seeing a good change in the way GPS is evolving. It has gone from being strictly for military systems to where we are today; it is moving into a part of our social structure.”

On July 14, 2011, the U.S. launched its most recent GPS satellite in order to improve GPS accuracy all over the world. Whether we are aware of it or not, we have free access to billion dollar satellites on a daily basis, and it’s getting better. The U.S. government is in the process of replacing the current GPS constellation of satellites.

GPS Satellite Orbits

GPS satellite 2F-2  replaces a 20-year-old GPS satellite that has long surpassed its intended lifespan. This new and improved satellite features improved accuracy, enhanced internal atomic clocks, better anti-jam resistance, a signal for commercial aviation, a longer lifespan and reprogrammable on-board processors to evolve with future needs. The addition of this satellite will boost signal reception to users in difficult terrains and accuracy worldwide.

“The average geocacher has come to rely on GPS satellites always being there, and the signal always being there,” says GeoBeau.

Following the first launch of Sputnik in 1957, many satellites have been launched from countries around the world. They now orbit earth in a very particular pattern. More than 30 of those satellites are GPS satellites. Growth in the number of satellites has enabled the Global Positioning System (GPS) to become increasingly accurate.

After touring the Boeing facility in California, GeoBeau could not help but to notice the “enthusiasm that the engineers had toward geocaching and geocaching in the future.” The benefits of increased accuracy include more detailed navigation systems and 3D geo-spatial positioning, thus improving our favorite hobby of geocaching.

Beidou-2, China's GPS Satellite

China, Russia and the European Union have and will be launching GPS satellite systems into orbit in the near future. In April, China launched its annual satellite, the Beidou-2, and is expected to have its own fully functional GPS constellation by 2020. Russia recently launched the Glonass-K M36 in hopes of improving its consumer GPS technology. The European Union’s GPS satellite constellation, Galileo, is not expected to be ready to launch until 2014 or 2015.

The launching of new satellites means that we all have access to an increasingly accurate billion dollar commercial utility GPS upgrade for free.

Beau says that GPS hobbies like geocaching actually enable us to break down social and political barriers. “Geocaching is now a global interactive hobby that allows us to more closely interact with our brethren throughout the world.”

Hear more from GeoBeau on the importance of the GPS industry. Check out this video.

[youtube]zdlKegHPv9E[/youtube]

/ Eric Schudiske /

Strubklamm GC14D8W GEOCACHE OF THE WEEK – August 1, 2011

Strubklamm GC14D8W

Not far from Salzburg, Austria a daring adventure waits among the steep cliffs that shoulder the Almbach River. Strubklamm (GC14D8W) is a difficulty five, terrain five geocache placed by Baumrinde & sternfänger in 2007.

The cache owners ask geocachers to understand the risks, find the cache in groups and bring the proper equipment. The list of equipment includes a wetsuit, helmet and climbing gear.

Strubklamm GC14D8W

The cache container is located down a steep gorge. There’s more than just a cache to be found at this location. Cachers will navigate to the gorge, then climb up the canyon walls to jump off of perches (again and again) into a deep, refreshing pool of water. Some who logged a smiley on the cache say they jumped from as high as 13 meters (42 feet) into the water below.

Strubklamm GC14D8W

Continue your exploration of some of the most engaging geocaches from around the world. Explore all the Geocaches of the Week on our blog or view the Bookmark List on Geocaching.com