Dr. Barbara L. BranchBranch Consulting
Eureka: Using Geocaching to Support Differentiation
What is geocaching?
Began in 2000
*Military satellites opened to the public *On May 3rd, someone hid a ‘cache’ in Oregon. It was visited twice within 3 days and logged in the log book once.*Mike Teague, the first to find it, built a web page to document the ‘caches.*Jeremy Irish, the current operator of the Geocaching website, expanded the idea and named it ‘geocaching’.
What is geocaching?
*Individuals hide ‘caches’ or treasure boxes
What is geocaching?
*They post latitude and longitude on the internet www.geocaching.com
*Others locate the treasure using a GPS unit and log the visit
*Sometimes the hunter trades treasures or leave treasures (called swag)
What is geocaching?
What is geocaching?
Getting Your Students StartedYou need a classroom or school set of 10-15 GPS
Units & Compasses
*Write a technology grant for $500 - $1000 *Tech Grants *Donors Choose.org
*Garmin*etrex*GPS 60
*Compasses*Bruton
Getting Your Students Started
*Teach latitude and longitude*Teach GPS Unit and compass use*Teach GPS*Teach geocaching vocabulary*Cache*Swag*FTF*DNF*Log*Waypoints*Geocoins
Getting Your Students Started
*Teach the geocaching process
*Get started with simple caches that are large enough to see without too much exploring (plastic glad storage containers)
*Hide caches in your schoolyard or neighborhood park
Supporting Differentiation*Select a lesson or unit you want to differentiate
*Select an activity or final project*Do the activity as a geocaching session*Hide the clues or questions in caches
*Students learning about geography, directionality, latitude, and longitude
*Tiering can be done by creating various levels of questions, activities, or information for each cache
*Compacting can be done by providing different caches for different levels of students.
Supporting Differentiation*History
*Explore historic sites, cemeteries, landmarks using GPS*Create a family vacation
*Science*Plot various GPS locations along a local river or lake
and evaluate water quality at each location*Use Google Earth to follow the Iditarod Race
*Math*Find caches with objects to measure, record, and figure
the average*Provide riddles or word problems at each cache
Barb’s Diigo
Is this worth the time?*Active learning*10% vs 90% of retention*Stimulates students to search further and ask more
questions
*Gets kids and you outside and physically active
*Students can share with their families and create a new healthy family activity
*It’s fun
www.drbabs.wikispaces.com