Information Overloaded

Over the last few months,  Jeff [Technology Mentor] and I have been traveling to the 18 schools in our District with a supply teacher to offer technology pd sessions.   The teachers in that school are able to sign up for one hour of technology PD while the supply teacher covers the class.

Teachers love this approach to professional development as they can work with us individually and don’t have the stress of preparing lessons for a full day of being away from their students in order to learn something new.

I put the results of the teachers’ requests into Wordle.  Wordle is a word cloud generator.  If words are repeated, then wordle makes the size of that word larger.

Its not hard to tell what teachers in our District are interested in!

The weather is absolutely beautiful here today. And I am “one with the high pressure system”. But that is not why I am writing today.

I am absolutely giddy about geocaching and wish to tell you about our PD session. Geocaching involves taking a GPS system and locating caches, or hidden treasures, using latitude and longitude coordinates.

We had the opportunity last week to present geocaching to the Vice Principals in our District. I have one word to describe the experience……fun, fun, fun!

We hid 4 caches in Oromocto. VP’s were placed in groups of four and given 2 gps units per group. We programmed the gps’s with the waypoints and away they went.

We wished to model a math lesson, so we hid fraction playing cards in each of the caches. The winner had to return back with all of their cards and show us that they understood equivalent fractions by matching the pairs.

Here is one of the VP’s after her first find:

Here’s what I learned:

• Some VP’s are competitive
• Geocaching is a great way to build teamwork
• People love “doing” things (adults are no exception)
• You could apply geocaching to any subject….hide Math questions in caches, assemble story starters for Language Arts… you could geocache in Science by placing caches beside areas in nature that you want them to notice….oh the endless possibilities.

So, I was all fired up from the PD session and went home afterward bound to find a cache by my house. [This is where the demented comes in.] So I found one that was close and away I went.

Now, if you have been reading my blog, you will remember that we had record snowfalls this winter. Well, that snow is still on the ground, especially in the woods. And there are underground rivers under that melting snow too!

Needless to say, after my experience, I have decided to forgo geocaching expeditions in the woods until either a) the snow is melted or b) I buy a pair of hip waders. I sank in the snow up to my waist and discovered an underground river when I reached the bottom. . But I did find that cache!