GeoCaching
For this week’s assignment we discussed the benefits of GeoCaching
Introduction
If you never tried Geocaching, you should. It is a lot of fun. It used to be that you needed a lot of equipement to get an accurate location, but now you can do it on your phone. If you want more of a thrill, may I suggest either Ingress or Pokemon Go. They are a gamified version of geocaching where you go to portals (public places), and interact with them in the app. The goal of both is to control more portals and area than your opponent.
Niantic Labs, founded in 2010, was an internal project of Google which created a augmented reality game using Google Maps (Davis, 2017). Pokémon Go is much more limited due to the age constraints of its core demographic (Gong, et al., 2017)
Why It Is Fun
I enjoyed the game because I got to explore new places. Ever been to Fort Nonsense? Yes, it is a canon on top of Morristown, NJ. It is a national park. How about the top of Mosada in Israel? What about all the barracks at Sandy Hook? These are great little adventures that as a family everyone can enjoy.
Geocaching may not appeal to the littlest kids, but imagine finding a legendary, shiny Charmander (I don’t know if that is a real pokemon)? For the adults, controlling an area by layering fields. How about exploring a national park with a free guide? All of these things are achieved with either app.
As an educator, if you were able to coordinate these type of field trips, students can go explore, with a purpose.
References
Davis, M. (2017). Ingress in Geography: Portals to Academic Success? Journal of Geography, 116(2), 89–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221341.2016.1227356
Gong, H., Hassink, R., & Maus, G. (2017). What does Pokémon Go teach us about geography? Geographica Helvetica, 72(2), 227–230. https://doi.org/10.5194/gh-72-227-2017
Haim Cohen
CS Teacher, Podcaster, Organizer of Cryptovillage, and Chairman of Highland Park NJ Public Information Committee.