GPS game with runners and surfers

Yes, it is pretty exiting to walk around with a GPS receiver, towards waypoints to collect some new clues. This week we went with a big group of Stoas to a very nice town called Deventer.

The game was a nice mix of activities. In total we had 4 timeslots of 30 minutes. In the 30 minutes we divided our team in two sub team: 'Runners' walked through the city with a GPS receiver to search for predefined 'waypoints' At certain coordinates there was an object we needed. Via the mobile phone we stayed in contact with our team mates who played the role 'surfers'. The surfers sat behind a laptop and had different assignments. The surfers needed to solve online puzzles and had to answer certain questions. They could use internet to solve things. If they answered a question not correctly, the pages were blocked for a minute. The surfers had to provide the runners with questions that were related to the certain spots in the city. This way the tasks were involving and not boring at all. The runners needed to be back at the base (a warm and nice café of course) on time.

I could imagine that you can turn this quite easily into an educational game e.g. for new hires to explore the company (at least from the outside). You only would like to do a bit more at certain locations so I would prefer to use a GPS enables PDA or iPhone. With that you can do different assignments and use the web for additional info and to enter the answers. But the way we did it (with a collaborative task and a simple receiver) was also challenging and fun. It is motivating to team up with people at a different location and to put together the pieces of the puzzle.

The Surfers are working very hard!

If you want to set up games like this you can use free available software tools, one example: http://www.mscapers.com/