Giga-Caching

Lesson name: Giga-caching in the park Activating activities:

Grade level: 6-12 Number of students: 20. 4 groups of 5

The students will be able to: • Conduct team building activities • Work collaboratively in small groups to find waypoints with the GPS unit • Discuss possible photo opportunities where to take a Gigapan picture Activating activities: • Children will meet at a nearby park with teachers and other staff members. This introductory activity will be to engage students in a team building exercise, have them split up into teams of students, and use GPS units to find predetermined waypoints. Once the caches are found, a question will be presented to the children as to what Gigapan pictures will be taken. (student choice) Once the children brainstorm ideas for possible pictures, the Gigapan will be taken, stitched together, and uploaded to www.gigapan.org. By uploading the pictures, the children will then be able to pick personal points of interest from the picture and create a snapshot that contains content and personal reflection. Each group will have a different group of snapshots since they were required to find different waypoints. Students will also geotag their photos and post them to Google Earth. (Latitude/Longitude skills will be thoroughly reviewed in the classroom for this activity) Materials needed: • 4 Gigapan cameras (school provides) • 10 Garmin E Trex Legend H GPS units Strategies used: • Brainstorming • Teambuilding • Evaluating choices for pictures in a nearby park • Stitching • Uploading • Differentiating lesson to groups where necessary Closure • Although the lesson will take place over a few days, students will continue to go to the Gigapan site and post snapshots. Teachers can encourage other students to find new waypoints for new students to find. The initial activity will be used as an introduction to both Gigapan and geocaching. Once the activity is over, students and teachers will create other projects that will embed the skills learned during this lesson into their daily projects. Assessment • The assessment piece will involve children knowing how to create additional projects. The criteria will be linked to the Digital Bloom’s Hierarchy in having the students remember, understand, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating new projects and ideas. Although at first it will be difficult to gauge understanding of the new skills, it will become evident as students create more projects on how to use geocaching and Gigapaning in the classroom.

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