A Nice Presentation about Geocaching

I’m sitting in a presentation by Acacia Dixon from the NC Department of Public Instruction. She is talking about Geocaching in the classroom (or outside the classroom). I’ve known Acacia a long time, and have known about her passion for this technology. This is my first time seeing her presentation. So you’ll know something about Acacia. She just called one of the participants, “Darling!” 😉

She recommends a web site called Geocaching for basic information. You can type in your zip code, and get a list of caches within 100 miles. For Greenboro, one year ago, 1,135 caches showed up. So what is a cache. I’m on the edge of my seat.

The information on the listing include the type of cache, the degree of difficulty, the terrain (level or straight up), the date it was placed, the title of the cache and who planted it, and finally, the last time it was found. Acacia has learned not to count on finding a cache if a hurricane has come through lately. If you click one of the cache entries, you also get the the long/lat, called the waypoint, a description of what is in the cache, a map, and logged entries. These are writings from people who have searched for the cache. Smily face means they found it. Frowny face means they didnt’. A geo-muggle is someone who does not geocache.

Some ideas:

• Have students prepare multimedia presentations for the Internet of their geocache location, to draw interest to their community.
• Create a tour of the your town, recording the waypoints of interesting places. Then produce an audio narration of the place, and record it on an MP3 player. Then allow people to take the tour, going to the waypoint using a GPS device, and then listen to the narration for each spot. Very Very Cool!
• Do a puzzle, where students must work through some math problems to discover the waypoint numbers for the cache.
• You can purchase travel bugs from Geocache.com and place them in caches. When people find them, they are asked to take it, log it, and then plant it some where else. Students can then track where geocachers are going.

Geocaches have rules and guidelines:

1. Respect your environment
2. Respect other people
3. Protect yourself (where orange during hunting season)
4. Respect the Cache (put it back, don’t reveal it to muggles)
5. Dress appropriately.

Finding a cache involves:

1. research
2. preparation
3. the hunt
4. the find