A Most Devious Geocache

This geocache would be brutal, but quite a thrill when finally found! This set of photos is from a series posted on flikr by SEDCClint. He also blogs at GPS & Geocaching in Education.

Here's a fence post like many others in the desert.

Nothing unusual here.

An ordinary railroad spike.

Ah, but is it?

The end of the spike was drilled and tapped. Then a hollow bolt containing the log was screwed in the end. Another symptom of microsiscannotfindus.

I Told You So

See...

My ideas about using geocaching as an educational tool are starting to cache on. Oooops - I mean catch on. Teachers attending an education conference in Austin, Texas got to learn the easy way, by going geocaching!

"This could be a really cool school activity," Janet LaMasters, chair of the computer science department at Ursuline Academy of Dallas, said of the geocaching activity." It definitely has possibilities." Her school is considering purchasing some 10 handheld GPS units.

Click on the GPSr photo to read the entire story.

And to think, I started it all... Yeah, that's the ticket.

Education...

And it was me, not Al Gore, that invented the internet.

Along with an aquaint... uh... my wife... Morgan Fairchild.

Yeah, that's the ticket

History Caches

Since it's colder here than a... well, it's cold OK?

We won't be doing any geocaching today.


A few posts back, misterteacher left a comment that got me thinking about using geocaching for education. One of our favorite caches was the Watertown History Cache. Very educational, and a brilliant puzzle to put together. So I thought I'd do a little thinking about educational caches, and here's what I came up with.

A great idea is to have the class create a cache, like this one, where student keys travel the world. This creates opportunities for studies of Science, Geography, & History. Another idea is to have someone create caches for the class to discover. The caches could be temporary, just for that event, or permanent, for anyone to find.

We found a bunch of caches at The Bjornson Educational Center, (brutal caching, read about it here) where mamakat has hidden over a dozen caches. She is an educator in nearby Menomonie, Wisconsin. She takes her class to Bjornson to study history, science, & nature. Geocaching is part of it.

Here's some ideas for history caches.
"History Of Corona" Totem Pole Cache This one is a micro at the base of an historic totem pole.

20th Century History 1960 This one is a multiple, puzzle cache based on news stories of the 20th Century. It's too bad that coterm59 didn't add links to the news stories. That way when finding each cache, we could just click on the link to read more about the event.

6000 years of Hellenic History-Argos Here's a series of caches (too bad they're in Greece. But I guess that would be the idea behind Hellenic History). Smiley emoticon placed here. There's bunches of historic information in this series.

A little more history Here's one that requires the finder to answer a question before they can claim the find.

You probably get the idea. With just a little imagination, geocaching can be used to create interest in just about any subject.

Geocaching in Education

It looks like we'll be seeing more and more young geocachers out there in the field as educators employ GPS technology for education. The idea was pitched recently at a meeting of the National Council for Geographic Education. (You can read more here.) Educators have been using GPS for some time now, but not on a national level. For example, the School District of the Menomonie,WI Area integrated the The Bjornson Education-Recreation Center into its regular educational program. There, educator and geocacher, mama kat, has hidden over two dozen caches on the property - and as you can read from a previous post - some of them can be very challenging! Local schools routinely schedule field trips to the property. What better way to combine geography, biology, and technology to keep kids interested in the world around us.

Debra's & Emma's Travel Bugs

Wayfarer222 retrieved two keys from the Key Team #1 (GCWB95) cache. That cache is part of an elementary school education project to learn more about latitude and longitude. Each student placed a key in the cache with his/her name or initials. Wayfarer222 got Debra's & Emma's keys. She them made travel bugs of each one. Watch as both Emma's & Debra's keys travel the globe.