By Greg McCroary
Teacher
Bundanoon Public School
OUR OUTDOOR EDUCATION PROGRAM BEFORE COVID19
Bundanoon Public School has been developing a practical and meaningful outdoor education program. Our public schools should provide outdoor education facilities promoting sustainable practices within the broader community including the utilisation of school grounds as a network of habitat stepping stones in a nationwide wildlife corridor enhancing Australia’s unique biodiversity.
Greg McCroary
In normal times, our students regularly undertake flora and fauna surveys to see what shares our space. Recorded observations guide future planning and improvements to our school grounds as a sustainability and outdoor education facility. With guidance from horticultural and bush regeneration experts, selective native plant species propagation will provide year round habitat for the different species known to frequent the school grounds and targeted threatened local species that remain absent in surveys. Monitoring will allow us to assess the effectiveness and suitability of our habitat for mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates for an increased biodiversity in school grounds.
BUT WHAT ABOUT DURING THE COVID19 PANDEMIC & STAY-AT-HOME ISOLATION?
Self-guided, outdoor education, citizen science activity during home learning?
QuestaGame.
Making a real contribution to scientific data?
QuestaGame.
Continuing our Outdoor Education Program?
QuestaGame.
Too easy!
If students experience nature they learn to appreciate it. If they appreciate it they want to conserve it. As teachers, we need to provide that experience to promote sustainably minded and environmentally aware citizens of tomorrow. The School Bioquest is a simple and engaging way to gain that experience. All while getting my students away from a desk and outdoors on a field trip in their own backyards.
INTEGRATING QUESTAGAME INTO THE HOME LEARNING PROGRAM
ART: Photography skills, perspective, framing, cropping and selection of quality images…
NUMERACY: Understanding 3D objects have different views, mapping, data collection, graphing, scale, measurement…
SCIENCE: Taxonomy and labelling, experiments (e.g. what visits a piece of fruit left in the garden? What if you change the fruit? Change the position? etc.), ecosystems, habitats, microclimates…
LITERACY: Information reports, field note writing, story prompt & stimulus, staying safe guidelines, public speaking, filming, reporting, scripts for nature documentaries…
GEOGRAPHY: develop knowledge and understanding of the features and characteristics of places and environments across a range of scales
Free, engaging and meaningful quality teaching at home. Why not?
DATA STILL SHARED FOR SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND CONSERVATION
Now the observations are coming from around the students’ homes. But the sightings data are still shared with national and global biodiversity databases (via CSIRO) for scientific research and conservation. All of our catalogued species sightings are available to researchers via the Atlas of Living Australia’s database providing a growing range and distribution map of Australian species.