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Teams track down, root out answers
Published: Thursday, 29 Mar 2007
The News Journal, Ormond Beach, FL
By Jennifer Surgent, Staff Writer
Learn more about Geo Teams
Teams track down, root out the answers
Osceola Elementary School teacher Steve Waterman brought in Wes Foster of Expedition Earth on Monday to celebrate his pupils' hard work in preparation for the recent FCAT test.
Foster, a former middle school teacher, travels the country delivering educational programs to schools. This week he traveled from Ohio to Ormond Beach and volunteered his "Geo Teams" program to the school.
HOW GEO TEAMS WORKS
Students are grouped into teams. Using global positioning system tracking device, half the team is sent out on school grounds to search for "geocaching stations," ( a large plastic bag with questions on a sheet of paper).
Once they find the bag of questions they read the questions over a walkie-talkie to the other half of their team in the school media center.
The team members inside the media center are sitting at computers ready to look up the answers on the Internet. The questions range from local trivia to facts about Florida, like,
"What is the capital of Florida?" and "What is the longest river in the Florida?"
When the pupils find the answers, they immediately report their findings to their team members and then the answer is documented. Each pupil gets a chance to both search outside and research inside. The process takes an average of an hour and a half to complete.
Pronounced geo-cashing, the game involves teams using a global positioning device to find hidden "treasure" according to map coordinates of latitude and longitude.
SOURCE: geocaching.com
Cutline: Photo 1: Media specialist Nancy Keck helps, from left, Logan Brownell, 10, Frank Puzziferro, 9, T.J. Smith, 12 and Zach Chambers, 10, as they research answers to questions called in by their Geo Team teammates outside Osceola Elementary School on Monday.
Photo 2: Uncaptioned photo of a global positioning system tracking device.
Photo 3: After successfully finding a geocaching station with their GPS system, Geo Team teammates, Tyler Phelps, 10, left, and Austin Tarlini, 10, prepare to read the questions found in the clear bag they discovered.
Neigbors photos/ JENNIFER SURGENT
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