A Golden Opportunity for Learning

I want to give you an example of a tool that really combines learning and outdoor activity at the same time. It combines studying in a more traditional way with ICT and gives the teachers and the students the opportunity to learn collaboratively and in a real context. The teacher prepare the tour/treasure hunt on the computer while planning the lesson and combine all the material that you see fit. you ca add audio files as narrations, games, maps and pictures. Why not letting the students themselves create a GoldHunt for their classmates.

Through a tool on the web called Locatify you create a content for your students in any subject and then you locate questions/information on the map for your students to follow. Here you give the students the possibility to learn within a context and move around at the same time which is most often a very good combination in several ways; first of all when we engage our whole body we remember more and second it is of essence to create as stimulating environments as possible and these does not have to be within the walls of the classroom. Locatify gives us all that and more. The treasure hunt can also be used as a game and add a bit of an excitement into the activity as well, since you can gather points and solve challenges.

Look up Support för Locatify SmartGuide to find out more about these exciting treasure hunt games.

The app you use to take the treasure Hunt is called GoldHunt Education. The students needs some kind of device when they go for a GoldHunt. THey can play in teams or individually. On a map the students can see the locations that the teacher has posted and when they get within range of a location a question/a challenge or information appears on the screen.

If you perhaps remember an app called TurfHunt - then this is similar to that one but GoldHunt does not have third party in-app advertising. Turf Hunt has been popular in the Nordic countries.


With these Treasure Hunt Games the students gets involved, they get to experience their nearby environment but it is important to not add to many locations in one hunt because it gets tiring. 6 - 8 locations is my suggestion - it is better to make several shorter GoldHunts instead of a few longer. You need to keep them focused and to participate in follow-up activities as well.

Anyone can use your Treasure Hunt Game whilst you have published it and imagine how we can share and use each others GoldHunts and how much time that would save, the students could give feedback to each others hunts and maybe even adjust them according to the feedback. you can use them again and again when needed.

The opportunities with this tool are limitless and only your own imagination sets the limits. You ca engage the students in any subject, any time of the day and can be used even if they do not have internet on their devices. They have to download the game at school where they have connection and then as soon as they are back at the school again they can download their score.

I am looking forward to see how more and more Treasure Hunts are being created all over the map/the world. See you in GoldHunt Education.

Provocative and important new paradigm

I have written about this before in a different way and now I want to emphazise and go deeper in my thoughts about how we need to change teaching and learning in our schools all around the world. Th first thing we need to do is learn to not only accept change I think but also invit it, encourage it and welcome it- it is the one thing we know our children growing up today will meet.

Everything changes so fast around us. New things are invented and evolved. As the technological evolution keeps accelerating we need to adjust and adapt to the change of paradigm that is needed and most of all we need to prepare our children and let them build the key competences they will need to become world citizens when they grow up and being able to take the responsibility needed to build a sustainable society. Thomas and Brown talk about A new learning culture in their book and it is well worth the time it takes to not only read it but also consider how it affects us in our profession. THe book upends our way of looking at teaching and is a mindbender that encourages us to think outside of the box. I totally agree with them concerning why learning is changing in the society and so also in our schools. The most important thing to cultivate within our students is their imagination and keep our minds playful, then we will be creative and can think creational and there will be no limit in what we can achieve.  It is time for us to leave the old ways behind and embrace the changes that are already here. It is my strongest believes that we (all teachers and schools in the world) will succed in changing (not adding) our methods and ways of working and our view of learning and start working with blended learning, flipped classroom, open sources, mastery learning, gamified learning, and create learning environments that encourage our students to become curious and motivated. Those learning environments do not have to be at a certain place as I see it it can be anywhere we choose it to be. ICT will be of great help and we will know when we are there bcause our biggest problem will be: What are we going to do with all the time we have on our hands in school, no mor estress, plenty of time to help the students develop their skills for the 21st century. This we will grow into a few steps at the time I am sure, only we will all do it differently, with different approaches and there are no rights and wrongs here. The one thing that we cannot do is stand and watch the world move forward, we have to create this together with not only colleagues, but with our students and colleagues from all over the world. We need to share with each other, learn together and fail together. There is nothing wrong in failing, that is how we learn and develop our skills. To me failing is a success, it shows me new ways to do things, how I can approach them in new ways and what does not work. We find new solutions.

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We need to go from fixing a problem to grow a solution. This is exciting, thrilling but also scaring, it is therefor such a relief that we have each other.  We do this beacuse we care, we care abut our students and their future. We need to teach the pupils to embrace change and in order to do so we need to become good rolemodels and start embracing changes ourselves. Today. Now. Together...