April 5th, 2023

Hello there,
You might be rolling your eyes at seeing the timestamp of this post, and I would definitely NOT blame you: we are yet again reporting live from AQUOPS because of course we are. I am very pleased with so many of the things I’m going to be able to share with you and, honestly, I really, really hope that you can use any of the resources here! Of course, you have my get-well wishes if you are not feeling well at the moment, and I hope you are not experiencing, as we are in Montreal right now apparently, an event of freezing rain. I really hope that in early April, it is a nice weather, especially since Easter is right around the corner (at least for us here in 2023) and Ramadan is finishing soon (again, at least for now in 2023). 

What is it? 

Geocaching is an activity you can do to explore the world all around you. It is a little bit like Pokemon Go, where it encourages you to walk outside and explore, which is why I placed it in the Physical Education/Gym category. Since you are walking the land and sometimes, it could be interesting lands like the Abraham Plains in Quebec near where we are situated at AQUOPS today. Of course, this ties right into your Univers Social or Social Sciences classes, which is also why I placed this into our geography and history category. What’s fun is that the RECIT has been collaborating with gym teachers to develop something with this. 

Second of all, where can you get it? As it is an application, Geocaching (images and information from their website here and from the Google Play Store) can be downloaded on your phone or on your tablet. I believe that as long as you have access your own GPS location [you might need WiFi according to our instructors, but as long as you download the map offline on Google Maps, you should be good], you will probably be able to play. It is available on Androids via your Google Play Store (link) and on your Apple App Store (link) as well. There is a premium Geocaching thing (50$/year), as some caches will not be available for free users. Someone mentioned that you can find a free version that give you geocaching [C:Geo, apparently?]. 

Third of all, how do you play? From what I’ve experienced today while walking in the freezing rain and geocaching, we choose a “geocaching journey,” which will lead us to different places. It is a little bit like a scavenger hunt, basically. Careful: The caches are actually hidden and their locations are supposed to stay hidden from the general public who should not know about it. Our instructor told us that business owners might decide to destroy the cache if they are annoyed with the amount of people that agglutinate around their shops. He placed us in teams of 5, so that we would be more inconspicuous. 

In geography and in history, you can for sure make them experience using a compass and the GPS and following a map. You can also talk about mapping out a place, thinking about the historical and economical functions around the buildings placed there. For sure, students can look at the architecture of the buildings and hypothesize what they could have been used for. The students can do some research into the local history of the place. You are basically situating into time and space what they are seeing. Cities are more and more 

They also mentioned that you can ask students to take pictures of some of the places, to ask students to take different kinds of perspectives when they’re considering taking pictures. You can ask them, for example, to take a look at a building with a banker’s perspective or a First Nation person’s perspective. 

Careful: as a teacher, for sure, you need to think about how you’re bringing this to your students. You can’t just throw them out there to explore without doing anything. 

Some interesting vocabulary word: Geomoldu (roughly translated from French to: “geo mudblood“) are people that do not not the parallel universe of geocaching. Bruler (translated to: “Burn“) which means when normies basically find out which is the cache and they might destroy it. 

That’s going to be it for me, 
Have a great day! 
Miss PV