Modern Day Treasure Hunt

SEBRING - Trampling through the underbrush among palm trees and live oaks, Sebring Middle School sixth-grader Trevor Ieslin shouts "I found it," as he uncovers a military ammo box hidden among the foliage.

Through a high-tech treasure hunt game called Geocaching, 52 Sebring Middle advanced academics math sixth-graders learned the practical use of a GPS (Global Positioning Systems) receiver.

Working in groups of four students with a teacher or parent, the students searched Thursday for 18 containers hidden at Highlands Hammock State Park.

Before the hunt, district technology resource teacher Darrell Layfield showed the students how to use the hand-held GPS units.

"What does it mean if I have a big arrow?" he asked the students.

"It's navigating to a point," a student replied.

"What are those points called? Layfield asked.

"Waypoints," a student responded.

After explaining different GPS menu option to the students, Layfield said that if you go hunting or walking around the woods, mark waypoints about every 100 feet as you walk.

Then when you get two or three miles into the woods you can follow your path back, he said. If you don't mark your path, when you are two miles out the GPS will mark a straight path back to your car.

"That could be through a bear's den, lake or through a pool of lava or whatever," Layfield said.

Student Clark Farmer said "it's fun to use; there's nothing real tricky about it."

Parent Sandy Ferretti worked with a group of four students as they searched for the hidden containers.
She was provided with a list of hints in the event students had trouble finding the items, but the students didn't need help finding a Tupperware container behind a water facet.

The group also found a real Geocaching benchmark - one that was not placed by the school.

The term geocaching is derived from "geo" for geography and "caching" for the process of finding a cache. A typical GPS receiver calculates its position using the signals from four or more GPS satellites.
Waypoints are sets of coordinates that identify a point in physical space.

Math teacher Diane Morse was able to get about 25 GPS receivers through a grant.