Hillside School Seniors Class – Geocaching for Blue Switch Day – 5/5/21

What was the event?

Hillside School, Cumnock and East Ayrshire Council Learning Outdoors Support Team (LOST) partnered up to celebrate the 21^st anniversary of Blue Switch Day.

To mark the event, pupils from the Senior Class at Hillside School went to the Woodroad Park, Cumnock to use GPS technology on the Geocache App to search for two Geocache treasures within a short walk from their school.

What is Blue Switch Day?

It is no secret, that Global Positioning System (GPS) is a huge part of our lives.  When we find the fastest way to work, check the weather at our location, tag our location on social media, or order a dinner from an app, GPS is responsible for it all.  We can even add finding a geocache to this list!  This is all thanks to a change made to GPS in the year 2000.  When GPS was first developed, it was only available for use by the U.S Military.  Eventually, GPS was opened up to civilians, but with Selective Availability.  This meant that although everyone had access, the accuracy was lowered for civilians.  On 2^nd May 2000, the U.S. government ‘flipped the switch’ so high-accuracy GPS was available to everyone.  For reasons unknown, geocachers know this as Blue Switch Day.  However, there really wasn’t a blue switch!

Opening up accurate GPS technology to everyone around the globe launched a flow of innovation and new cutting-edge technology that changed the world forever.  It created an entirely new world of possibilities.  It’s not a coincidence the first geocache was hidden on May 3, 2000, and the game of geocaching was born!

What happened?

Two senior pupils from Hillside School, a classroom assistant and LOST staff used GPS technology and the Geocache app on an iPhone to navigate a walk from the school on the Barony Campus, Cumnock to the Woodroad Park.  Once in the park, pupils used the GPS with support to navigate to the location of the Geocache treasure hidden within the park.  They had to work out which way they were facing, the direction they had to travel and how near or far they were to the treasure.  Once the location was found, pupils had to ID a tree from a description and photographs to find the correct one and then get on their hands and knees to explore the base and find the treasure!  The two pupils were then able to retrieve a piece of the treasure hidden and replace it with something of their own, as is Geocaching custom, before returning it to its hiding place to be found by others.

Willie White, Education Officer, said, “Could there be a better way of demonstrating science, technology and maths combined in the real world than geocaching?  Pupils understand the significance of these subjects through a fun, outdoor activity; who doesn’t love finding hidden treasure?  Using the free app on any phone to adventure out and find hidden places on your doorstep to all over the world, really opens the door to a lifetime of exploration and learning, but warned, it can be addictive!”

Other East Ayrshire schools will celebrate the 21^st Blue Switch Birthday by placing 21 new geocaches at significant cultural and heritage locations around East Ayrshire for everyone to explore.  Delivered through the Coalfield Communities Landscape Partnership and organised by EAC Learning Outdoors Support Team, many of the new caches will highlight special places recently restored and returned to community access as a legacy of East Ayrshire’s coal mining heritage.

Geocaching is worldwide and accessible.  It is free to anyone with a phone, if you want to try; download the Geocache App, register an account, find a geocache and share your experience, just like these pupils.

Case study compiled by:

Alyson Conquer, COACh Teacher, East Ayrshire Learning Outdoors Support Team

With thanks to:

Hillside School pupils

Janet McKechnie, Principal Teacher, Hillside School

Mary McEwan, Classroom Assistant, Hillside School

Coalfield Communities Landscape Partnership

Further information can be found at:

EAC LOST: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/ea/learningoutdoorssupportteam

Coalfield Communities Landscape Partnership: https://coalfieldcommunities.co.uk/

Blue Switch Day Blog Post: https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2021/04/new-souvenir-blue-switch-day-2021/

What is geocaching?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuFiLhhCNww&feature=emb_title

Staring another week with another brand new resource ready for use by you in your remote learning, or as part of your planning for school return.

We have created three different shape hunts, with accompanying worksheets, differentiated for Early, First and Second Levels.  This activity allows learning about shape to be extended and to be explored and applied in real life contexts.  We have also added a SWAY resource that could be used to supplement the second level activity.

Find more information and the resources here:

Daily Walk – Shape Hunts

Welcome to another Friday!  Well done to all of you for all that you are doing!

Next week, we have one of our most popular webinars coming up – Make your own Resources.  This webinar will support you in making your own practical resources for teaching outdoors using easily found, cheap materials.  There will be something to suit every age, stage and ability and plenty of hints and tips coming from our team members.

The webinar is on Tuesday 9th February, starting at 4pm and running until 5pm and will be hosted on Google Meet.

Visit our Webinars page to find the link to the meeting and we hope to see you on Tuesday.

We are excited to share another example of fantastic learning and parental engagement from across East Ayrshire.  Roady Jack, brother Riley, who both attend Shortlees Primary and their family achieved their John Muir Family Award through lockdown and put together this video to share and celebrate all the hard work they put in.  This is a really brilliant example of outdoor learning in action.  Well done to all the Jack family and thank you to the family, Miss Cardie at Shortlees Primary and Lorna Sloan, John Muir Trust for letting us share this video.  

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any of us here at LOST if you have been inspired by the Jack family’s journey and would like to learn how you, your family or your pupils could take part in their John Muir Award, even during lockdown.

Lots of people are out exploring their local area at the moment, as a way to get fresh air and clear their head through lockdown. Our ‘Write a Guide to a Wild Place’ lesson encourages learners to connect with and explore the spaces that they are walking in to share what they have discovered with others through a guide or presentation. This lesson can be differentiated to suit both First and Second Level learners and we have created a generic Sway presentation which can be used and extended to suit your classes.

Find out more and access resources here: Write a Guide to a Wild Place

We are really excited to be able to share a fantastic film created by Galston Primary School’s P7 class as part of a film course they took part in for their John Muir Award. What a brilliant example of sharing learning and super work done by all! The class have also submitted the film to a competition about taking action on climate change which may be shown in front of world leaders at COP26 – the global United Nations summit about climate change and how countries plan to tackle the issue, which takes place in Scotland later this year.  More information to follow in the coming weeks. You can watch the video by following this link:

Spending time outdoors is important for our mental and physical health at the best of times, and is becoming an even more vital part of people’s day when other activities are restricted.  To mark Children’s Mental Health Week, we have put together a suggestion sheet of easy, resource free, quick things to try which could be carried out on winter walks, in local greenspace or even in gardens.  The aim of these activities is to have fun, slow down and take notice of the world around you.  Learners and their families can choose which activities to do, how many times they do them and which order they do them in.  You can find the suggestion sheet here: Winter Walk Fun

Happy to share some fantastic work from across East Ayrshire schools in partnership with the John Muir Trust. Lorna Sloan supported Shortlees Primary and Galston Primary to engage with nature and to write some fantastic poems based on the Lost Words Spells Book. Check out the good news story and examples of work here: The Red Fox Poems – huge well done to all involved!!

Starting a new week by sharing a new resource with you. ‘Using tallies to complete a survey’ will help first level learners to sort and categorise objects in the world around them and to use tally sheets to record what they have found. The resource comes with a sheet for recording, suggestions of assessment questions to further learning and links to other resources to take the topic further.

You can find the lesson here: https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/ea/learningoutdoorssupportteam/using-tallies-to-complete-a-survey/

New resource alert! We have updated one of our existing resources with a ThingLink interactive image. You can now share this image for our ‘Outdoor Workout’ activity with your pupils. Pupils can click on the tags and find exercises that they could try outdoors, with options for challenges to make them more difficult! Check it out here: Outdoor Workout ThingLink