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just a few simple questions to help a student out - High school assessment


stawbby

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hellooooo, my name is E and i'm a year 13 (12th grade) high school student from New Zealand ( A country further down than Australia). 

I'm currently doing a paper about Gamification of the Outdoors for my Level 3 NCEA assessment and I have a few questions about geocaching if anyone doesn't mind answering :)) 

 

1. how did you get into geocaching? 

2. why do you do geocaching?

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

 

Thank you for your time and have a great day! :))

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1. First heard of it in 2001 or so when I was living in Arizona, when it was brand new, but didn't end up trying it. Later, in 2007, when we loved in Germany, one of my wife's friends mentioned it, and we gave it a go. Haven't looked back since.

2. It is a great excuse to explore new places, and it often takes me to spots I would never have seen.

3. I'm not sure what this means, so I would recommend defining what you are asking some more. Edit: if this is "why do you still do it," it seems like the same question as #2.

Edited by hzoi
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Hello E, I'm from Australia (a country a bit further up than New Zealand) and I'm happy to answer your questions although I have no idea what Gamification of the Outdoors means:

 

1. how did you get into geocaching? Back in 2013 I read an article about geocaching in an outdoor adventure magazine and thought it looked interesting. They gave the geocaching.com website so I took a look, created an account and saw there were a fair number of caches close to home. I was able to find my first cache just from the satellite image and hint, then went out and bought a GPS receiver and tried a few more. Pretty soon I was hooked.

 

2. why do you do geocaching? Earlier in life I'd done a fair bit of orienteering and rogaining, and have always enjoyed bushwalking, so it seemed a good extension of that interest, particularly as caches are available at any time and aren't restricted to particular events like orienteering days. Over the last nine years, caching has taken me to many amazing places I wouldn't have otherwise discovered, as well as introduced me to a great bunch of friends who share that common interest. Since retiring from work in 2016, it's become a mainstay of my life.

 

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? My caching experience has changed a fair bit over the years. Early on, there were heaps of caches to find so it was mostly about discovering something new, either in the location or the design of the cache. Then as time went on I started creating a fair number of my own caches, inspired by those finds I'd really enjoyed, while at the same time I cleared out most of my local area, so nowadays my caching time is mostly a mix of routine maintenance checks on my hides, occasional longer trips away to find more caches, and group outings with my caching friends which are always lots of fun even if I've previously found many of the caches we visit.

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1. how did you get into geocaching? 

I read an article in an outdoor walking magazine "10 things to do while walking in the countryside", which included things such as Photograpy, Bird watching,..., Geocaching,...

I liked the sound of geocaching and thought it would help me find new places to visit, that was 17 years ago and I'm still at it.

 

2. why do you do geocaching?

It gives me a reason to go out, it encourages me to visit areas I wouldn't otherwise get to, I find it helps me to relax and forget about the minor daily troubles for a while.

 

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

Pretty much the same answer as #2, and as caches get archived, then new ones published there's always something new to visit.

 

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4 hours ago, stawbby said:

I'm currently doing a paper about Gamification of the Outdoors for my Level 3 NCEA assessment and I have a few questions about geocaching if anyone doesn't mind answering :)) 

1. how did you get into geocaching? 

2. why do you do geocaching?

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

 

We've considered this a hobby since we started.  We didn't notice many folks mentioning "game" until phone apps were introduced...

 

1- After being lost with the other 2/3rds in changed woods I hunted since a kid (around when God made dirt...), we saw an ad for this new gizmo called a GPSr. 

Included with the info pack was an ad for the hobby Geocaching.  We tried it out on a local "Virtual" cache, and it took us to 12 feet.

Upgraded a year later to a model that didn't die simply going under tree cover, and haven't been lost since.

2- We started with Groundspeak saying this was the "Language of Location" and has brought me to unique areas and great views, some even close-by that I was unaware of.  We now know the best hunting, fishing, mtn biking, and hiking opportunities because of this hobby.

3- There's still many areas I'm learning of.   It's getting tougher to get to unexplored areas (besides gas prices and a continuing injury right now...) with (I feel) a large group now considering it a game.  Games need "points", and many newer caches are placed (it seems) just to acquire points.

The other 2/3rds no longer plays, feeling she was a beta-tester for newbs on First To Find runs. Her last was 400' off (yet found it...).

When able, I'll continue by simply going by higher terrain, and looking for green on maps, skipping those nondescript hides.   :)

 

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Good luck on your studies!

I agree with the previous post. Consider it a hobby not a game. Though as a hobby it can easily lead to an obsession. Personally have over done it in the past and I'm still trying to find a balance and fail often. The new folks that treat it as a game I see pretty much don't stick with it long. The only rewards I see are virtual smileys and of course the statistics & numbers.

 

1) Started back in 2012 my parents introduced me to it. The had recently moved back to the west coast near to me and a friend of theirs was really into it. My kids had fun search and walking the hiking trail we were on. Basically it was a Walk with a purpose. I did not start in earnest for another 2 years.

 

2) I love it because it can take you to some pretty amazing places that don't exist in tour books. Local only information. As an example, hot springs in the middle the desert, caves, amazing views of the ocean or mountains, interesting historical spots, or art. All of which in our busy lives we drive by at 55 mph and never stop and see the wonders that exist right next to us. My two favorites were first to a rock cairn near one of the glaciers on Mt Hood it was such a beautiful hike 5 mountain views I would never have visited this on my own it gave me a goal and I was not disappointed. The second was to a border marker delimiting the states of Oregon/Idaho/Nevada literally in the middle of nowhere 30 miles from the nearest road saw a black bear, heard the coyotes, and was passed by a heard of antelope probably running at 60 mph across the desert. There are no antelope in my city suburb. Amazing!

 

3)  On regular days it can be as simple as something to do for 15 minutes. But the real fix is stated above. It's a hobby that give purpose and encouragement to check out new areas even in your own back yard so to speak.

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1. Saw a PBS show on geocaching, thought it looked like fun.

2. A good excuse to get outdoors and get some exercise with my husband. (We almost always geocache together.) We enjoy going to the nearby conservation areas or more remote back roads and hike/walk to find a series of caches.

3. I continue to do it for the exercise, to get out into nature, and to see new places or revisit old ones. We had tapered off our activity before Covid; then (besides cycling) it was a good activity to do away from others. I think I more do it for the sunshine and nature; the containers around here are usually not very exciting, and I don't care about the numbers or stats.

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1)I saw something somewhere about Geocaching and looked online I found a cache nearby that was in terrible shape, that was in the spring of 20-16 I believe. Then I  learned my brother from Florida and his two sons were geocachers. When he was up that Thanksgiving some of the younger relatives (niece and nephews and their kids) war with him- and went  also- to find some. In think we found four of six. 

 

Then I found a way to track my brother's and nephews' chef he finds and decided to try to catch up. I did, and now have many more than them at present.

 

2) It gives a chance e and opportunity to see things and places  even nearby that are missed easily.

 

3_ Why continue?-- there are still caches to find! 

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How did I get started?

I was taking a trip to Ecuador and I bought a GPS so I could stand on the equator and mark a spot where the GPS read zero degrees north/south.  I accomplished that then wondered what I would do with this expensive toy.  Someone mentioned Geocaching but I did not try it right away.  Eventually I made my first find and I was hooked!  That was in July of 2002.

 

Why do I geocache?

For me Geocaching is the right combination of my techie toys (Computer, GPS, and now smart phone) and being in the great outdoors.

 

What keeps me doing it?  What keeps me interested?

1. I have always loved to travel and Geocaching  fits with that and takes me to interesting places.

2. It continues to get me up out of my chair, out of the house, and occupied.

3. It allows me to challenge myself with personal goals such as: caching in new states and countries, qualifying for certain challenge caches, having 10 finds on each calendar day on my stats page (only four days left), and my newest is to have a continuous chain of counties from the Atlantic to the Pacific in which I have found geocaches.  I should be able to finish that this year in North Dakota. Part of that chain is through Ontario, Canada.

 

Still loving it and celebrating 20 years of Geocaching since starting in July 2002.

 

 

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1.A friend muggle (one who did not know about geocaching) found a cache near their home and showed it to me. I reasearched the Geocaching website and thought it looked like a great way of finding interesting places in our upcoming cruise from Oz to Aue Te Aroa. We bought a car GPS in Hobart on the way then  got started as soon as we got to Dunedin. Have done three or four geocaching trips to NZ since.

2. Finding interesting places to visit off, and sometimes not so far off, the beaten track.

3. Until my wife passed away it was something we loved doing together. Since then, not so much. I continue to maintain, and occasionally place new, caches as a cache owner. I get great enjoyment from reading the logs of finders. It's a way of sharing in their - the finders -  enjoyment.

 

Good luck with your paper.

 

Edited by colleda
Lots of typos. Should proof read more carefully.
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1. how did you get into geocaching? A member of my church came to my house (just to chat) and just randomly started talking about geocaching, He was still in the driveway when Me and my dad started downloading the app and picking a geocache to go look for. 

 

2. why do you do geocaching?  I love the outdoors and having adventures with my dad. 

 

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? Who knows what adventures the future holds. You can also never love your dad too much. I also need to get my numbers up.

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1) I had read about geocaching way back when it started. I have always loved maps and compass, and I knew about GPS. Years later, my wife worked food service as a kitchen manager. One day, she brought home a catalog from a local food service company, and told me I have 100,000+ points that I could spend on anything I wanted. They had a Garmin eTrex, the original eTrex for 98,000 points, so I ordered it. Loaded the coords for a local cache, and went and found it. Then, it sat for over a year, before I found another cache.

2) I did it for a number of reasons. First and foremost in my mind, it was a cool use of the technology. A bit of adventure, getting out and about. Something I could do with the kids, then the grandkids.

3) I haven't gone geocaching in a couple of years. Basically, all the remaining local caches are (IMO) lame. I don't have as much time to do this, and I do other GPS based activities. I will get back into it when I retire. (I'm right on the brink of starting to count down the months, instead of the years. Got 33 months left.)

 

Other have mentioned that Geocaching is a hobby, not a game. To me, it is a bit of both. Games need to have rules, so I make up my own rules. Challenges actually. I did a Jasmer challenge. I want to find a cache in each degree (0-359) using my home as a base. I want to find cache in each 5 mile band away from my house out to 350 miles. I will do GeoTours. These are the games/challenges I set for myself. 

 

You talk about the Gamification of the Outdoors. I'm assuming that this is about games played in real world locations, and how technology is allowing a more diverse set of location based games. Pre-GPS, this would include things like Orienteering and Letterboxing. With GPS, we got Geocaching. With Smartphones, our options expanded to include 'games' such as Pokemon GO, Ingress, Pikmin Bloom, and others. If you change the title to Gamification of Location, you could include some console based games, games that required multiple people to be in the same location (indoors or outdoors) in order to do certain things. (Anyone remember the cables required to link handheld consoles together, before wireless.)

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On 3/20/2022 at 5:54 AM, stawbby said:

1. how did you get into geocaching? 

2. why do you do geocaching?

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

 

1. A friend with a new iPhone said to me "Have you ever heard of geocaching? Do you want to give it a try?"

 

2&3. Geocaching takes me interesting places and shows me interesting things. It encourages me to get outside and walk in the woods. It provides structure and goals.

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1. how did you get into geocaching?   

Our son had been geocaching for several years and we had a good idea of what it was all about, though we didn't geocache on our own.  We'd make detours on family outings and help him search for caches, help him hide things in various places, and we knew he enjoyed comraderie with other geocachers.  He met his wife through geocaching!  When he moved to Arizona, he convinced us to sign up so we could watch over his caches here in Northern California; we might as well go find them all so we would know where they are!  It coincided with my husband's retirement, and we discovered we enjoyed doing this thing together...here we are 5 years, almost 2500 finds, and a few hides later, still enjoying the hobby!

2. why do you do geocaching?

It gets us outdoors, helps us to explore the towns and places we visit in a new way, takes us to places (even in our hometown) that we may never have discovered except that there is a geocache hidden there!It's a little added bonus wherever we are - are there any caches near here?  

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

With 3 million plus caches all over the world, we will never find them all, but we can always find some of them wherever we are.  And we've discovered a whole community of people who share this off beat hobby (some people get it, others don't, even between married folks!) and made some awesome friends we would never have met otherwise.  And it's a hobby that (thankfully)  my husband and I both enjoy together most of the time.  We each have our own account, and do cache separately and with different groups now and then, but it has given us a common hobby in his retirement, something we can do together.

 

Hope this help with your research!

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1. how did you get into geocaching?

 

Introduction at a scouting camp.

 

2. why do you do geocaching?

 

- Get out to get exercise

- Gratification succeeding in finding/solving.

- Creativity, building custom caches, and the gratification for that when visitors like them.

- Get to new places that I wouldn't see otherwise.

 

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

 

I will make my own interpretation of this. We all have moments where we feel it can be time to move on. For me it was in 2016, after putting a lot of work into a mega event. I had decided to take a break to see if it was time to do something else. A month later or so, my body screamed for getting out. I went out and solved a looong reflex trail. Then I felt better... so let's get back in action.

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Hey E! I'd be happy to help with your assignment

  1. I was first introduced to geocaching on an elementary school field trip, but didn't do it again until many years later at a scout camp
  2. I've now gotten into many different location based hobbies, as I like to call them, and all of them I enjoy because they help me see the world around me in a new way. It takes me to places I never would've noticed before, or helps me notice them in a new way. And, afterwards, I can look at that place and feel good because I know there's a secret there that only a few people know about
  3. I continue geocaching because it always gives me something to look for when I go to a new place, and I continue to get enjoyment from every cache I find and every connection I make with other cachers
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1) Looking for an outdoor activity for a first date. She suggested geocaching. Neither of us had done it before but both had a good knowledge of what it involved.  We found one or two and had fun. I then found that there were a couple in the woods behind my house. Then a few near work, then more until I was hooked.

BTW, I ended up marrying her 3 years later. She doesn't enjoy caching as much as me but will still accompany me occasionally or at least be patient if I stop to look for one.

 

2) I enjoy being led to new and interesting places. One guideline of geocache placement is something like "if there's no reason to take someone to that location, find a better one". There are plenty of crummy location geocaches around, but it's easy to weed those out and find the interesting ones.

 

3) After 13 years I'm still having fun and still finding cool places that I would never know about if not for this game. Now when grandchildren come to visit they beg me to take them caching.

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It’s undoubtedly too late for the research assignment but I had fun reading people’s answers, so I thought I would contribute my own.

 

1.  In 2003 my daughter showed me a container her classmates had found while on a field trip to a beautiful location in nearby hills.   I had no idea what it was but someone suggested it might be a geocache.   A few months later I saw there was a cache on a trail near where I live.  We went out searching based on the description - and the very rudimentary maps - and I found it.   A few weeks later I could not find one and decided to get a gpsr.   
 

2.  In the beginning there were few caches and they usually brought me to great places.   We traded off as to who could place containers in interesting spots, which got me out researching trails.  It also became fun to find caches on trips, doing earthcaching and virtuals.  Over the years I became selective, concentrating on caches where I wanted to take a picture, write a log, or otherwise document something other than a lamp pole - but the basic motivation is still similar.    
 

3.  My numbers kept dropping every year, until most of my finds were on trips.    Caching became less of a guide than a way to document places I had discovered in researching other interests - kayaking, petroglyphs, and the like.  After an accident I have been caching now and then to have a rehab target.  I made some good friends while caching - we have all slowed down our numbers but still do things together, which is another motivation.   

Edited by geodarts
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Hello

 

1. I'm from the US and had heard of geocaching through a famous pro cyclist I follow on social media. But I got into it when I was living in the UK a while later. (Really in 2013.)  It was originally a great activity to do with my stepkids, outdoors and fun and a game (and free, we were just basic members). 

2. Why I cache? I love the challenge of finding hidden things but I also like the outdoors and exercise. I especially like solving puzzles and then making finds but equally love being taken by geocaching to places I'd never otherwise have known about! SO MANY reasons. :-)  Basically: it stimulates the mind and the body both.

3. What made me continue? Two things... one was that I can target caches to cycle or walk or hike to, so I use it for exercise motivation. But also I have made a number of lovely friends through geocaching. 

Good luck with your project! p.s. maybe you want to add a date it is due??? I might not be helping at all... :-) 

 

Edited by CCFwasG
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On 3/20/2022 at 5:54 AM, stawbby said:

hellooooo, my name is E and i'm a year 13 (12th grade) high school student from New Zealand ( A country further down than Australia). 

I'm currently doing a paper about Gamification of the Outdoors for my Level 3 NCEA assessment and I have a few questions about geocaching if anyone doesn't mind answering :)) 

 

1. how did you get into geocaching? 

2. why do you do geocaching?

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

 

Thank you for your time and have a great day! :))

 

1. My church priest taught an extracurricular class on geocaching at my elementary school (I was 11 at the time). 

2. Gets me outdoors and seeing places that I wouldn't ordinarily see. At times, geocaching also challenges my mind to think creatively. 

3. See #2.

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1. how did you get into geocaching? 

Read about it and thought it sounded interesting.

 

2. why do you do geocaching?

To get out and somewhere. Also, I move internationally a lot and it's nice for discovering my new neighbourhood/area/country and to get to know people. Ok, is a bit more complicated with covid. Also love EarthCaches. While many are a bit s***ty they still bring me to interesting geological phenomena.

 

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

See 2, and to work on certain challenges that I chose for myself, like caching in as many countries as possible or do other geographical challenges.

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On 3/20/2022 at 10:54 PM, stawbby said:

hellooooo, my name is E and i'm a year 13 (12th grade) high school student from New Zealand ( A country further down than Australia). 

I'm currently doing a paper about Gamification of the Outdoors for my Level 3 NCEA assessment and I have a few questions about geocaching if anyone doesn't mind answering :)) 

 

1. how did you get into geocaching? 

2. why do you do geocaching?

3. what made you want to continue on geocaching? 

 

Thank you for your time and have a great day! :))

Hi all!

I just wanted to say thank you very much for those who took the time to reply too my post and helped me with this assignment. 

For those who are wondering, I finally got my grades back and I got the highest grade you can get within the NCEA curriculum (Excellence whoop whoop!).

Thank you to all who has helped me and took their time to reply to me, I couldn't have done it with you guys! :)) 

 

I hope everyone is doing well and I wish you all the best in you future geocaching adventures! 

 

- E 

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12 hours ago, stawbby said:

Hi all!

I just wanted to say thank you very much for those who took the time to reply too my post and helped me with this assignment. 

For those who are wondering, I finally got my grades back and I got the highest grade you can get within the NCEA curriculum (Excellence whoop whoop!).

Thank you to all who has helped me and took their time to reply to me, I couldn't have done it with you guys! :)) 

 

I hope everyone is doing well and I wish you all the best in you future geocaching adventures! 

 

- E 

Just curious, can you post a link to your paper?

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