Geocaching: High-tech hobby taps skills in math, science, geography and phys ed
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Hampton fourth-graders are among the latest players in a high-tech treasure hunt that can involve participants from around the world.
Equipped with hand-held Global Positioning Systems, pupils at Poff Elementary School marched into the woods behind their school last week to play a new adventure game called Geocaching.
Seventy kids split into three groups to search for places to hide their "caches" -- plastic containers filled with trinkets, a log book, game rules and what is called a Travel Bug, a traceable tag that is moved from cache to cache, with its whereabouts recorded online.
"This is more fun than a scavenger hunt!" said Jessica Argenas, 10, as she watched her classmates place a cache along a wooded trail.
"Geocaching is a great hobby to incorporate teaching in different academic disciplines, including math, science, technology, geography and phys ed," Poff Principal Michael Mooney said.
Global positioning systems track a holder's position by reading signals from at least four of 12 satellites circling the Earth. When the latitude and longitude coordinates of a cache are entered into the system, it can tell where a cache is hidden with an accuracy of up to 50 feet.
Finders of a cache do not move it from its hiding place but are expected to record their visit in the log book. They may take one or two items out of the cache, and they're supposed to add something of their own. Travel Bugs are meant to be removed and placed in a new cache, preferably far from the cache in which it was found.
More than a dozen Geocaches are in North Park, and at least half that many are in the forests of Hartwood Acres, according to Mooney. Hampton Community Park has three, and new caches are being placed around the world all the time.
At the center of the new sport is the Geocaching Web site, www.geocaching.com. Players establish free accounts on the Web site using nicknames they've created for themselves, and they can find the location of caches all over the world -- or in their own neighborhoods.
Already part of Hampton Middle School's curriculum, Geocaching was introduced to the Poff pupils in May by Glenn Geary, technology education teacher at the middle school.
First Published June 9, 2005 12:00 am
