1 / 24

Eureka: Using Geocaching to Support Differentiation

Eureka: Using Geocaching to Support Differentiation. Dr. Barbara L. Branch Branch Consulting. What is geocaching?. Began in 2000 Military satellites opened to the public On May 3rd, someone hid a ‘cache’ in Oregon. It was visited twice within 3 days and logged in the log book once .

reegan
Download Presentation

Eureka: Using Geocaching to Support Differentiation

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. Eureka: Using Geocaching to Support Differentiation Dr. Barbara L. Branch Branch Consulting

  2. What is geocaching? Began in 2000 • Military satellites opened to the public • On May 3rd, someone hid a ‘cache’ in Oregon. It was visited twice within 3 days and logged in the log book once. • Mike Teague, the first to find it, built a web page to document the ‘caches. • Jeremy Irish, the current operator of the Geocaching website, expanded the idea and named it ‘geocaching’.

  3. What is geocaching? • Individuals hide ‘caches’ or treasure boxes

  4. What is geocaching? • They post latitude and longitude on the internet www.geocaching.com • Others locate the treasure using a GPS unit and log the visit • Sometimes the hunter trades treasures or leave treasures (called swag)

  5. What is geocaching?

  6. What is geocaching?

  7. Getting Your Students Started You need a classroom or school set of 10-15 GPS Units & Compasses • Write a technology grant for $500 - $1000 • Tech Grants • Donors Choose.org • Garmin • etrex • GPS 60 • Compasses • Bruton

  8. Geocaching Tools GPS Units • Magellan

  9. Geocaching Tools GPS Units • Lowrance

  10. Geocaching Tools GPS Units • Garmin

  11. Geocaching Tools Smartphone app • Geocaching.com

  12. Geocaching Tools

  13. Geocaching Tools

  14. Getting Your Students Started • Teach latitude and longitude • Teach GPS Unit and compass use • Teach GPS • Teach geocaching vocabulary • Cache • Swag • FTF • DNF • Log • Waypoints • Geocoins

  15. Getting Your Students Started • Teach the geocaching process • Get started with simple caches that are large enough to see without too much exploring (plastic glad storage containers) • Hide caches in your schoolyard or neighborhood park

  16. Supporting Differentiation • Select a lesson or unit you want to differentiate • Select an activity or final project • Do the activity as a geocaching session • Hide the clues or questions in caches • Students learning about geography, directionality, latitude, and longitude • Tiering can be done by creating various levels of questions, activities, or information for each cache • Compacting can be done by providing different caches for different levels of students.

  17. Supporting Differentiation • History • Explore historic sites, cemeteries, landmarks using GPS • Create a family vacation • Science • Plot various GPS locations along a local river or lake and evaluate water quality at each location • Use Google Earth to follow the Iditarod Race • Math • Find caches with objects to measure, record, and figure the average • Provide riddles or word problems at each cache

  18. Barb’s Diigo

  19. Is this worth the time? • Active learning • 10% vs 90% of retention • Stimulates students to search further and ask more questions • Gets kids and you outside and physically active • Students can share with their families and create a new healthy family activity • It’s fun

  20. www.drbabs.wikispaces.com

More Related