Geocaching in Education

Geocaching is an emerging, technology rich game that uses a hand-held GPS, the Internet and some plain old detective skills to find hidden caches. It is highly addictive and often frustrating but lots of fun! There are over 1,000,000 caches hidden worldwide with over 18,000 of those hidden in Australia. It is a physical and highly educational activity that can be enjoyed by students and teachers at both primary and secondary levels. It covers many areas of the curriculum from Geography to Mathematics, Literacy to Physical Education. Geocaching is an excellent way to attract those students who do not participate in traditional sporting activities to be involved in a physical activity.
The aim of the presentation is to give participants, in both a theoretical and practical manner, a brief overview of the concepts of Geocaching and how it can be used in an educational setting.
The presentation will cover the following main topics:
The basic concepts of Geocaching
The equipment needed to undertake the sport
Ideas for use in an educational setting
There will be demonstrations showing what a hand-held GPS is and how to use it, what a cache may look like (as there are many different variations) and what the usual contents of a cache are. As well as some of the various Internet based resources for Geocaching.
We will also cover some of the unique and fantastic places to hide a cache and the basic puzzle strategies used by cache hiders to make the game more interesting such as puzzle caches, multi caches, virtual caches and web caches. We will also look at trackable items such as Geocoins and Travel Bugs and Geocaching environmental initiatives such as CITO (Cache In Trash Out) which encourages cleaning the areas where caches are placed.
Resources for Geocaching that are suitable for educational use will be highlighted and some of the best practise uses of Geocaching within the classroom will also be examined.
By the end of the session you will be hooked and will never look at a playground the same again!

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