Geocaching @ NCCE

NCCE Annual Geocaching Event

Explore Portland and Unearth Buried Treasure! What better way to explore downtown then to go on a treasure hunt! Last year’s Geocaching event in Seattle was so successful, it has officially become an annual event and will be offered again at NCCE 2006 in Portland. No experience is necessary and GPS devices will be provided. Come and learn how to use these learning tools and enter a contest to find all the hidden treasure caches in downtown Portland. Once you’ve collected all the items, you will be registered in a drawing for lots of neat prizes and your very own GPS device!

Here's the idea:
All 3,500 conference participants will be given a ticket to enter a free geocaching drawing at registration. Teachers love free stuff so most will stop by our booth and inquire, many will actually play.
However, in order to be in the drawing they must complete the course, ie. find our caches. They will present the ticket to our volunteers at the geocaching booth after they complete the objective to be entered into the free drawing. We'll have many winners but only one GPSr.
The volunteers will give the teachers a quick orientation on how the GPSr works, with coordinates preloaded. We'll help them checkout the GPSr, give them a one page map on one side and cache description, hint and coordinates on the other. If they have their own GPSr they'll only need the handout and obviously no training.
To make sure they have actually completed the course each teacher will need to retrieve one of the GEM's in each cache, each cache will contain a different GEM. When they have all the GEM's they return to our booth and turn in the GEM's, GPSr, Handout and Ticket to then be entered into the drawing. For completing the course they will receive an official Geocaching tattoo from Groundspeak. Volunteers will periodically return the GEM's to each respective cache so that the caches will always contain GEM's.

Are you coming to NCCE in Portland this year?