Mark Case’ Blog

Like most workshop junkies, I found about 4 great seminars and workshops to attend this summer that took me all over the country. A new passion my wife and I developed is geocaching. It has taken us to places we never would have known. We have hiked swamps, forests, historic parts of towns, mountains, the beach and more.

Every workshop I attend, I bring my GPS and usually find at least one more person that either does geocaching or wants to learn. We go out, see the sites, learn and have a great time.

This past weekend, geocaching took me to the birthplace of the Revolutionary War. I stood in the spot where “The shot heard around the world” was reported. I live near the spot where the same war was ended. I boarded my plane home that day, went by Guilford Courthouse and in one day, I stood where the war started and ended.

I have never found an activity that combines so many areas of education.

We all get a class like that one… yea that one… the class with no matter what we do, what we try, we cannot make headway.  I had one of those this year.  No matter what I did, it was like pulling teeth from a gator! 

I tried the unit on tides.  Yes, I have High School, but many of them operate on a lower middle school education level  The combination of the hands on and computer work was great.  I made a difference in about 4 of the students that did not care, but 4 was a major breakthrough. 

I use DE Streaming, but have not seen these video clips before and it was GREAT that they were packaged together with the teacher guide and student guide.  I used the online assessment on the projector and had them write the answers down.  It worked great (and saved making copies).

 I hope to use more of the modules this fall.  I was already past most of the weathering and mass movement, but will be going back to it this fall!

May 21 is DEN Geocaching Day. We will meet at Southern Guilford High School at 8:30 and go to Southwest Park for a couple hours of geocaching! RSVP if you can make it.