Page 12 - May 11, 2017

Page 12
The Independent
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Into
The
Woods
for Fun and
Learning
Local students design a game combining orienteering and Pokeman
Heather Wright
Jaques admits the rst day did not go as well as they planned.
The Independent
The rst team found all the Pokeballs and emptied the cache, leaving the rest of the players out of the game.
Megan Jaques had never played Pokeman before but when her Enrichment Program teacher suggested she and three others create a new outdoor event like the popular online game, she was excited to help.
So the creators sat down and looked at the game again. The next day, school kids were racing through the woods hoping to nd that last Pokeball before time was up. “Now it works a lot better,” says Jaques as she punched a student’s ticket.
Sheila Ward noticed the similarities between Poke- man, where people use an online app to earn Poke coins - and geocaching - a game where people use global position systems (GPS) to nd game pieces all over the country.
Other children may soon get to play the game, as the conservation authority is considering making it part of its outdoor education program.
Jaques, of Petrolia, Dalton Robles, Nolan Patchett and Paige Ferguson got together in a classroom and created Pokecaching.
It took lots of time gure out just how many poke- balls the students would need and how the clues would lead students to the prize. They also had to make hints so the students could use GPS coordinates to nd them.
“I knew we would have to use geography in the pro- ject,” says Jaques “but I didn’t think I would need to use as much math as we did. But that’s okay because I like math.”
The Enrichment Group worked with Sharon Nether- cott of the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority
to design the game and then they tested it on other students recently at the Lorne C. Henderson Conserva- tion Area near Petrolia.