Science on the Road in Tamworth

From July 2019, the Discovery Voyager crew will be piloting professional development sessions for regional, rural and remote school teachers in their own schools. Teachers have repeatedly indicated that participating in professional learning workshops much closer to home would relieve time and budget constraints for many who are juggling multiple important roles in a community and find it difficult to get away to upskill.

We also understand that there is limited time in a teacher’s life for playing with new activities, new technology and new ideas in a supportive and enabling environment. So Discovery Voyager will bring hands on tech play, ideas and lessons for extending and expanding both young minds and the curriculum, to keep things interesting and engaging for everyone.

The idea is that the team will facilitate 2-hour workshops after school in a regional centre like Inverell, Moree, Gunnedah, Tamworth and others with the intention of also hosting teachers from smaller rural and remote schools in the vicinity.

Workshops that we are developing for launch in 2019 include:

• Playful Learning in STEM. Implement a playful approach to teaching and discovery in your STEM program, learning to trust your students’ process toward outcomes.
• Understanding soils at your school.Describing, mapping and understanding soil as the basis of a healthy eco and agricultural system.
• Agtech when you don’t have a farm. An understanding of green biomass for food and animal production using a range of technologies.