Geocaching

This study explores the relation between playful learning experiences of preschool children and an Augmented Reality application used in connection to a geocaching trail, Sigrid-Secrets. We have created a game-based learning environment based on the treasure hunt of the geocaching game that utilizes Augmented Reality (AR) technology. Augmented Reality game-based learning (ARGBL) is quickly gaining momentum in the education sector worldwide as it has the potential to enable new forms of outdoor learning and transform the learning experience (Fotaris, et al., 2017). Our aim is to determine the experiences of preschool children regarding playful augmented learning, through the use of the Augmented Reality-enhanced Sigrid-Secrets mobile application on a geocaching trail. One of the goals is to explore which educational needs, such as collaborative learning, does new technology like Augmented Reality cater to when preschool children learn in environments outside of the classroom. This study was conducted with 20 preschool children, who participated in our Sigrid-Secrets geocaching trail play-test with their four teachers. After the play-tests, the children were asked how they would teach their peers about what they learned during the play-tests. The results show that the suggested Augmented Reality game-based learning environment may help preschoolers to engage, explore, explain, and elaborate understandings of their own environment and, for example, the history of their hometown, when using the Flipped Classroom approach.

For those who have access to them, locative digital technologies are becoming increasingly pervasive in everyday life. It is therefore important to understand the processes by which such technologies are shaping how people engage with the world. This thesis uses a postphenomenological approach to examine these processes in the context of geocaching, a locative digital game that combines aspects of treasure hunting and orienteering. In particular, this thesis focuses on how technologies indirectly mediate how geocachers engage with the world; that is, how technologies might shape experience even when they are not co-present with humans. Interpreting data from interviews and participant observations conducted in metropolitan Melbourne, this thesis discusses how indirect technological mediations shape a geocaching world and a geocaching subjectivity. Firstly, it argues that directly mediated social relations shape the parts of the landscape that geocachers engage with and give rise to a shared mode of interpreting that landscape. Secondly, it argues that differentiated access to digital information creates a divide between the worlds of geocachers and non-geocachers, compelling geocachers to employ distinctive modes of interacting with and being in the landscape while playing the game. Its findings suggest that embodied interactions with technologies may create the conditions for the indirect mediating effects of technologies, but that we require further investigation to better understand the intricacies of indirect mediation. Hence, this thesis not only develops a relatively under-theorised aspect of technological mediation, but also contributes rich empirical data to understandings of geocaching and experiences of public space more generally.

This article reports on the design and evaluation of player experiences in relation to a location-based game (LBG). LBGs seek to move gamified play into the "real world" of cities, parks, and other locations. These games are played in everyday places, where game information is tied to specific locations (Magerkurth et al, 2005). This connection to real-world physicality makes the game experience multidimensional and fun for players of different ages. Yet, to be able to envision and create an urban gamescape means that a set of criteria must be met. The unique challenge of creating and orchestrating LBG experiences requires a certain sensitivity from its designers to the multiple factors that must be considered. These may include-but are not limited to-factors such as the city's infrastructure, the flows of urban traffic, the maintenance of recreational areas, and human-related factors such as cooperation with the city administration. The game introduced in this article-Sigrid-Secrets-represents an urban game adventure built upon the platform of geocaching. We approach the game with a focus on its potential learning affordances. We ask how the pitfalls in creating opportunities for learning through LBGs could be avoided, especially when designing pedagogic aims into an urban gaming experience fit for school-aged children.

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In this study we explore the concvergence of art and game present in the so-called 'gamification' of the Sigrid-Secrets, and urban geocaching trail. The starting point for our investigation is the idea that the participants to the 'gamified' art experience are xommitted to interact with the visual artworks they encounter and share their experiences with other users. By closely studying this game, we get a better insight into the concept of gamification, which allows its users to engage with both art and game (i.e. digital technologies) simultaneously.

The abilities of analyzing and perceiving of the landscape are paramount skills of a geographer. In the context of the corresponding course of the Geography Department of the University of the Aegean, we conducted field activities using a mobile learning system that we have developed and which is the intersection of two emerging learning practices: geocaching and mobile learning. The system consists of a web and a smartphone application for Android devices. The web application allows teachers to create educational geocaching activities by providing point coordinates as well as information, and multiple choice questions relevant to each point. The smart phone application is used by students on the field, in order complete the activities prepared by the teacher. For testing and evaluation of the system, a geocaching activity was designed and conducted within the framework of the “Analysis and Perception of the Landscape” course. The aim of the activity was the identification and analysis of landscape elements. The students were divided into two groups: half of them participated in the field exercises without the use of the system but accompanied by the course professor, while the others used the system exclusively, without supervising or instructing by the professor. Our objective was to compare the educational results of these two methods, using evaluation sheets that were distributed to the participating students after completing the activity. The conclusions of the case study show that geocaching and mobile learning are not only exciting, but also support the achievement of the learning outcomes effectively.

In this study, we explore the convergence of art and game present in the so-called ‘gamification’ the Sigrid-Secrets, an urban geocaching trail. The starting point for our investigation is the idea that the participants to the ‘gamified’ art experience are committed to interacting with the visual artworks they encounter and share their experiences with the other users.

An optional leisure activity in the countryside for wheelchair users is subject to discussion b in this article. Geo-caching is a leisure activity on the borders between tourism and sport, which appeals to a growing proportion of peoples globally. It can become a prospective part of social tourism as a leisure activity for persons with disabilities: this paper devotes attention to wheelchair users. In this research project we analysed how terrain difficulty and its markings reflect on the availability of caches to be gained by wheelchair users. The aim of the field survey was to verify if the caches indicated by the difficulty of the terrain (terrain level: 1 and 1.5) can be considered available for disabled people. The availability of the caches was also assessed based on the presence (aid) of an assistant. We found that access to most of the easily available caches contains small but critical constraints for wheelchair users – from path bumps to the very cache locations which are unreachable for wheelchair users. Therefore, we have proposed a set of recommendations and pictograms to make geo-caching more available for persons using wheelchairs and to expand their opportunities for active outdoor leisure activity. The results will be used to design access to natural sites for wheelchair users.

This study explores emerging types of mobile and social play patterns through the object-based, but technologically enhanced practices of toy tourism. As our case studies demonstrate, object play practices in the digitalizing world are not only becoming increasingly social in nature, but even more mobile than before. As illustrated by our study focusing on Travel Bugs in the context of the international game of geocaching, toys become mobile through different practices partaken by players, willing to either become involved in toy tourism with their playthings. Our study consisted of 45 survey responses from geocachers traveling with Travel Bugs. According to the results, mobile and social object play practices enabled by the platform of Geocaching become gamified – i.e. more perceivable, goal-oriented and measurable. Our main contribution is a conceptual framework in which the relations between the digital, the physical and the social dimensions of toy tourism are modelled.

This paper reports on the design and evaluation of player experiences related to a Location-Based Game. Location-based games (or LBGs) seek to move gamified play into the " real world " of cities, parks and other locations. These games are played in everyday places, where game information is tied to specific locations (Magerkurth et al. 2005). This connection to real-world physicality makes the game experience multidimensional and fun for players of different ages. Yet, to be able to envision and create an urban gamescape means that a set of criteria is met. The unique challenge of creating and orchestrating location-based game experiences requires a certain sensitivity of its designers to multiple factors that must be considered. These may include but are not limited to factors such as the city infrastructure, flows of urban traffic, maintenance of recreational areas and human-related factors such as cooperation with the city administration. The game introduced in the paper represents an urban game adventure built upon the platform of geocaching. We approach the game with a focus on its potential learning affordances. We ask how the pitfalls in creating opportunities for learning through location-based games could be avoided, especially when designing pedagogic aims into an urban gaming experience fit for school-aged children.

Over the past decades, the rural portuguese space has suffered dynamics that translate their multifunctional growth, in paisagistic changes and in the set of actors which, in the direct way or indirect, have built their territorialities and somehow involving that multiple and diversified rurality. Especially after the decade of (19) 80 and the accession to the then European Economic Community, the rural has been the subject of an interest aimed at reversing the downward trend, with the value of its resources and the induction and development processes of dynamic territorial. It is in this context that seek new attractions and seek to capitalize on new looks, more positive and attractive on rural. This led to a rural more complex, a rural which has not lost to agriculture, forestry and pastorial of the past matrix, but to which he added plurality, innovation and other actors. These bring new perspectives, other perceptions and also find a different rural, more complex and fragmented. In this work, we will make a note of travel and observation the rural landscape from the points of observation and lines provided by geocaching in a Portuguese rural region: the powertrail promoted by Lousitânea - Liga de Amigos da Serra da Lousã, na Serra da Lousã.

Geocaching is a type of a field game, which consists in finding caches (Eng. cache) placed earlier in the area. Participants of the game find the approximate location of a hidden “treasure”, basing on geographic coordinates and descriptions contained on the website and using GPS. Perceptiveness, creativity and unconventional thinking should be demonstrated to find a cache. There is a so-called logbook in a hidden container in which its finding should be recorded, and then this fact must be confirmed on a special website (http://www.geocaching.com, http://www.geocaching. pl). Geocaching is not a threat to the environment, the rules of the game forbid the devastation of the environment near the cache. Many of the caches are located in the areas of national parks. Enthusiasts of a new form of tourism, which is geocaching, are rarely encountered near Roztoczański National Park, even though the area has a great potential for using in this game (play). Currently, there is only one cache in the Park at the Conservative Breeding Centre in Florianka. Numerous natural and cultural values, as well as developed tourism infrastructure create favorable conditions for the creation (establishment) of new caches in the RNP (Roztoczański National Park) and its surroundings. The authors present a proposal for the inclusion of new caches along the bicycle route Zwierzyniec – Florianka – Górecko Stare. General use of this kind of activity can be helpful in tourist traffic dispersal and directing tourists to places rarely visited.

Folklorists and ethnologists have increasingly begun to take notice of the ways in which digital technologies are playing a central role in the creation of contemporary vernacular understandings of space and place (for example, McNeil 2007; 2012; Buccitelli 2013). Yet, like the digital spaces in which much of contemporary folklore is being performed, the possibilities and constraints of the different technological platforms through which these folk geographies are taking shape have not been fully explored. This paper will begin this exploration by comparing the spatial practices of “geocaching” to those involved in the augmented reality game Ingress.In particular, the paper will focus on the ways in which each community of participants establishes important geographic sites in play, with particular attention to how Niantic Inc., a former Google subsidiary and the makers of Ingress, structures and defines spatialized notions of cultural heritage for its players.

Synopsis This study explores the educational potential of an urban gamified art experience based in Finland, which provides physical, mental and social well-being through play in a park environment. The goal of this study is to investigate the opportunities for education and learning, offered by a visually and digitally enriched geocaching trail offers.