1. Send groups of students, in turn, to the 4 corners of the school campus and record the coordinates. Show these coordinates to students either on the GPS unit itself, or on GoogleEarth to the whole class with a projector.
2. Send groups of students to coordinates that will put them at certain places on the school campus (library, office, cafeteria, bus stop, etc.) Again, use GoogleEarth with the whole class.
3. Send along an iPod, with audio files to play when they are at those certain points. The names of the audio files’ names should be somewhat cryptic, so as not to give away the location (such as the coordinates themselves).
4. Make this a kind of virtual cache, (where people aren’t supposed to find an actual hidden container, but they find a plaque of some kind that has information on it. This information is emailed to the hide-er of the cache). The school version of this could be asking about the plaque from the founding of the school, or something about the flag pole
5. If this is on a field trip, like one of the California missions, virtual cache waypoints could direct students to certain places around the mission. Many educators have used worksheets with questions that can only be answered as students progress around the location of a field trip. Maybe geocaching techniques could have something to contribute here…
6. Finally, my favorite application to this outdoor sport (yes, it’s considered a sport, not just a hobby – when you do some caching that requires some significant hiking, you’ll agree)… Anyway, my favorite application of this involves Scicon – The Clemmie Gil School of Science and Conservation! I’ve blogged about Scicon before (this year and last year). I’m still thinking about how to incorporate this activity with all the hikes and locations up there. Maybe have caches for students to find at places like the hermit’s cabin (at the top of Sky Trail), Eagle Point, etc. Maybe places like some of the spots that teachers take our students, could have coordinates to find would make good caches, too.

Objectives. What would an educational activity in California in 2007 be without objectives?! Actually, it’s a very valid question – What’s the point? The above activities are nifty, interesting, and easy for techies to get excited about, but what about the non-techies, and the unconvinced?

1. Math: The concept of the x-y axis is something that comes up in 6th grade math standards, and is much more vital in 7th grade math standards.
2. Science: The concept of the x-y axis being analogous to the latitude/longitude is key! Our understanding of world geography, and that we have a place on this planet that is unique, and can be described with numbers is an important idea. The more our world moves in this direction, the more this idea will be crucial to our students functioning in their jobs. GoogleEarth should definitely be used as a tool, as well.
3. Language Arts: Especially if students are reading and writing blogs with students in other parts of the world, they could communicate about their location. Understanding that their friends across the globe have different coordinates could really bring the reality of this to life. They’re not just numbers! Someone with whom they’ve communicated is at coordinates much different than ours – wow!
4. Social Studies: Finding the coordinates of certain places around the world would be interesting for the same reason as above, but would also help to put these other locations into context. Of course, this is particularly helpful for 6th grade Social Studies standards in California, which is about Ancient Civilizations. As I’ve learned from my friend Tom, Florida’s 6th grade standards are about World Geography, which is an even closer match!
5. Others? I’m sure there are many more ideas of how to integrate GPS’s and geocaching into education. If you have any other ideas, please comment on this article to continue the conversation!

This is what happened to me recently. However, this one was significantly different! It was so exciting, I had to share it with you here. My student was to be gone for 2 additional weeks just after the Christmas vacation. She went to India! (This is especially exciting for our class because later in the year, we will be studying ancient India!)
More common plan vs. This one
replaced activities,
activities that didn’t change,activities added to the list

1. Read as many books as you can get permission to check out, and take the Accelerated Reader test for each of them when you get back. as soon as you finish the book.
2. Write a “Response to Literature” in your notebook on your blog for every 2 points worth of your books.
3. Write a page in your notebook blog article for each day you are gone about each of the following prompts: How is India different from where you live? [several specific ideas about what to write about]. We will comment on your blog articles with questions and comments.
4. Science – Read the textbook [pgs], complete workbook pages [pgs]. Blog at least 2 articles, about things in the reading that you have questions about, and things in the reading that you hope to see and experience at Scicon. [That's our 6th grade Science camp. We'll be going up to Scicon for a week the day my student gets back.]
5. Social Studies -Read the textbook [pgs], answer questions [pgs]. Blog at least one article about what you read. [some specific prompts] OR Go to our class wiki and write a summary of what you read/learned.
6. I gave my email address, so that is there were any questions, my student could contact me…

This was all possible because my student:

1. had an internet connection where whe was,
2. is responsible enough to handle the technical skills necessary to accomplish the assignments,
3. is advanced enough to deal with the more advanced nature of the assignments

I was excited about this because it resembles distance learning, where there might be some face-to-face interaction, but a lot of the learning happens using internet tools, allowing direct interaction in various ways.

When my student wants to publish a blog article, the work will come to me via email. I will then be able to write comments and/or instructions for revision, and students will be able to read and comment on the work as well. This is possible using a tool called ClassBlogmeister.

To a remarkable degree, it will be as if my student never left!

I’m excited to see how this all turns out… I will blog again about how this turns out. I thought about publishing an article about this only after it works well. However, the more I thought about it, it made sense to share the beginning of the experiment, and then later share how it turned out. (That will be Part 2 – stay tuned!)