Caching in our Schools

[Rigger64]

As I have intimated before, I don't think there should be any influence over who should and who should not be able to place caches.

Imagine if there was a policy that could determine who was able to FIND caches. Are you in school, are you a scout? Yes, well sorry, can't find a cache. We won't let you.

Sounds a bit silly really, doesn't it?

As a community we should be happy to educate and to share our knowledge and passion for our game / sport. If someone doesn't do it just quite right, lets give them a helping hand. In private.

Bring them all on and I welcome it. Teach our youth to get outside and go for a walk. Oh, and use and exercise those befuddled brain cells as well. The more geocachers, whatever the creed, school or scouting preference, the better.
Let us welcome them all.

Well said Earthbound.
Thats why i set up a Topic for those of us that are intrested in adopting a "School Cache" to express our intrest in a cache or two that we intrested in & to offer help is it is so asked for or just offered.

[PirateRock]

I'd think it would be better for everyone if they place caches in their school or local area and distribute information about their hides internally, not on a public site.

That way they get to play and have fun, and no-one gets upset at :
a) kids leaving stupid logs
b) cachers going and seeking caches located awfully close to or in school grounds and
c) cache maintenance issues

There's also the risk that depending on the school and type of kids that the local caches near the school might get trashed by some of the kids. This has happened in the past.

I'm aware of a couple of school and scout cache listings (on both GC and GCA) and while the scout ones seemed to go well, some of the school ones had some...umm... odd logs and such.

It is possible to teach geocaching without using a public listing site.

My wife has previously done this with the year 7 students at the school, and after the school hidden caches were found at the end of the week, they were collected. No information regarding the caches was passed outside the school community.

As a result, one container was recycled (it is my multi container) and 2 kids have got their families hooked on caching...

[blackadders]

I'd think it would be better for everyone if they place caches in their school or local area and distribute information about their hides internally, not on a public site.

That way they get to play and have fun, and no-one gets upset at :
a) kids leaving stupid logs
b) cachers going and seeking caches located awfully close to or in school grounds and
c) cache maintenance issues

There's also the risk that depending on the school and type of kids that the local caches near the school might get trashed by some of the kids. This has happened in the past.

I'm aware of a couple of school and scout cache listings (on both GC and GCA) and while the scout ones seemed to go well, some of the school ones had some...umm... odd logs and such.

It is possible to teach geocaching without using a public listing site.

My wife has previously done this with the year 7 students at the school, and after the school hidden caches were found at the end of the week, they were collected. No information regarding the caches was passed outside the school community.

As a result, one container was recycled (it is my multi container) and 2 kids have got their families hooked on caching...

I have to agree with CraigRat here and in his comment are my concerns, In a perfect world it would be great to have schools participate but as CR stated there a a number of questionable kids, sad but true, that would probably sabotage the game. Imagine a teacher introducing a class of 20 or 30 students to caching, maybe the majority would gain interest but you would definitely get a few who were trouble makers, I can see them going after school to destroy the containers and even with nothing else to do, getting a free trial of the Geo App and searching for them. By all means have a closed data base within the school and if any of the kids are genuinely interested to do the right thing then they can be informed that there is an "official? game that can be accessed.

Again sorry to sound negative but I personally do not wish to put extra burden on seekers and more importantly Co's with having to continually replace and or maintain the work they have done in designing purchasing and appropriately placing a cache.

Paul

blackadders