Snapshot of learning for Geocaching
Creating an authentic learning opportunity for students and staff
Contributed by Gerard MacManus, Papatoetoe High School, Auckland
Focusing Inquiry
Get Lost! is a geocaching project based on Education Outside the Classroom. It was one of a number of projects designed to provide Papatoetoe High School staff with opportunities to begin to explore effective teaching in The New Zealand Curriculum. The design of each of the projects included agreed principles for student learning and was intended to contribute to establishing a shared understanding and supportive school culture as the school explored The New Zealand Curriculum.
The design principles
- Projects should provide interactive, engaging learning activities which strengthen 'learning to learn' capabilities.
- Projects should help students to make authentic, relevant connections between their learning and the world they live in.
- Outcomes should conclude with an evaluation, using learner-derived indicators of successful learning and opportunities to celebrate achievements.
The following concepts also guided the design of projects:
- opportunities for curriculum coherence by making links within and across learning areas
- timetable suspension, allowing for increased scope and choice for learning
- students and staff learning collaboratively
- opportunities to nurture creativity and innovation
- enhancing staff collaboration and collegiality
- creating opportunities to connect with the needs and interests of junior students
- multi-literacies in a knowledge age and opportunities to consider new approaches to assessment.
(Also the following adapted from Claxton, 2006)
- problem solving tasks that encouraged reflective thought and action
- actively questioning the learning, including traditional and less familiar types of questions
- making links to real life contexts where outcomes and solutions genuinely matter
- designing challenging and authentic tasks that provided multiple opportunities for students to learn.
Staff members were invited to contribute project ideas that could be run over three days. Get Lost, submitted by teacher Gerard MacManus, used cell phones, Global Positioning System (GPS) devices and Auckland public transport to get lost through geocaching.
Geocaching is a high-tech treasure hunting game played throughout the world by adventure seekers equipped with GPS devices. The basic idea is to locate hidden containers (or geocaches) and log your find online. Each geocache is concealed in an outdoor environment, which for the purposes of Get Lost was confined to the Auckland Domain. Students were challenged to decrypt clues to locate each hidden cache using a simple Caesar cypher, which shifts the alphabet any number of letters to create a cypher, as used by Geocaching.com.
'I have a passion for technology, especially ICT and I was keen to share this with the students. I had previously attended an exciting geocaching workshop at a uLearn conference and begun to make connections with the directions for learning in The New Zealand Curriculum that staff had been considering'
Gerard MacManus
Teaching and Learning
Students began by researching the history of geocaching and its uses. This also required them to familiarise themselves with the different types of caches and strategies for deciphering the clues and GPS waypoints.
Students were tasked to locate an object or cache through map directions and using technology, in this case a GPS locator (free applications for iPhone or iTouch are also available). Students were able to access public transport to travel between locations. Students identified themselves and their location through various forms of electronic communication including texts and PXT.
Gerard briefly describes the programme for each day below:
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Day 1: Introduction and street orienteering around the school and local community.
These were clue-based activities using a map of the suburb to locate landmarks. Students were required to find the answer to the clues using an unlabeled map. Each group of students started at 3-minute intervals, and teachers were positioned around the course. Students submitted text answers and also PXT certain landmarks along the way. Students spent the remainder of the day familiarizing themselves with the GARMIN eTrex Handheld GPS through a series of group exercises.
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Day 2: Geocaching at the Auckland domain.
This was great fun and the students really enjoyed participating. We took the train to Newmarket where we walked to the Auckland Domain to undertake the activity. We had previously created geocaches for the students to locate. Students were given 10 geocache locations with hints. Each cache included code that students would text to staff to identify their location. Students also had to find various statues and PXT through themselves in a shot with the statue, whilst others solved puzzle caches and again would text in their answers. As the first texts came rolling in there was a lot of excitement. Knowing we had created something that provided a challenging and competitive climate, in which the students were actively engaged, was very motivating.
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Day 3:The final day.
This included a mix of “The Amazing Race” style activities around North Head and downtown Auckland. We followed the same technology setup as the previous days, but with the new terrain and more challenging clues.
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Hints and Tips.
Geocaching requires careful planning, 18 hours of planning and location scouting went into the Auckland Domain exercise alone.
Identify possible risks, Safety Action Plans are essential. In Geocaching all it takes is for one piece of information to be entered incorrectly and the students find themselves off course and potentially in an unsafe situation.
Students tend to follow a straight line and they will not always look for tracks and safe pathways such as footbridges and pedestrian paths. Choose your routes carefully and provide students with hints describing what they need to look out for.
Mobile phones are a good way of keeping in touch with the students. If a student became lost they used phones to make contact and were collected by a supervising adult.
Collect feedback from students at the end of each day to help with future planning. Our students were invited to text in their feedback, what worked for them and what could be improved.
Make sure to collect your caches at the end of the day. We had 14 text messages come through from the public that found some of the caches and thought it was part of a radio competition.
We did not use the students’ mobile phone numbers, rather provided them with 2degrees mobile SIM cards to avoid issues with phone credits.
Learning Inquiry
Planning and participating in this project provided many opportunities for staff to think differently about teaching and learning in The New Zealand Curriculum. Specifically implementing the key competencies and what this might mean for both students and teachers. The following highlights some of Gerard’s initial observations and thinking about the relationship between the competencies and what teachers are doing to model and develop these competencies, in this case, through a geocaching project.
Thinking- students were required to read and make sense of the maps, GPS coordinates, and puzzles that led them to various clues, caches and other tasks. They needed to use knowledge from the previous day’s activities to solve the final clue and order the railway stations that we stopped at the previous day, from our origin, to Newmarket South.
Using Language, symbols and text– this competency is key to successful geocaching. The project included puzzles, decrypts to solve a puzzle and locate caches. Students also had to solve technological puzzles and questions through map reading, locating GPS waypoints and marking where they were on a map.
Managing self- Perseverance and self-motivation to complete the puzzles and caches were a key factor for students in this project. The students also displayed a ‘can-do’ attitude that was evident as they traveled between locations, often ahead of the allocated time estimated by teachers, and coordinated ferry timetables. The students also needed to manage their phone credits (preloaded SIM cards were provided by 2 Degrees). It was great to see them respecting this, as their phones were key to participating successfully in the project.
Relating to others- one of the amazing things throughout the project was the way students looked after each other and the teachers. They negotiated between themselves to identify individual and group strengths and who would take responsibility for puzzles and finding specific caches.
Participating and contributing- While the students responded positively to the team and competitive nature of the challenges they also were very aware of looking out for the welfare of others and the safety of all teams.
Further actions include continuing to consider how we are modeling key competencies in our learning programmes, informed by the outcomes of this project, and utilizing some of the recently purchased ‘Kick Start’ resources designed to help teachers to reflect on the nature of the key competencies and the potential they hold for teaching and learning.
For further support, resources and articles visit Gerard’s geocaching session links from EduCampNZ 2010 posted on the wiki.
