Donna's Blog

Locationless Caching with Fourth Grade Social Studies

Description

*The information below about how GPS works is from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum website.

Geocaching is similar to a scavenger hunt, but on a larger scale. Geocachers hide a collection of items, usually in a waterproof container, in a certain locations, then post the longitude/latitude coordinates of the locations on a geocaching website. People can search for caches hidden their area and use GPS (global positioning) handheld units to locate them.

I wasn't very familiar with how GPS worked, so I did a little Internet research to find the following information. GPS satellites send information to GPS handheld units. Each GPS satellite transmits data that indicates its location and the current time. The signals move at the speed of light and may arrive at GPS receivers at slightly different times because some satellites are farther away than others. When the receiver estimates the distance to at least four GPS satellites, it can calculate its position in three dimensions. There are at least 24 GPS satellites operating above the Earth at all times.

Key findings from readings

In the Lary article, a concept called "locationless caching" is mentioned. In this type of caching, someone creates a cache describing a certain type of object they are searching for, and others take pictures and/or write descriptions of this type of object and post them online with their longitude/latitude coordinates. Cachers don't need a GPS unit for this type of caching, so it would be great way to start incorporating geocaching into your classroom and allow students to become familiar with the process. On a related note, the article also mentioned "travel bugs," which are tags that can be attached to objects. A cacher indicates where the bug wants to go and "releases" it into a cache. Each time the bug is moved, the person who moved it records the movements on a geocaching website. Lary noted that travel bugs might be of particular interest to elementary teachers, and the idea does interest me, especially for sending a travel bug around North Carolina (see below).

Applications to Teaching

North Carolina is the focus of the fourth grade social studies curriculum. I would like to use locationless caching to allow my students to take a virtual tour of North Carolina. The students could describe various historical or famous NC locations they want a photo and description of, and people who visit or live near those locations could send them in. Some examples that immediately pop to mind are Jockey's Ridge, Cape Hatteras or another of the NC lighthouses, the state capitol in Raleigh, the Biltmore Estate, Mount Mitchell, etc. I would probably divide the locations into the coastal, piedmont, and mountain regions and assign groups of students to each region. This activity would be like a state-wide field trip! A travel bug could be used in conjunction with this activity by sending it around NC, and we could create a physical map of where it had been. I would really like to try this idea next year. A website I found for starting a locationless cache is www.waymarking.com.

Posted at 01:56PM Jun 10, 2006 by DEAL, DONNA in General  |  Comments[0]