Geocaching: great technology use for the classroom...

Well the summer is supposed to be a time to play for teachers and I have found something that is a blast to do. While at Space Camp one of the teachers in my group from Ohio told me about this thing called "geocaching" that I was embarrassed to say I had never heard of before. Basically this is a high tech "treasure hunting" game.

If you are like I was and clueless on all of this, let me give you a quick explanation. With a handheld GPS unit, you go to a website like Geocaching.com and find the coordinates for a "cache". Now a cache is a container - which can be as small as an Altoids can or even a large Tupperwear tub - that is hidden somewhere outside in a public place where once found you sign the enclosed log and sometimes there are even small prizes that you can take by replacing it with something you brought. The fun is that generally a standard GPS unit will get you to within about 10-20 feet and so then you have to go hunting. As the tagline goes geocaching is "where YOU are the search engine!"

At this point you are probably thinking well that is all well and good but it is not like you are going to go traveling across the country to find a silly little prize. Well according to Geochaching.com there are currently 287,043 active caches on their database and when I did a search I found out that there are 1,758 within a 100 miles of my house (one even being literally a half mile away!!!).

This is a blast!!! It is a great outdoor activity not only to do yourself but also something fun for the whole family especially with little ones (and for me that means me and my dogs).

And as much fun as it is, there are also some great educational tie-ins. My friend Tom, who turned me on to this, actually purchased a set of GPS units through a grant he wrote and uses geocaching as an activity for his science classes. He hides caches around the school grounds and sends the students out in small groups to find them - what a great way to incorporate technology into the classroom. There could also be some great math lessons worked in talking about calculating the triangulation of satellites as well as the geography of using latitudes and longitudes. This is definitely something I want to look into doing. [Here is a link that I found with some other ideas in how to incorporate this into the classroom: Geocaching with Kids]

Now I am one of those anal people who does a lot of research before purchasing anything and so that is what I did in this case. After hours of reading reviews I ended up purchasing the Magellan eXplorist 210 from Amazon (after a $30 rebate it will end up costing $95). My second choice would have been the Garmin eTrex Legend which was also highly rated. These are actually low end units but plenty powerful for what I am doing. But in talking with people they say you should not go with anything below around $75 if you want anything with reliability.

I would love to hear from anybody else who has found this geocaching universe. I especially would like to hear about any other classroom tie-ins that you have found.