Geocaching!

On Wednesday October 7th, our 9:30 section of COM 435 went on our geocaching adventure! For me, it was my first time participating in an activity like this and may I say that I had a fun time especially for a morning class!
The first time I heard about geocaching was from a friend of mine who participated in the event this past summer. It sounded like a fun thing to do but I knew little about it. It's a small world considering that I am now in a class learning about the game as well as being able to participate in an example game.
I'm sure after reading many peoples experiences, you'll get the idea of what geocaching is about but in our class we were separated into teams go out and find clues to make up a bigger picture. The teams would report clues back to a main/lead unit who were back at the classroom and they were to put every teams clues together to find the answer to the riddle and try to get it done in the fastest time. 
I was in team 4 which was out in the field looking for clues.


Just a little about my experience--- 
When we first got together in class, I had no idea what to expect. I felt a little lost as to what my role as the reporter was supposed to do. Was I just supposed to text the lead investigator? Call him/her? Twitter? Email? Was I supposed to find a completely different form of communication as a way to send my clues/location to our lead team? I hope I wasn't the only one who felt that way! 
Anyways, so we left the ME building with our teams and met outside to receive our GPS systems, which by the way were amazing and very high tech!...actually it looks a little like this 

Our team began our journey once we started to receive signals of where our clues were. We headed from ME toward the Hovde, and we stood around the grassy areas across from the building construction for quite some time. Finally we figured out "OH there is a clue in the grass/plants!" This is where we found clue 4 which was about the first of buildings to be certified with this credential. We sent this clue back to our lead investigators by text. Then we were on the lookout for our next clue. This lead to Schlemen Hall, where we met up with another team in search for the next clue. We found it between the cement seats outside the hall and the plants. This clue stated "whats up with my roof?" We then sent this clue back to the lead investigating team by text. It was then that they sent me a text back trying to figure out where we were locating our clues, which may or may not have been important to the result of the puzzle, but I let them know.

Then our team moved on searching for our next clue, but time was coming to a close. It took us a very long time to find our next clue but we were unable to find it by the time the lead investigative team texted me telling me the answer was 'going green.' I still do not know where the clue was that my team was looking for.

This activity took a lot of patience but a lot of teamwork to be able to follow the navigator and be able to work with the other teams in reporting back what we had found or where we were. But overall, I had a really great time with this activity and I can see why it is such a popular game of hide and seek around the world!! I may end up playing sometime in the future!

-Conte

Real-Life Geocaching

I missed the class geocache activity yesterday. To those who were in my group, I am sorry. I ended up with food poisoning. (Don't eat at Red Lobster.)

I have geocached before. "Geocache" - is that a verb? Oh well, it is now. To anyone who considers themselves an outdoor person, I'd suggest this as a hobby. I first heard of geocaching this past summer through my brother and his friends. Summers in the Goshen/Elkhart area tend to be pretty boring. Whenever we got bored, we'd log on to geocaching.com and search the local geocache sites. Its actually surprising how many geocaches there are. I didn't realize this was such a popular thing. The geocaches are rated on level of difficulty. Some are easy to find. For example, the directions on the website would say "under the big rock at the end of the church parking lot." Others have vague directions. Perhaps only the coordinates are given. Sometimes we would make a day of it, we'd print out the pages and go from site to site. Its fun to write in the logs and read about the experiences of other people who have been there. Its also entertaining to see the objects people put into these boxes. They are usually worthless trinkets - toy machine rings and keychains. We found a dirty beanie baby in one once. We like to leave "homies" in the caches. (For anyone that doesn't know what these are, they are little plastic figures you get in the toy machines at Meijer or the bowling alley. They are basically little gangster figurines. Kinda wierd, kinda funny, whatever...)

All of our geocaching adventures have been small scale, but there are some hidden way far out in the woods. We thought about hiding our own cache along the Elkhart River in a place where you'd need a kayak or canoe to get to. Maybe next summer. Someday, I'd like to go hiking at Turkey Run or Warren Dunes to find some caches. It makes hiking more fun. Instead of just walking around in the woods, you are actually looking for something. I've heard of geocaching being compared to a treasure hunt. I guess it kind of is. It is amazing that hiking and outdoor adventures have even become technological. You'd normally think of those activities as a way to get back to basics and escape technology. What will they come up with next...?

To those who are interested, here is the link to a video clip on the "getting started" page on geocaching.com. It shows just how fun geocaching can be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_vSWSXaAyP4

GeoCaching

Today during Com 435 we had to spilt up into five different teams to discover clues in order to solve a problem. We learned the other day in class about geocaching and how it is starting to be used throughout our country and how it is becoming apart of our culture. For those of you who dont know what geocaching is it is like a treasure hunt game, but you use GPS devices to help locate the clues. For our geohunt in class we had five teams that went out into the field to find the clues and then had a group of four students in the room to collect all the clues and decide what they meant. It take a while for the groups to figure out how to use the GPS machines and what they were suppose to report back to the central team. This is where it was very important to have great communication skills. The central team needed the clues to be clear and quick inorder to beat the other class section teams. We learned that there were many different ways to communicate the clues to the central team. Some teams used Facebook, others used texting, and one group even took pictures and emailed the clue into one of the members of the central team. I believe that all of the different methods were beneficial because it didnt limit everyone to the same type of technology. People could use the technology that they were must comfortable with, which in the end lead to a successful treasure hunt. It took us about 15 minutes to figure out as a group how to use the tools to our benefit. Then when we finally discovered what we were suppose to be looking for we all came together very quickly and figured out the saying. The saying was Purdue's new motto: "Going Green".

I believe that this activity was a lot of fun and really showed the class what new technology can do for us in the future.