Thoughts from 7/17

Well, we packed in a great deal in this class. This class was dedicated to latitude and longitude and our first geocaching adventure. In class we reviewed the principles of latitude and longitude. Often times this subject can be difficult to teach. One of the things that I have found that make it a difficult subject is the counter-intuitiveness of the lines. Latitude lines run east/west around the globe, but we measure latitude in degrees north or south of the equator. Longitude lines run from the north pole to the south pole, but we measure longitude in degrees west or east of the Prime Meridian. With all of that said, we moved on to GPS and its role in the beginning of geocaching.

Geocaching began around 2000 with the deregulation of GPS.
Geocaching.com is the source for locating geocaches around the world.
Accounts are free and necessary for the site.
We typed in the Cambridge zip code and located the cache, "Billy Moon's Bear". Click here to view the page for this cache. With our GPS loaded with the first coordinates we headed out for Harvard. Our first find was a small red door with a name above it...




From here we used the clue of Sanders to locate the next part...off to Sanders Theatre. There we had to find a William with one given name and use his graduation date to complete a math problem to finish off the coordinates of the final cache location. The theatre was beautiful with sunlight streaming in through the stained glass.

We plugged in our new coordinates and headed towards those, approximately .5 of a mile away. This lead us back through Lesley's campus and into a surrounding neighborhood. As we approached the cache we found a yard that contained Winnie the Pooh's friends. The cache site was a hollowed out tree complete with a miniature door, log book, signs and a book swap box. Here with are with our first geocaching find!
We made our way back to class to log in our find online. We reviewed the numerous ways to incorporate GPS and geocaching in the classroom in conjunction with the assigned readings. After that we got on the computers to delve back into Inspiration for our next lesson plan. The uses of the program are widespread. Looking over shoulders I saw Venn Diagrams, mind maps, timelines, sheets for students to organize new information....the list goes on.

Our next meeting features a guest presentation by school psychologist Debra Culberson as well as our Cultural Biographies and a readings recap. Keep up the hard work, I'm so impressed!