Welcome to Kenmare

Feature Stories (Vol. 110 No. 3--1/16/2008)

Grant allows second graders
to enhance skills using
GPS technology

By Caroline Downs

What sounds like a treasure hunt for kids will actually be a lesson in geography, math, science, civic, reading and writing skills enhanced by satellite global positioning system (GPS) technology.

All in second grade.

Kenmare elementary teacher Tami McNeiley is sharing her personal interest in geocaching with her second grade class, thanks to one of ten $2,500 grants awarded in December to educators across the state by the Qwest Foundation and the North Dakota Education Technology Council.

The purpose of the Qwest Teachers and Technology grant program is to recognize public school instructors who use technology with students in grades kindergarten through 12 in innovative ways to improve the students’ performance, and to fund technology-related projects.

McNeiley’s plan is so dependent on technology as to be a nearly paperless activity for students. The basic idea behind geocaching is that items and a logbook are left in a container, often a metal ammunition box, for someone else to find. Clues are recorded for the cache’s latitude and longitude, also known as waypoints. This information is made available through a geocaching website accessed by other geocachers who download the waypoints and use their own GPS units to go and find the actual container.

"It’s addicting!" McNeiley said as she described the geocaching she, her husband Ron and their two young children do together as a family. "There are a hundred geocaches around the Kenmare area right now. In Minot, there are 500!"

The McNeileys, who started geocaching with Ron’s parents, may spend a typical weekend checking for a new cache on www.geocaching.com, downloading waypoints for the cache, and then taking a trip to find the items. "They all have a story," McNeiley said. "And you always leave little trinkets. That way, the next geocacher takes something from yours and leaves something for you."

She explained that geocaches could be categorized by various levels of difficulty and terrain. "There’s some in Minot we haven’t found yet," she said.

Geocachers participate under their own etiquette, which includes picking up trash found while geocaching and leaving message’s in the cache’s logbook. Much of the information about found geocaches is shared online, but names and other personal information about individual geocachers is not included.

As McNeiley watched her own children’s enthusiasm and skills grow, she realized her students would enjoy the activity while also developing a host of skills usually taught in more traditional ways. "First, we’ll have to learn about geocaching, about latitude and longitude and how to read a map," she said. "Then we can do content-related caches, with a holiday theme or maybe historical landmarks, or plants. We can even do math with multiple caches, with the first cache containing coordinates for the second cache, and so on."

The students will access the Internet both to share the waypoints for the caches they develop and to log the class’s geocache finds.

McNeiley discussed the proposal with her students as she wrote the grant last fall and discovered that while several kids knew their parents had GPS units at home, they hadn’t seen them used or tried the units themselves. "The GPS unit can determine our approximate location, within six to twelve feet, on the planet," McNeiley said. "It’s a whole system of satellites that works with a GPS receiver. We can use the GPS to navigate from our current location to a cache."

With the grant money, McNeiley intends to purchase 10 Magellan eXplorist 500 GPS handheld units, at the cost of $150 each. She will also buy an iPAQ, or personal data assistant, that can download the coordinates and clues for a cache as well as enter information the class wants to remember about a particular cache during a search.

Kenmare’s second graders will learn to use the equipment and locate caches in the area. They will also create their own caches to hide, provide clues for the location, and then note who searches for those caches. "The students’ roles are to be investigators, observers, leaders, planners and problem solvers," said McNeiley. "They will help each other and learn from each other."

GPS, iPAQ, Travel Bugs
Kids in the class will work in groups of three, with one student as a photographer, one as the GPS handler, and one as the iPAQ logbook keeper. As they become more proficient at using the GPS units and recording necessary information, McNeiley wants to introduce the concept of Travel Bugs.

"A Travel Bug is like a dog tag with a number on it," she said. "You hide it in a cache, and give the tag a letter that tells where you want it to go and why. Other people who find it will take it."

She explained that the students could follow a Travel Bug’s progress by reading messages from geocachers who have logged their progress and the Travel Bug’s number on the geocaching website. "There are a lot of retired people who geocache," McNeiley said, "and a lot of families. As they travel, they move [Travel Bugs] from place to place. It’s exciting when you find one, and it’s exciting when you let one go."

McNeiley’s family has discovered Travel Bugs from Australia, Japan and China while geocaching in Bismarck. "When these second graders are seniors in high school, they can log in to the geocaching website and see where their Travel Bug is!" she said.

2nd graders will
draw interest to Kenmare
McNeiley believes a second grade class participating in geocaching will attract a great deal of interest among other geocachers, several of whom already travel from neighboring states and Canadian provinces to locate caches in Kenmare.

"People just drive through here to do it," she said. "You know they’re going to come for a second grade cache. It’s a way to promote the community, to hide the cache in places people don’t normally drive off the road to see."

McNeiley has named the project "Take a Second Look," both to honor her second grade students and to emphasize that geocachers look at their surroundings carefully. Her lesson plans met goals required by the Qwest Foundation as well as the state’s standards for using technology in the classroom, including research, developing products using media and technology, utilizing technological systems, and the appropriate ethical, legal and social use of technology.

She appreciated the grant money and was excited about starting the project this month. "This is something that schools are not going to just go buy for you," she said, referring to the GPS units. "This will be a new adventure for me and my students. The monies available with this grant will enable me to take learning to a new level."

She also predicted the second graders would apply skills from the "Take a Second Look" project to other situations. "Today’s students learn in different ways," she said. "This project gives them the learning tools and learning environment to flourish."