Classroom use

[+irishmanmac]

I was hoping to do a scavenger hunt with gps and geocaching.  How do I create an event on school property where only my students will have access to and/or participate in the hunt?  I am a premium member (under my personal email), however the students will most likely not have a gps unit, thought they should have a smart phone. Do they have to create an account?

[RuideAlmeida]

5 minutes ago, irishmanmac said:

Do they have to create an account?

 

Yes... or they all log with your profile on each smartphone.

You can create waypoints on any nearby easy D/T Traditional (using the official free app), and use them as locations for your private hunt, by instance.

Edited August 9, 2023 by RuideAlmeida

[+kunarion]

42 minutes ago, irishmanmac said:

I was hoping to do a scavenger hunt with gps and geocaching.  How do I create an event on school property where only my students will have access to and/or participate in the hunt?  I am a premium member (under my personal email), however the students will most likely not have a gps unit, thought they should have a smart phone. Do they have to create an account?

 

Not all smart phones have a compass.  You may find an App online that can be installed, but this first requires access to App stores.  Prepare to spend much time helping everyone get their phones set up, except for the phones that don't have the minimum functions required.

 

Search for "GPS Apps", and you'll see several that allow typing coordinates.  Some (such as Spyglass) have demo versions for both Android and iPhone.  Depending on how complicated you make this, having different Apps for different systems multiplies the complications.  Even the Official Geocaching App is somewhat different between Droid and IOS, plus there's the member login requirement.

 

One simple idea would be to set up and test couple of handheld GPSs and/or phones in advance, and form groups, and share devices and go find stuff.  In any case, have some king of printout or file with "Cache Info" for every point that they will hunt.

 

Edited August 9, 2023 by kunarion

[Keystone]

Anything you organize would need to be independent of Geocaching.com.  An event cache needs to be open to all geocachers in order to be published.  Physical caches cannot be published on school grounds, and "temporary caches" for an educational event cannot be published regardless of the location.

[+NanCycle]

2 hours ago, irishmanmac said:

I was hoping to do a scavenger hunt with gps and geocaching.  How do I create an event on school property where only my students will have access to and/or participate in the hunt?  I am a premium member (under my personal email), however the students will most likely not have a gps unit, thought they should have a smart phone. Do they have to create an account?

You cannot create an official Geocaching Event where attendance is restricted to your students.  What you do on your own without involving Geocaching is up to you.  Your membership and your students membership (if any) are totally irrelevant.

[+Wadcutter]

Do a search for archived caches GC3TJAK and GC3TJBN.  An instructor at a junior college attempted to do the same.  They were a bit slow learning such caches violate Geocaching.com rules.  The reviewer who finally archived them posted they should never have been published.  

[+kunarion]

In addition to the helpful replies, be aware that there are guidelines for creating an official Geocaching Event.  As to the OP, an Event "cannot be set up for the sole purpose of finding geocaches".  But you can make a "Geocaching 101" Event where you present information on what Geocaching is and how it works.  There may be a chance to find "a Geocache", but for several reasons it's best if they are temporary, set up just for the Event.  I don't know for sure that you can't exclude everyone except your students from the "scavenger hunt" portion of the Event.  Many Official Events have various exclusions and restrictions.  But at Geocaching 101 Events, the hosts tend to appreciate more participation, especially when some attendees are familiar with Apps and GPS and finding Geocaches.

 

And if you meant that it's an "event" not truly connected to Geocaching.com, you simply need a way that at least each group can navigate to the scavenger hunt spots.  Possibly with some of the ideas already mentioned.

 

 

[+GeoElmo6000]

6 hours ago, irishmanmac said:

I was hoping to do a scavenger hunt with gps and geocaching.  How do I create an event on school property where only my students will have access to and/or participate in the hunt?  I am a premium member (under my personal email), however the students will most likely not have a gps unit, thought they should have a smart phone. Do they have to create an account?

 

One idea is to do this outside of geocaching.com.  Hide some geocaches around the school property for the students, document the coordinates, and have them enter the coordinates you give them into their smartphone's Google Maps app.  It won't have a compass but it'll show where the location is and they can navigate to it.  Your idea won't work because a) it's on school property, b) you can't have an event with any exclusivity, and c) you can't hide temporary geocaches.

[+Smitherington]

I had a Geocaching 101 class open to the public and sponsored by the local Parks and Rec.  I proceeded that with an event so I would have geocachers there to help the newbies.  I had placed several fake geocaches and gave the coords to the cachers.  They made waypoints on their phones and let the newbies use them to find the 'geocaches'.  It was a great cooperative event.  GCA9DQZ was the event.

 

You may be able to ask the school leaders if other geocachers can help teach the class.  Then go for it.

[+niraD]

11 hours ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

Hide some geocaches around the school property for the students, document the coordinates, and have them enter the coordinates you give them into their smartphone's Google Maps app. 

Be aware that the default map app may show the nearest street address to the coordinates, rather than the actual coordinates. It's been a number of years, but I ran into this with a puzzle-hunt style event that I organized. Some of the teams used map apps that took them to addresses along the road that encircled the lake, rather than to the correct locations somewhere on the lake.

[+GeoElmo6000]

4 hours ago, niraD said:

Be aware that the default map app may show the nearest street address to the coordinates, rather than the actual coordinates. It's been a number of years, but I ran into this with a puzzle-hunt style event that I organized. Some of the teams used map apps that took them to addresses along the road that encircled the lake, rather than to the correct locations somewhere on the lake.

 

I encountered this when trying to use Google Maps for directions, but not for putting the coordinate in and walking to it.  That's been my experience.

[+thebruce0]

Yes I think the 'nearest address' annoyance was fixed some time back; haven't seen that happen for a long time, at least while entering coordinates. However for navigation it will location the nearest end point depending on your travel method, but in my experience it provides a dashed arc between the closest access point and the desired coordinates. THAT is what you need to watch for with, for example, caches opposite a sound wall near a highway, where it may navigate to and stop you ON the highway as the closest road point - but it'll still give you the dashed line to the coordinates.

'Navigate' itself is really the function to make use of correctly if at all. Viewing coordinates in google maps should be fine.

[+vw_k]

On 8/10/2023 at 1:30 AM, GeoElmo6000 said:

 

One idea is to do this outside of geocaching.com.  Hide some geocaches around the school property for the students, document the coordinates, and have them enter the coordinates you give them into their smartphone's Google Maps app.  It won't have a compass but it'll show where the location is and they can navigate to it.

 

This.

The geocaching website and app isn't set up for "private" caches to be created like this.

Just noting down the co-ordinates of the caches you hide and finding a smartphone navigation app in which they can be entered (such as google maps) is the way to go. Perhaps the signatures in the logbooks confirming which student found which cache could then be entered into a spreadsheet to create a list of logs and find counts.