“Go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.” --Jimmy Carter
Cool title, eh? I harvested it from my principal friends Scott Panozzo and Jeremy Zonts who rocked the house at the MEMSPA Summer Institute’s Spotlight on Innovation 1.5! Their session on sharing the GooseChase Scavenger Hunt app had principals singing, dancing, leapfrogging, and collaboratively having some fun together as they fulfilled missions for points! I imagine there will be many school faculty and staff groups that will be trying out a GooseChase for the first time this fall!
If you haven’t participated in a GooseChase, the concept is simple. You create missions or use the mission bank to put teams to work fulfilling them for points. They can include photo/video, text, or GPS locational items. Teams can be formed in advance or chosen randomly and are sent out for a specified period of time to fulfill as many missions that they can accomplish. Each video capture is about 30 seconds and participants access the game via the GooseChase app in order to submit responses. Meanwhile, the facilitator can view and organize all submissions on the GooseChase web version on their laptop. Sharing the submissions and watching people laughing and having fun while learning is half the fun! These can be downloaded and shared by the way if you choose!
At Jeremy and Scott’s session I was not on a team participating, but was one of the “missions” to be accomplished! Dancing with Derek! As I watched principals work and learn together having fun, I soon realized the power of this tool and the innovative way it could transform learning in an engaging and collaborative fashion. I thought to myself how I might use it in my own work.
So I took a risk! Went out on a limb and created a GooseChase for the Greenville Public Schools administrative team that I work with! Their session was focused on district culture, so as a grand finale I had them write an acrostic poem describing the district culture, create a cheer about their culture, draw an emoji that described their culture, use their body in someway to spell culture, sing a song that depicts their culture, and see who could read the mission and vision of their district the fastest!
I learned a few things. First, it is easy to create your own missions, add images, create team names, etc. With a little bit of messing around, you can figure out on your own how to create missions and teams, set passwords, and start a game. I do suggest that you test out a game all the way to the end to see what the user sees if you have not ever participated. Be explicit in your teaching on how participants need to use the GooseChase app to download their photos, videos and text missions and access to passwords, and finding your game. You can access a description of how to play a GooseChase game here: Goosechase Onboarding
Some people may say that using innovative apps such as GooseChase are a passing fad. That may be, but I like to think of it as an opportunity to embed learning in a fun and engaging way while capturing information about the way people work and learn together. It is not the innovative app per se, but how you use it, deploy it, and what your purpose is. As a facilitator of learning, our modeling of taking a risk, trying out something new, and failing forward sets the stage for our learners(our teachers and students) that it is okay to as Jimmy Carter says, “Go out on a limb, because that is where the fruit is!”
Cool title, eh? I harvested it from my principal friends Scott Panozzo and Jeremy Zonts who rocked the house at the MEMSPA Summer Institute’s Spotlight on Innovation 1.5! Their session on sharing the GooseChase Scavenger Hunt app had principals singing, dancing, leapfrogging, and collaboratively having some fun together as they fulfilled missions for points! I imagine there will be many school faculty and staff groups that will be trying out a GooseChase for the first time this fall!
If you haven’t participated in a GooseChase, the concept is simple. You create missions or use the mission bank to put teams to work fulfilling them for points. They can include photo/video, text, or GPS locational items. Teams can be formed in advance or chosen randomly and are sent out for a specified period of time to fulfill as many missions that they can accomplish. Each video capture is about 30 seconds and participants access the game via the GooseChase app in order to submit responses. Meanwhile, the facilitator can view and organize all submissions on the GooseChase web version on their laptop. Sharing the submissions and watching people laughing and having fun while learning is half the fun! These can be downloaded and shared by the way if you choose!
At Jeremy and Scott’s session I was not on a team participating, but was one of the “missions” to be accomplished! Dancing with Derek! As I watched principals work and learn together having fun, I soon realized the power of this tool and the innovative way it could transform learning in an engaging and collaborative fashion. I thought to myself how I might use it in my own work.
So I took a risk! Went out on a limb and created a GooseChase for the Greenville Public Schools administrative team that I work with! Their session was focused on district culture, so as a grand finale I had them write an acrostic poem describing the district culture, create a cheer about their culture, draw an emoji that described their culture, use their body in someway to spell culture, sing a song that depicts their culture, and see who could read the mission and vision of their district the fastest!
I learned a few things. First, it is easy to create your own missions, add images, create team names, etc. With a little bit of messing around, you can figure out on your own how to create missions and teams, set passwords, and start a game. I do suggest that you test out a game all the way to the end to see what the user sees if you have not ever participated. Be explicit in your teaching on how participants need to use the GooseChase app to download their photos, videos and text missions and access to passwords, and finding your game. You can access a description of how to play a GooseChase game here: Goosechase Onboarding
Some people may say that using innovative apps such as GooseChase are a passing fad. That may be, but I like to think of it as an opportunity to embed learning in a fun and engaging way while capturing information about the way people work and learn together. It is not the innovative app per se, but how you use it, deploy it, and what your purpose is. As a facilitator of learning, our modeling of taking a risk, trying out something new, and failing forward sets the stage for our learners(our teachers and students) that it is okay to as Jimmy Carter says, “Go out on a limb, because that is where the fruit is!”
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