Monsters come to Komoka

Remember the days when you used to follow treasure maps to find buried treasure? If you led a less exciting life as a child, you'll be happy to know that you and your students can both find treasure, and hide it through Geocaching.

Although I'd known about Geocaching for some time, it took an invitation from Jarrod Robinson for me to undertake a first hand exploration of this growing phenomenon. An overview of the Australian origins of this project is included in this brief audio podcast:



At the launch of the project, Mr. Robbo: The P.E. Geek, posted this video introduction to the monsters project:



On Saturday, we went treasure hunting!

Step 1: The monsters arrived via air mail from Australia. We unpacked the envelope and discovered a number of hand-drawn monsters, attached to a Travel Bug.

Step 2: After recording the tracking number of the Travel Bug, we documented the arrival of the attached monsters at Geocaching.com.

Step 3: We chose an existing cache at the Komoka Railway Museum, as the first hiding place for the monsters.

As much as it was fun to play hide & seek via geocaching, we discovered a number of additional, unanticipated treasures:
making treasure maps;
climbing on rail cars;
hearing stock car races echo in the valley;
hiking around the Kilworth pond,
confirming that beavers live in the neighbourhood.

We had a gorgeous day to explore, but I suspect this recreational hobby can be enjoyed year-round. If you're interested to learn what may be hiding in your neighbourhood, simply input your postal/zip code at Geocaching website, then take the next step, and seek out the hidden treasure!

For more photos of our hike, visit my Geocaching photos via Flickr.

Blogging Voices Quieted

A classroom blog of 8 & 9 year olds is closed, and the blogosphere responds by the hundreds.

Mini 16 tells part of the story: "When I new that my blog got blocked I thort that all my work was gone! But al said that it was’ant gone. good because it is fun."

If you haven't heard the story yet, you can head over to Al Upton's Minilegends update page to read an overview of the story so far. The short story is that the primary school blogging project in South Australia has been taken offline, but in text, Al seems pretty upbeat suggesting that we should learn what we can from the experience and acknowledging that the story is not yet over. When you consider the 166 comments as of present, There is much to read, and Al is promising at least one more update on the blog.

Even though this story makes it easy to imagine the sad faces of primary students, there are countless thousands of students (and teachers) out there, who have yet to discover the blogosphere.

When a teacher is willing to take a risk with blogging, I guess we have to be prepared for even unimagined consequences. So how do we ensure that ventures of this sort can be safely undertaken? I'm thinking that we should harness the collective wisdom of the blogoshpere in supporting Al Upton and other teachers who are willing to take the leap into using the read/write web as learners.

To facilitate the gathering of blogging policy/guideline resources, I've created a wiki page where educators can share known resources and ideas that might be used by teachers or school boards as as scaffolding to develop and refine policy frameworks related to classroom blogging. On this page, you can share your expertise or ideas for how a teachers and students can safely explore blogging. If we can harness even a fraction of the many who responded to the 'minilegends', I'm sure we can help ensure that student voices can be safely heard.

If you have suggestions for what a good policy might include, or if you know of policies that can be shared, your contributions are most welcome!

Blog Sketch Credit: Frances Copozzi