Teach ‘Em How to Fish

Geocaching, Part 1 – What is it?

It’s official – I’m a geocacher!
I’ve been doing a lot of geocaching this Easter break. For those of you who don’t know what geocaching is, here are some links I’ve assembled: http://del.icio.us/wark/geocaching

Basically, geocaching is a big treasure-hunting game that people with GPS devices play with each other. A cache is hidden somewhere, and the hide-er makes note of the GPS coordinates (latitude & longitude), gives a creative name and description, and logs it on a site like geocaching.com. There might be some trinkets in the cache (you’re encouraged to take something, and leave something), but there’s always a log book. You’re supposed to sign the log book, and hide it back where you found it. Then, you go back to geocaching.com and log your find. This way, your profile shows all the caches you’ve found, and others looking for that cache later can see the logs, as well. As geocachers interact with each other in this way, a community if built. For instance, we have found several caches hidden by “The Plunketts”, and we’ve gotten familiar with their style.

“Muggles,” named after people without magical abilities in the Harry Potter books, are those that don’t know about geocaching. In the case of urban caches, where there would be the potential for someone unaware of the whole concept to destroy, move, throw away, or otherwise sabotage the cache, being aware of muggles is verrrrry important. In fact, one cache that caused us significant difficulty was placed in an area where there was a security guard!

I must admit, I wouldn’t be much of a ‘cacher if I was alone. My wife and I ‘cache under the name “orangewormz.” We got the idea from the fact that we both like Apple computers (and worms like Apples – hence the “worm” part), and my wife has red hair (which is more orange -y than red – hence the “orange” part). Then, we wanted to spell it a nifty way, so we changed the “s” to a “z”.

So what does all this have to do with education? How can this be used in the classroom (actually, outside the classrom, but you know what I mean!)? I’ve been racking my brain to come up with good answers to that question. After trying to come up with some answers to that question, and writing several ideas for different subject areas, it became apparent that it deserved its own posting!

Tags: del.icio.us, geocaching