Geocaching and Education

Welcome back to another installment into this geocaching adventure. I know I was really excited about the iNaturalist app... and I still am, but I have found another amazing app that will aid in your adventures. I understand that geocaching is a "treasure hunt" for pre-hidden treasures, but nature also provides with uncountable amounts of treasures. You just have to get up and go find them. The new app is called Seek by iNaturalist. In this app you can take pictures of an animal, plant, or fungi and it will identify what you are looking at! This was a lot of fun on our hike! From here on out I will be armed with both apps to find and identify all kinds of cool stuff... but like in the video... ( I hope it works) if you get a question wrong, you have to get stronger! I hope this new app motivates you to get up and go find it! Thanks for stopping by, me and my strong Ranger are off on another adventure!

Andy

Educational Geocaching in the Rio Bosque Wetlands

Welcome back to Geocaching and educational adventures in El Paso Texas! I usually try to find a new app to assist in geocaching and tie it into educating my young child in the world around him (or his archenemy... the number line!) but I do not feel like I gave iNaturalist enough attention or credit last time. So we took it out to a new spot we found! And this location is a real treasure all in itself! The Rio Bosque Wetlands is a marsh in the middle of the Chihuahan Desert! It is formed from the Rio Grande River and is a nature reserve. It was a great change from the usual mountainous desert terrain we get to explore. If you remeber the app allows people to pin a location of an animal, insect, or plant that they find. As well as name it and add a photo of it. So off we went to find new animals and learn what we could about waht we found. These are but a few photos of what we saw and found. In the first photo we found and followed the Desert Stink Beetle. The second is a marshy tributary, that is so out of place here in El Paso. Third, is a giant North Amercain Bullfrog. This bad boy was bigger then my hand! The fourth picture is a lesson on "Cat Tails", seeing, feeling, aaand smelling what you are learning about makes great connections to the subject. The final picture is what happens when you miss a simple question, you learn it through physical exercise! Got to love pull ups on tree limbs! I would have taken a screen shot of the app screen to show you all how many pins were at the wetlands, but it was filled to the gills with critter locations! All in all I believe this is my favorite app that I have found in this Blog adventure. It leads us to so many natural treasures, which is what I think this is all about. I highly recomend the iNaturalist app and for everyone to get up, go outside and go find it. (it makes you feel young!)   

Andy 

I am excited to share this weeks adventures! There really was not a specific treasure we went looking for, but I found an app that connects the community together by helping to identify wildlife that you find and sharing on the app. So we set off into the mountains to see what we could find and it turning into a very informative, physically challenging, and fun science lesson! iNaturalist is an awesome app and I will be using it long after this Blog is terminated. If you look at the third picture, these are icons denoting where someone has seen an critter and marked its location, with a picture and a description. Is the animal still there? Not usually but it was fun looking for them, we managed to find a Curve-faced Wind scorpion! However, most excitingly as we rested on a mountain cliff face a Red-tailed Hawk flew beneath us screaming into the desert air! The video shows the hawk, I hope it works... It was an amazing adventure and the iNaturalist app really help us learn about our natural surrounding... have you ever heard of a Tarantula Hawk? Now I have and its cool! It is actually an indigo blue and orange wasp that kills tarantulas! There is so much life in the desert, and its a real treasure! You just have to get up and go find it! Until nect time...

Andy  

Treasure Hunting

Treasure Hunting!

In this weeks adventure in Geocaching, technology, and education conglomeration, I have found a new app called TravelersQuest. It is a virtual treasure hunt, like geocaching, however nothing is physically at the location. you just have to go to the location on your map and it will let you "dig" it up. The tricky part is you can only see a treasure that you are close to, so you have to go out and drive and walk around (unless you pay to upgrade your map). Another interesting part of this app is that you can have a crew. So that was our geocaching portion, not the educational part is working on my sons short comings from last week in school. So once we found the treasure my wife and I made a number line out of water bottles and rocks. He then had to plot his given numbers on the number line. He is a hands on and physical learner (like his Dad) and seems to have soaked in his number line lesson a little better (If not I will make him do push ups). If he cant be smarter he will be stronger... again , like me!

Until next time you Scurvy Dogs get up and go find it!

Andy 

New App.

In this weeks adventure I downloaded a new geocaching app from the apple store to increase our adventures. This photo is a screen shot of all the geocaches from the greater El Paso area, the green ones are the free ones and the grey ones are the upgraded ones that I would have to pay for. However, as you can see there are plenty of free ones in the area to find. In fact, the other picture is mine and my Wife's feet dangling of a 150 foot cliff after finding the cache. There was no need for additional physical exercises this adventure, due to the continuous upward climb to find the hidden treasure. We were also rewarded by a hawk screeching as it flew beneath us as we sat. That provided the education part of this adventure for our son, as we sat and enjoyed the view we learned about the different birds of prey in the local area. So the lesson for today is technology can be used to educate almost anywhere. Thank you for visiting my blog and following along on my educational geocaching adventures. Until next time, get up and go find it!

Andy 

Geocaching with technology

     In this weeks adventure in Geocaching, the DeUnger clan, trounced around the Chihuahua Desert, outside of El Paso Texas. I used a simple tech tool this week to find a cache to search for. I just googled "Geocaching El Paso" and picked a location to explore. Along the 4 mile trek, up and down rolling hills that turned into mountains, I would stop every half mile and select a quiz question for my 7 year old son. I prepared several questions for him from his various subjects. If he got it correct we would continue on or search for treasure. However, if he got it wrong, would do push-ups or lunges. after missing a couple questions, he started to try harder. We used a simple tech (a google search) to get us started this week and I used my sons 2nd grade Schoology app for some study questions to review and learn while we walked. I added physical exercise for "fun"

In the future I will find a geocaching App in my apple store for a new tech to try out. I had not even thought about looking into them until one of you mentioned the Pokémon Go app. That got me think. An app for virtual geocaching  would be fun. I imagine it would be similar to Pokémon Go in that the treasure is not physically at the location, however, the app would use a map and have virtual treasures under the "X". I that would be fun. I have not found an app like that, have any of you? 

          Until next time, Geocaching pirates, Get Up and Go Find it!

          Andy 

 

One of the challenges to this Geocaching Blog is to relate it to and connect it to an instructional setting. Here is a link that I found that can get you started. 

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/geocaching/

I enjoy being active and find that I learn more efficiently if I can be active and actively learn. Maybe we can discuss and find ways to bring the classroom to a geocaching spot.

Andy