Have you wanted to try out the newest craze – geocaching or letterboxing? Here’s a new twist! Try “educaching” !Educaching can be described as using GPS technology to complete educational objectives in a variety of subject areas.
Instead of using the same old teaching methods to teach or review how to average numbers or measurements of an object, educaching adds a more interesting element where you have to follow GPS coordinates to find the items to measure, then figure out the average. This is one example of how to use this adventurous element to learning.
We recently received the Educaching manual to review and try out for ourselves. Using your own GPS with the manual, you can use the lesson plans in the manual or begin developing your own around any subject or topic you are studying with your children. The manual has lesson plans geared to grades 4-8, but can easily be adapted to younger and older grades. Once you get the hang of the idea of using the GPS as a device to introduce, review, and reinforce any academic concept, you can write your own lesson plans for anything you want.
A word of advice from our experience, a GPS that would be used for hiking would be easier and more efficient to use for geocaching than a GPS that is more adapted to highway miles.
Now, about the content of the manual – For your convenience and ease of use, the manual is divided into five sections.
The First Section – Teacher Training
This section provides you with the information you need for the background knowledge in GPS technology, knowledge to apply the use of the GPS to the lesson plans, and hands-on training activity suggestions to assist your children in using the GPS.
The Second Section – Lesson Plans
This section has lesson plans already written for you to use as you get used to using the idea of educaching to spice up your learning. There are twenty lessons that range from simple to more complex use of the GPS and academic skills. These lessons are correlated with national teaching standards for math, language arts, science, social studies, technology, and fine arts. Each lesson plan includes the standard being taught, lists of materials needed, any preparation tips, and instructions for implementing the lesson.
The Third Section – Worksheets
This section includes templates or reproducible worksheets to copy and hand out to your children for each lesson plan activity. A CD is also included with the manual with these worksheets so you can print them from the CD or customize them for your needs.
The Fourth Section – Acquiring GPS
This section does not really apply to homeschoolers. It focuses on obtaining funding to purchase GPS units, such as grants, donations, fundraising, and educational discounts.
The Fifth Section – Beyond the Basics
This section of the guide offers suggestions in ways to use educaching beyond the provided lesson plans. These ideas can be used alongside of the suggested activities or as a jumping off put for you to develop your own lesson plans.
Now, let’s look at our educaching experience with using the GPS and the lesson plans in the manual. Let me start by saying I was quite excited about trying out this program. My guys are outdoorsy “manly men” and love hands on opportunities, so I thought this learning method would be quite exciting for them.
First, I would advise anyone interested in this program to consider where they would use their GPS, as different areas have varying degrees of reception. My area unfortunately is very spotty, due to weather conditions and living among a number of mountain ranges and an overabundance of trees.
Now, we tried a couple of different lesson plans I thought would give us a good variety of activities to test drive this learning method. We started out doing some basic research using the suggested websites in learning about satellites and GPS technology. We all found this very interesting and informative. With our new found understanding in this technology, we started outside armed with our GPS and ready to apply our new knowledge.
Our first lesson was very basic focusing on “absolute location” vs. “relative location”. This did not require too much preparation ahead of time to bring the kiddos out to show them how to input longitude and latitude into the GPS and explain the difference between the two different kinds of location descriptions.
Our next lesson, estimating the average length of sticks scattered around a field, required a little bit more preparation beforehand. I had to locate sticks of varying lengths, scatter them, and mark down their coordinate positions, so that my kids could later input these positions into the GPS. As they found each stick, they measured it (a rounded estimate), and then found the average length of all of the sticks. I wish I could I say the kids found this a neat way to review math, but I can’t. I’m sorry to say that they found it a long way around the barn in order to review this mathematical concept.
Our next lesson, finding and marking down examples of physical and chemical change in the outdoors, also required advance preparation. I went outside to locate different examples of physical and chemical change and recorded their locations. After a brief explanation of the difference between each type of change, we went hunting for examples using the coordinates I gave them. This use of the GPS was more engaging for them as they were using the GPS to “find” something as an example in nature. This lesson definitely kept them more interested.
Overall, I think the idea of using this technology to engage students in different lessons is a good one. For our family, however, the more directly the GPS was used in searching for something or doing something outdoors, the more engaged my guys were. For example, notating the locations of different types of leaves, plants, trees, anything in the outdoors, and having my guys use the coordinates to find these items and notate them on a journal or record sheet seemed to make more sense to us. Also using the GPS, as suggested, to notate the locations of points in a shape to make in a field and then measure the dimensions of that shape would also be more of a direct connection.
However, spending so much time using the GPS to do something like averaging lengths of sticks did not seem to be the best way to use this technology. We could do this kind of task more efficiently or in another entertaining way. For a lot of the lesson plans, there was a bit of time and advance preparation before the lesson. I would put in that time only if the lesson was something that I could not do in a more time efficient or effective manner. For other lessons that incorporated examples of concepts found outside or physically measuring great lengths in a field I would definitely use the GPS again.
Before investing in a GPS to use with this curriculum, visit the Educaching site to look at sample pages of lesson plans by selecting “Product” on the Home page.
This curriculum is available for purchase in a 3-ring Binder with a CD containing customizable templates of forms to use with your children for $32.00 plus $6.95 shipping and handling. An electronic PDF version is available for $32.00, no shipping charges. Other bundles are available that include a refurbished GPS receiver, as well.
To read more ways others from the Homeschool Crew used this curriculum, visit these reviews.
I was excited to receive Christian Kids Explore Physics and give it a try. The first thing I did was take a look at the Table of Contents. Wow! It covered such a great variety of topics within the physical science area; and, here’s the lovely coincidence. It closely matched the contents of my older son’s physical science program for high school, of course in a more modified form for grades 4-8.
A website providing over 35,000 worksheets, clip art, and educational tools for its members, 
