These notes are from a session at the TETA Summer Institute in Memphis.

Pirates of the Mississippi – Geocaching

Started by watching a Podcast about geocaching – a beginners guide.

We were then provided with a gps hand held unit to use and we are going to be going outside to use them.

We are using a Garmin etrex.

First screen shows range of satellites and shows how strong the signal is and what your accuracy distance is.

Contact Google earth and you can get the Pro version free when explained how you will use it in schools – can we get it in Australia as well?

The GPS units are pre programmed for the session with co-ordinates of caches planted in the yard.

Official Geocaching page.

We went outside and looked for 3 caches – one together, that had a pedometer for each of us, and then we split up and found another one – ours had plastic scraey critters in – I picked a bat! That was a great way of demonstrating the process in a practical way, getting everyone involved and giving us a taste of geocaching.

We then opened google earth, ‘flew’ to a location, and used the coordinates at the bottom of the page, to enter a waypoint in the GPS. You need to either have Google pro, or use a converter program online to get the right form of coordinates (ie google earth had 2 extra numbers….).

Great presentation – most of the information was things I had already done with Trudy, but as a hands on conference session, it was an excellent model, and I learnt a few new things too (and got a cool pedometer )