Anyone have any experience of this?

http://beatthestreet.me/

The two smallest panthercubs (one aged 7, one aged 10) appeared home from school yesterday with a folding streetmap of the entire county marked with 300 odd locations and a couple of RFID chipped keytags.

Apparently it’s a “game” to encourage kids to get out and exercise, either by walking or cycling to scan their tags at these locations thusly….

The scanners record the tags and allocate points to the kids school to win stuff and award random spot prizes to the individual kids.

Seemed like quite a good idea until I thought about it a bit.
Looked at the map to see where the scanners were located locally.
Almost all are on busy roads / junctions.

Then I looked at the tick box on the map where the kids can record which points they’ve “bagged”.
Then I looked at my middle child, a hard wired competitive collector of things ( currently working his way through both the Panini Euro 2016 football sticker album and the full suite of Blue Peter badges )
It occurred to me that similarly competitive children might decide to go for an unauthorised wander to far flung places in order to bag points that their friends haven’t.

It feels kinda wrong to me. A good idea poorly executed perhaps.

Any opinions?

get him a cheap GPS with OS grid ref/long lat and send him into the hills
http://www.gagb.org.uk/whatisgeocaching.php

Reminds me a bit of letterboxing on Dartmoor.

Urban GeoCache’ing?

Sounds good, perhaps an Adult should be tagging along if child under a certain age??

I agree, it does sound good, but a map of the entire county?
No warning from the school this was coming either. Our boys came home and told us all about it but what about the kids whose parents don’t take so much of an interest?
I can absolutely guarantee that this weekend there will be kids wandering the streets of our town whose parents have no idea of the existence of this or that their kids are doing it.
What happens if they decide to range further afield to unfamiliar parts of the world armed with nothing but an RFID chip, a BMX and the map reading skills of your average urban 7 year old.

This is my worry. I’ll be expecting a helicopter search for a missing child before Sunday lunchtime.

I did, however bag nine points when out for my bike ride last night.

Just think of the bullying.

Gripper Stebson will have Roland walk right around Greater London and that’s before he’s even had to hand over his dinner money.

Makes you think walk.

Reminds me a bit of letterboxing on Dartmoor.

Is that what they call it now? 🙂

There is/was a Mobile game where you have to walk around your town capturing certain strategic locations whilst other players who are complete strangers also try and capture the same location…Inception?? Something like that?

You need to stick the kids in an SUV and drive them around collecting all the points. Problem solved, sure it’s what a few parents around here would do. Maybe stop off at McDonalds on the way home too

It feels kinda wrong to me

Perhaps you should begin by explaining road safety? Make sure they understand it’s not a race? Will your kids have completed their cycling proficiency before you allow them unsupervised on to the roads?

No warning from the school this was coming

Oh no

Perhaps you should begin by explaining road safety? Make sure they understand it’s not a race? Will your kids have completed their cycling proficiency before you allow them unsupervised on to the roads?

Also explain not to take sweeties off that bloke in the mac hanging around by the sign.

perhaps an Adult should be tagging along

The trouble is… most adults would just drive them from spot to spot. More than once I’ve seen parents driving their kids around a paper round – even driving them the few yards between one front drive and the next.

A good idea poorly executed perhaps.

Something has to be done. I think if we were to set our society a goal for the next 20 or 30 years its would be “seeing kids on the street again”. Not just in the sense of health and exercise, but so those kids can have some childhood to remember when they grow up. It would be better for everyone not just kids and parents. Just as one example -it wouldn’t be an issue that the scanners were near main roads if drivers drove with the expectation that kids were around. If they drove like that they wouldn’t run over as many pensioners as they presently do.

@Gwaelod – Deffo this from 1989

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk5PkgY0vZ8[/video]

sounds like munzee to me, except that’s with a phone and QR code rather than RFID.

Here’s the map with points on it.

Is this an acceptable range for my unaccompanied 7 year old to cover?

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=z_WYcDWt8BuM.ksujkh0aHFLI

as long as they keep to the hard shoulder on the M73 I see no problem.

@Gwaelod – Deffo this from 1989

Not what I was thinking off – but that looks bloody awsome!!! Never seen it before

I was actually thinking of Ingress

https://www.ingress.com/

Is this an acceptable range for my unaccompanied 7 year old to cover?

They don’t have to cover the range do they? They just do what they can or want to. The map looks like it covers several communities. The activity presumably isn’t only offered to 7 year olds.

It being a bigger area means there encourage exploration and activity though – if you go and visit your gran in the next town there encouragement to get out and go places while you’re there.

Ingress

… is a superb way to waste all your available spare time

glad I deleted that app

They don’t have to cover the range do they? They just do what they can or want to. The map looks like it covers several communities. The activity presumably isn’t only offered to 7 year olds.

That’s kinda the point. The activity is offered to all the kids in the school aged 4 – 11 and they’ve had the process explained to them at school and then been issued with a folding map which shows all of these points. The map contains a checkbox list of the numbered points. All of them. Not just a map of our town.
Some kids ( my oldest son included) might feel compelled to tick as many boxes on that list as they can. These are the same kids who collected Star Wars figures or Pokemon or football stickers when you were a kid. That competitive collector mentality is hardwired into them. They need the whole set.
They could also have placed the points in parks or football pitches to encourage kids to go somewhere they can play?
As i said, a great idea but poorly executed.

this is great, with a little tweaking, and a few strategically placed scanners, you’ve got the makings of an urban enduro timing system.

What happens if they decide to range further afield to unfamiliar parts of the world armed with nothing but an RFID chip, a BMX and the map reading skills of your average urban 7 year old.

Maybe part of the point is to improve “the map reading skills of your average urban 7* year old”?

Kids, riding around on BMX’s, whatever next!

*Ok, 7 might be a bit young, but by that age (in the 90’s) I was allowed to ride from home to my dad’s work a couple of miles away, private road though.

Beat the Street is good leverage to getting our eldest out and away from her My Little Ponies and tablet. It’s happened before and our school gave us advance warning that it was coming round again. Excuse for family bike ride IMO.

That great grandfather’s done well to walk 6 miles to Rother Valley Country Park to “go fishing” up there ^^^^

It only opened in 1983 and was meadows before.

typo I expect – probably should have said “fisting”

Beat the Street

Think I’ve watched that.

Beat Street Break down…Rrrruff!

Pook – Member

That great grandfather’s done well to walk 6 miles to Rother Valley Country Park to “go fishing” up there ^^^^

It only opened in 1983 and was meadows before.

Good wikipidding but he wasn’t going to the park, and he could have fished in the river.