What makes a great hiding spot?

Can you say...Easter Egg Hunt? Growing up, I remember running around my church's yard in my Easter suit searching high and low with the other church kids finding those great candy-filled plastic eggs. What a great time! Were the eggs difficult to find? Not too bad, considering they were brightly-colored and within my childish reach.

An Easter egg hunt is what we should consider when looking for great hiding spots in the school yard. Remember that eye-level and below is key. Anything higher than your students' eye-level might be out of your shortest student's reach. Plant life can make great hiding spots. For example, mulch beds, shrubs, right around the roots of trees but covered a little by grass clippings or pieces of bark can hide smaller caches. Many trees have notches, holes, large roots among which caches can become more camouflaged. If you find a good spot up in a tree, use it, but be sure it's not so high that a child might be tempted to "go ape."
If you have a school yard which is bereft of natural plant life, perhaps there are metallic structures that may be used. Cache containers equipped with magnetic strips on them can be attached to fencing, poles, signs, and other metal school structures and still remain hidden.

Finally, care should be taken to carefully camouflage your containers. A roll of camo duct tape can be purchased from WalMart or other similar store for around $2-3. This can be wrapped around film canisters and other plastic containers. For a little more moola (around $5 per can), brown or green spray paint can be purchased to coat all your containers. Camouflage colors are available at similar stores. For years, I have used 2 cans (1 brown, 1 OD green) and used both to give my containers a nice camo look. Some geocachers have used hide-a-key rocks for tricky cache containers, among many other great ideas. I heard from a teacher years ago who glues grass clippings to the top of Altoid cases and those old floppy disk cases and hides these containers in the middle of an open field! The possibilities are only limited by your imagination and your students will appreciate your creative hides. Feel free to leave a comment with your great ideas to add!

Rainy Day Blues? Part 2...Mathcaching

If you missed the first part of this post, you can find it here. Sometimes, you have this tremendously awesome lesson planned to take your students outside educaching and you've prepared several hours, when all of a sudden, the storm clouds roll in. You need to have a backup activity in mind. If you are a math teacher of 5th grade or higher, I recommend Mathcaching! The folks at www.mathbits.com have put together some excellent resources here.

The way mathcaching works is, you visit a web page called Box 1. There are 3 math problems to solve here. You then use the correct answers to help navigate to a web page called Box 2. The correct answers to this next set of problems will lead you to the next cache page and so on. This is just like finding virtual caches online. It works similar to a puzzle cache on geocaching.com. This activity is a lot of fun. The problems are challenging, and your students will work hard to find the correct answers and will check their work if they get a bum link.

If you have laptops, ipads, ipods or school desktop computers to use with students, you might want to pair them up for this hour (+)  activity. It can be split over several class periods or when you have a spare 10 or 15 minutes. If you have a teacher computer and are able to project the website to your classroom, then this also makes a great whole class activity. I highly recommend visiting here to try out the basic mathcaching hunt on your own first before using it with students. I think you'll be impressed and you may have one more great tool in your arsenal of inclement weather activities!

Happy Hunting!

Educaching hits Philly!

What an exciting time we had at the ISTE 2011 Conference! I had the privilege to work with a tremendous group of educators from all over the world. The session was called Digital Pirates, which is one I have taught before, but this was a 3 hour, hands-on workshop. We used this longer chunk of time to go find geocaches in downtown Philadelphia. This was exciting, because it gave everyone the opportunity to fully understand the reason why students would love using GPS in education. If you are an instructor or educator who teaches other adults about GPS in education, I highly recommend conducting a workshop of at least 3 hours! Do not worry about filling the time...it goes too quickly. Contact me if you need materials or support, or just browse this blog for ideas and resources. The pictures below show the ISTE educators on their geocaching hunt.

 The Black Sculpture (GC2572H)...Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz, anyone? A tiny nanocache was hidden on this piece of art.

 

This cache under the stairs was no match for our team! Love Me, Love Me (GC2W856) was the name of this tricky microcache.

 We used the Geomate.jr receivers...satellite reception was a challenge due to the skyscrapers, but it didn't stop us from a successful treasure hunt!

Promoting Inquiry in the Gifted Classroom...

The article below is fantastic proof for using GPS and GIS in education, and not just for the gifted classroom! Another article that is well worth the time is cited below:


Broda, H. W., et. al., Using GIS and GPS Technology as an Instructional Tool. The Social Studies (Washington, D.C.) v. 94 no. 4 (July/August 2003) p. 158-60.

Both articles have been extremely influential in my research of using GPS with students. Any teacher wishing to pursue this the same and need a rationale and/or purpose for doing so should read these articles by Shaunessy and Broda. The case for using GPS and GIS (geographic information system) and the benefit of using them with students is plainly stated. Not only are these systems described in detail, but ideas and activities are presented as to their application in education. Enjoy!

Geomate.jr Resources

The Geomate.jr GPS receiver from Apisphere is a cost-effective, user friendly unit to use with students of all ages. It is just one possibility for the Educaching teacher. Below are some resources to get started using your Geomate receiver with your students. Visit www.educaching.com to see these devices combined with a unique curriculum that transforms education into an outdoor learning experience. Kits of all sizes and needs are provided. Enjoy!

A Personal Story

Hide and Seek!

Jason Hubbard

Woodland Elementary

Perrysburg, Ohio

Alone in the woods with only my handheld GPS device and millions of dollars worth of satellites to help me navigate, I was looking for a small container hidden off the beaten path. Elated with joy, I finally found my tiny canister containing a clue that would prompt me to solve a simple math problem. As I excitedly fumbled with my pen and a scrap of paper to evaluate a numerical expression, I double checked my calculations and was on my way to find the final hidden prize! For those of you who have no idea what I am talking about, geocaching is an outdoor adventure that utilizes GPS technology to take people on high-tech scavenger hunts for hidden caches. Now, imagine using this concept to take students beyond the four walls of the classroom on engaging hunts centered around their learning and you’ve got what I call educaching!

I realized that a unique hook for learning could be found in educaching. I began, a la “cart before the horse,” by writing a teacher’s manual to help myself and other teachers who wanted to implement this strategy from the ground up and began using my own students as guinea pigs to pilot test the program and see if it had worth. The first year, I started a GPS-based after school club with 5th graders. To my surprise, half of the 5th grade showed up and I found myself in charge of 43 students (and quickly scrambling for parent volunteers!). The students simply wanted to use the technology to search for things I had hidden on the school campus. They enjoyed the thrill of seeking for something hidden. Imagine...students being thrilled to learn and wishing they could stay at school longer in order to do so...this is what happens through the vehicle of educaching.

The concept is simple: I arm groups of students with a handheld GPS and take them outdoors where I have pre-arranged clues in hidden containers. Each group begins searching for an assigned container which holds a math problem, for example. If the problem is solved correctly by the team, the answer tells them which numbered container to find next and they’re off running to the next location using their GPS device.  If they answer incorrectly, they clamor to correct their work in order to find the right solution. Another type of learning in this context can be pictured in a lesson I call “Grand Slam.” In this lesson, the students are teamed up and take turns kicking a kickball from home base. The total distance of each kick is measured by the students with the GPS device. They then calculate the mean, median, mode, and range of their personal kicks and compare with kicks of their classmates. It ends up being an exciting lesson that allows them to directly participate in their learning with their own data. When doing these kinds of educaching lessons, the students don’t even realize that they are using problem-solving skills, team collaboration, science, mathematics, language arts, and good communication all wrapped up into one exciting experience.

After GPS club and using this curriculum periodically throughout the school years with my students to engage them in lessons, I also studied educaching in my action research concerning the effects on motivation of today’s learners by using GPS in education. The results of the research are undeniable...providing students with this technology, cultivating outdoor learning environments, and providing a framework similar to “The Great Race” is a formula for success when it comes to student engagement. I can’t wait to see what happens next! I have plans to guide my students to create an outdoor educaching park adjacent to our school’s campus. The hunts will be completely student-created and maintained and would center on learning mathematics, science, and local history. This will also connect my 5th graders with their community as they would be creating an educational environment that everyone can utilize: from homeschoolers, to scouts, to youth groups, to neighbors...the possibilities are endless and the well of excitement is overflowing. Let the hunt for learning begin!

Math ideas run rampant with GPS in education! One helpful resource I've found is the edublog here, but it is currently down for repair. Below are some ideas gleaned from this site:

• Calculate the perimeter or area of your school or other large area - you could

even use the area calculation to estimate the volume of water that hits that area

during a 1" rainstorm!

• Calculate the slope of a hill, using the trip information page. It will show you

how far you have walked, and you can note the change in elevation. After that, let the power of the Pythagorean

Theorem guide you!

• Magic of Nine (GCGJPT) Geocache

(http://www.geocaching.com/seek/

cache_details.aspx?wp=GCGJPT).

Through some mathematical trick, the

procedure outlined in the cache

description will give correct

coordinates, even thgough the input

numbers could be different. Can

anyone explain to me how this one

works?

• Create a path, and at each turn, tell

your partner the angle to measure to

make the next turn. Could each

member of the team retrace the

correct path?

• Create a multi-cache, and require

students to do different math functions

or problems to come up with the

correct numbers for the next location.

• Have students walk and plot on the

map the endpoints of a given shape

(triangle, rhombus, parallelogram,

circle, etc.) and see their results. (My

addition - using Google Earth, plot the

coordinates and enter them into the

GPS units. Have students go from

point to point and see how the shape

that they walked compares to the

shape that they plotted.)

• Calculate the distance between 2

points, then calculate the legs using

Pythagoreans Theorem

• Calculate the height of an object

• Calculate or find the elevations of

different points and graph those

elevations.

• Area: Have students go outside and

step off an area, graph it, and find the

area. Use the GPS to walk the same

area to see how close you

were with the first estimate.

• (Elementary) Use the units to

practice or learn cardinal

directions of N, S, E, & W.

• Practice adding and

subtracting 3 digit numbers to

come up with GPS

coordinates to travel

from one cache or

location to another.

• Use a Sudoku

puzzle to give cache

coordinates - replace

the first needed digit in the

puzzle with an A, second number with

a B, and so on until the full

coordinates are given.