Franklin County Geocaching Network

My name is Tyler Duran and I am a Secondary Social Studies major at UMF. This summer I am also working as an intern with Stephen Engle at the Center for Community GIS in Farmington. One of the projects that I am helping to develop is a youth mapping collaborative called the "Franklin County Geocaching Network," in which we seek youth participation in creating a uniform set of geocaches around Greater Franklin county. Among other things, some ways the students could help in this project is helping to choose sites for the geocaches, creating a logo for the network, or using a GPS unit to help map the actual sites themselves. Due to our geographic location, youth located in Franklin, Somerset, or Northern Androscoggin & Kennebec counties would probably be best, but we welcome any youth and their families that show an interest. If you are interested, or know of any other people/groups that would be interested, please contact Tyler Duran (778-0900 or email tyler.duran@gmail.com) for a flyer that provides more details and goals of the project. Thanks!!

Best,
Tyler Duran
Intern- Center for Community GIS
109 Church St. Suite B
Farmington, ME 04938
(207) 778-0900
http://www.community-gis.org

1.) Secondary Social Studies is a fancy way of saying "I'm going to be a teacher." Secondary refers to grade level (middle & high school) and social studies refers to content (history, geography, economics, etc).
2.) When I say a "uniform set of geocaches," I am referring to certain caches that are going to be within the network. That is, we want the youth involved to choose the locations, and place distinct caches that, when found, are easily recognizable as part of the network (i.e. same container design, logo).
3.) The purpose of the map is three-fold:
To teach youth how to use both GPS and GIS
To create a map of the geocache network that can be used and distributed throughout the county
To provide the endpoint, or final product, of the FCGN (Franklin County Geocaching Network) project

I think this sounds really neat! Getting kids connecting technology with the outdoors! Way to go Tyler!:cool: