Travel Bug School Project

[+lydon71]

My wife is a middle school science teacher and I have her 1/2 talked into using geocaching and travel bugs as a module for her class. Still working out exactly how to work it all into the curriculum.

 

We were thinking of letting groups of students let travel bugs loose and track them as part of the module. I am looking at some of the travel bug logs though and while some go on for a few years with many many stops, it looks like a large number die after only 4 or 5 stops never to be heard from again. Either that or someone will pick one up and hold it for 4 or 5 months. Obviously the project can run no more than 9 months so the latter 2 options would pretty much kill the learning potential.

 

I was wondering from someone with experience which is more common, the traveling travel bug or the disappearing travel bug? Also wondering if we were to add a note that stated something to the effect of, “If you can not move this travel bug to a new cache in 14 days or less please leave it here” if most people would respect that?

 

I am new to geocaching and would like to get some feedback from some people who have a lot more experience that I. It would suck to put a lot of work into creating a module only to have it ruined by a disappearing or held bug.

[+BlueDeuce]

TBs for the most part do stay active although the basic bug doesn't move very fast.

 

A school project bug is probably going to do the best provided it's clearly labeled as one, the main issue is if people have to release it quickly it going to sit in caches since some won't grab it if they can't fulfill the requirements.

 

In my opinion the best approach is to focus on very specific tasks that have less to do with both distance and speed. I would cover either geography, or map reading, or on cachers themselves. Like having them tell something about their job, or about where they live, things like that.

 

Let me see if I can find examples of other school bugs.

 

And make sure to read through the GPS In Education forum.

 

Miss Searles Flat Stanley

 

Mrs. Tracy's 3rd Grade Class TB

 

And here's an article:

 

http://www.todayscacher.com/2004/dec/caches2.asp

Edited October 26, 2005 by BlueDeuce

[Bjornian]

anything I see mentioend as "school project" I move as quickly as possible. My goal would actually to move in in under 24 hours, but it doesn't always work that way

[+the hermit crabs]

In the "Geocaching and Education" forum, there's a thread along these same lines: "Travel Bugs and Geography -- have any teachers used them for this?". In that thread, I had suggested that maybe a fun thing to do would be for the teacher to enlist several cachers from around the country or around the world to release bugs with the goal of reaching the school. That way the bugs start off in far-away places, which might be more interesting for the kids to track, rather than watching several bugs bounce around your local area.

[+the hermit crabs]

I just visited a cache today that has another take on the bugs-as-geography-lessons idea. Stillwater Tiger6 was placed by a cub scout pack. They're going to track all of the bugs that pass through it.

 

(The good thing about this is that there could be a constant supply of fresh travelers to track, as people drop new ones into the cache. If you're just tracking a finite set of bugs, and they get lost or stuck somewhere for months, then you've lost part of your project.)