There’s nothing more fun than a field trip.  Or a scavenger hunt.  Or a scavenger hunt-field trip!  Each year we take our 5th-grade students to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to view their Ancient Egypt exhibit.  The idea behind the visit is to pique their interest in order to motivate them to write a research paper complete with thesis and evidence.  Rather than choosing to have a guided tour of the exhibit with a museum docent, many years ago a couple of wise colleagues decided to take the trip into their own hands and customize it specifically for our students.  After all, who knows your students better than you?

Our trip is an app-based scavenger hunt.  This year, we tried the app “Goose Chase” (www.goosechase.com/edu).  Goose Chase brands itself as “Educational Scavenger Hunts for the 21st Century.”  The app was loaded onto our school’s iPads, which we took to the museum, but students can also put them on a smartphone if your school is a “bring your own device” school.  Our technology department purchased me a subscription to Goose Chase, but there is also a free version that is perfectly useable.  Any hunts you do will have to have larger team groups because the free version only allows five teams, but you’re an educator- you can make it work!  See the table below for the differences in price plans.  Educator subscriptions are for ONE EDUCATOR ONLY, so only my classes were able to do the hunt with the premium version.  If you want more than one teacher to be able to use the premium version, you need the district and school wide option OR teachers without paid subscriptions will likely be able to use the free version, which still offers quite a few options.

To set up the game, the teacher has to use a web browser, and it is so easy to do.  First, you have to log in to your Goose Chase account to create a game and then you make the clues, or “missions” for your students.  Games can be created from a template from your own imagination.  Missions can be completed by answering a question, snapping a picture, or having Goose Chase perform a GPS location.  Our hunt did not use GPS.  As you use the app more often, you can take questions from previous missions to add to a new hunt or even draw from your own “mission bank.”  You can get REALLY creative with your missions because not only can you ask students to find something, but you can also attach images and links to help them in their quest.  If it is a competition, you can also set point values and allow students to see progress of other teams.  Our hunt was not a competition because, well, we didn’t want 5th graders racing through irreplaceable artifacts and we wanted them to follow museum etiquette.

Brilliantly, my teaching partner suggested creating teams for the hunt ahead of time.  When students access the hunt with the unique game code, they can then just click on their assigned team rather than trying to have students get into teams and then think of a team name.

The app interface is really friendly for students.  As with any app where a text answer is required, it can be hard for students to match the answer you’re thinking with what they’re thinking if you choose to have a lot of missions with a text answer.  The solution to this is to use only one-word answers.  What would be really nice is if Goose Chase offered students an override option if they are having a really hard time with a text answer.

Once the scavenger hunt is complete, the next step is to decide when it will be live and when it will end.  I personally wish there was a feature to keep it live all the time from its creation.  (As of the writing of this post, this feature didn’t exist.)  Goose Chase will generate a code for your hunt that students will need to access it.  The code is case sensitive, and students cannot start without the code.  Once students begin, YOU can track their progress even if you don’t allow them to see one another’s.  It is nice to be able to see where students are, especially if they are older and don’t necessarily have a chaperone with them the entire time the way fifth-grade students do.

After the game, I suggest you have a debriefing session either at the site of the final mission or back in the classroom.  It is important that students understand the point of the activity (besides the fun!) and also share what they’ve learned.  Decompression can do a lot for memory and understanding.  My fifth graders and I spoke about their research papers.  I wanted to know from them if any mission prompted them to be curious enough about one specific part of Ancient Egyptian civilization to write a 5-paragraph paper about.  Many of them had ideas and those who didn’t truly benefitted from the conversation.

Overall, I recommend this app.  I’ve also used it for a fun Student-Government sponsored Halloween Scavenger Hunt within the school building.  It is easy to use, inexpensive, and the students had a blast.  It can encourage learning and conversation if used properly and with a debriefing of the experience.  How do you plan on using Goose Chase in your classroom?