{"id":148,"date":"2009-03-29T15:48:32","date_gmt":"2009-03-29T15:48:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/?p=148"},"modified":"2009-03-29T15:48:32","modified_gmt":"2009-03-29T15:48:32","slug":"gold-hunting-on-a-sunday-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/gold-hunting-on-a-sunday-afternoon\/","title":{"rendered":"Gold hunting on a Sunday afternoon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just spent a happy couple of hours walking in a park near my house. This is actually a very unusual Sunday activity for me as I usually get bored of walking within about 20 minutes. I do like walking, but only if the aim is to get somewhere specific (i.e. it has a very clear purpose).<\/p>\n<p>However, I&#8217;ve recently discovered <a href=\"http:\/\/gpsmission.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">GPS Mission<\/a> for the iPhone. This is basically techno-orienteering, and at the moment is my favourite app by far. It&#8217;s a really simple premise &#8211; there are missions that you have to complete and gold that you have to collect (although so far I haven&#8217;t attempted any missions as there are none near where I live) by going to their location on the map. However, even finding gold is very compelling (particularly the &#8216;ker-ching&#8217; noise it makes when you walk over the right spot) and adds purpose to a simple Sunday afternoon stroll.<\/p>\n<p>At present there don&#8217;t seem to be many other players around where I live but I can imagine that the addition of a competitive element (once gold has been collected, that&#8217;s it &#8211; gone) would add a new dimension.<\/p>\n<p>My enthusiasm for this new game got me thinking about the potential uses for learning, particularly in terms of induction activities to help students find their way around new parts of a city or campus, or as a way to motivate reluctant exercisers. I&#8217;m sure it won&#8217;t be long until projects that use this sort of location-aware technology in education start appearing, and I look forward to seeing some really innovate uses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve just spent a happy couple of hours walking in a park near my house. This is actually a very unusual Sunday activity for me as I usually get bored of walking within about 20 minutes. I do like walking,&#8230;<br \/><a class=\"read-more-button\" href=\"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/gold-hunting-on-a-sunday-afternoon\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[106,105],"class_list":["post-148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-games","category-thoughts","tag-iphone","tag-location-aware"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p71sY0-2o","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playthinklearn.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}