Geocashing at School
Some
time ago a good friend of mine picked me up for a hike to the woods and brought
along his smart phone with a GPS application for geocaching. Geocashes are
basically little boxes which people that belong to the Geocashing community
hide away somewhere for others to search using a GPS device. The coordinates
for the Cashs can be retrieved from a website called geocashing.com. When you
succeed and finally find the little box you are after there will be list in
there of all those who have found the cash, to which you can add your
Geocashing nickname. Along with the list there are sometimes some gimmicks like
small toys and so forth.
In order to find the cashs we were after we had to climb some steep hillsides, solve a riddle and break into an old abandoned house. When we went home I had added my name to three different lists and had in a way become part of the community. I then decided to set up my own account and download the Geocashing software for my Ipad and registered on the website, to be able to go searching on my own. Since then I have dragged lots of my friends trough the city of Marburg and out into the woods to share this experience.
One cash that I really enjoyed a lot was one I did in Hamburg in the palm house of the Planten un Blomen Park. This cash did not only involve finding one single box. It was a so called multicash where you go trough different stations and have to collect information to find the little box at the end of the cash. What was very stunning for me was how much fun I had reading through all the little information signs on the plants in order to piece together the coordinates for the final station of the cash. I knew that I felt a lot like doing a classical rally in school, where you go through a museum and fill out questionnaires, only I was highly motivated because I wanted to see my name on the list at the end of the quest.
Then I thought: Why not do this at school? I am going to become a history teacher and I really want to be out there in museums and old buildings and show them to my pupils, so I can use everything possible to make things interesting. One thing I found while doing the cash in the plant house was that a lot of the information I was searching for actually stuck with me.
Apparently I am not the first one to come up with the idea. The website www.gps-schule.de by the Medienzentrum Reutlingen also promotes Geocashing at school. They suggest that there are a lot of competences that are taught using this method:1. technical, as students learn how to handle the devices, 2. social, as the pupils solve or plan riddles together, 3. personal, as self reliance is needed in the process and 4. knowdledge in the given subject is transported, like geographical knowledge, or information about biology if the quest takes place in a museum.
The biggest problem is that Geocashing is a very time consuming endeavour. Either the teacher has to plan and lay out the cashes, which is a lot of work for up to 30 pupils or he has to check the cashes that are there for quality to ensure they are suitable for his / her lessons. A way which might solve this problem is doing the concepts for the cashs with groups of pupils so afterwards another group can solve the riddle.
All in all Geocashing is something that can be used at school by teachers that are willing to invest time and energy to make it work for their subject. Not only the planing phase but also the cashing itself take up a lot precious time. And last but not least it also requires the right equipment which not every school can provide.
In order to find the cashs we were after we had to climb some steep hillsides, solve a riddle and break into an old abandoned house. When we went home I had added my name to three different lists and had in a way become part of the community. I then decided to set up my own account and download the Geocashing software for my Ipad and registered on the website, to be able to go searching on my own. Since then I have dragged lots of my friends trough the city of Marburg and out into the woods to share this experience.
One cash that I really enjoyed a lot was one I did in Hamburg in the palm house of the Planten un Blomen Park. This cash did not only involve finding one single box. It was a so called multicash where you go trough different stations and have to collect information to find the little box at the end of the cash. What was very stunning for me was how much fun I had reading through all the little information signs on the plants in order to piece together the coordinates for the final station of the cash. I knew that I felt a lot like doing a classical rally in school, where you go through a museum and fill out questionnaires, only I was highly motivated because I wanted to see my name on the list at the end of the quest.
Then I thought: Why not do this at school? I am going to become a history teacher and I really want to be out there in museums and old buildings and show them to my pupils, so I can use everything possible to make things interesting. One thing I found while doing the cash in the plant house was that a lot of the information I was searching for actually stuck with me.
Apparently I am not the first one to come up with the idea. The website www.gps-schule.de by the Medienzentrum Reutlingen also promotes Geocashing at school. They suggest that there are a lot of competences that are taught using this method:1. technical, as students learn how to handle the devices, 2. social, as the pupils solve or plan riddles together, 3. personal, as self reliance is needed in the process and 4. knowdledge in the given subject is transported, like geographical knowledge, or information about biology if the quest takes place in a museum.
The biggest problem is that Geocashing is a very time consuming endeavour. Either the teacher has to plan and lay out the cashes, which is a lot of work for up to 30 pupils or he has to check the cashes that are there for quality to ensure they are suitable for his / her lessons. A way which might solve this problem is doing the concepts for the cashs with groups of pupils so afterwards another group can solve the riddle.
All in all Geocashing is something that can be used at school by teachers that are willing to invest time and energy to make it work for their subject. Not only the planing phase but also the cashing itself take up a lot precious time. And last but not least it also requires the right equipment which not every school can provide.
