GPS

I really enjoyed this lesson on GPS and geocaching. It was a lot of fun having the scavenger hunt. While Nate and I were able to find the first cache, which happened to involve aspirin, we were not so lucky in finding the second one. As you can see in the second photo, Lisa and Kirsten we not able to find that particular cache either.

While the GPS was able to direct us all to the general area, it is too bad that it could not tell us an exact location. For example, when looking for the second cache, perhaps it was there in the right spot, but we just happened to not be able to find it. In that case, if the GPS was able to give an exact location of the cache, we would have known exactly where to look.

As far as using GPS in the classroom, I think it would be neat to use it in math. One way would be to use it when learning about geometry. You could give students a particular set of coordinates as a starting point, and then have them find something that is so many degrees in a particular direction. That would relate directly to using polar coordinates and would definitely motivate students to learn.