Webinar – Getting kids engaged with nature & contributing to science.

Nature Play QLD advocate  Jessie Oliver will chat about - Getting kids engaged with nature & contributing to science.

Outcome

Have you ever wondered how to identify a creature or plant? What about how to engage kids with learning about diverse aspects of nature? With many websites and apps available today, which ones are best-suited to support kids learning while outdoors? Whether a parent or educator, join this talk sponsored by National Science Week to find out! Jessie Oliver will share a variety of ways that kids of primary school age and older can have fun learning about nature with the help of technologies.

Nature Play QLD are hosting an online conversation with experienced outdoor teaching practitioners. These outdoor learning advocates will share their journey into teaching in the outdoors with fellow teachers and advocates. Nature Play QLD will share its latest resources with you so you too can feel more confident in taking more classes outside. This will be held via Zoom and a link will be sent in the confirmation email once you register.

Jessie is passionate about empowering communities to learn more about the world around them. Over the past 15 years, she has done this through a variety of environmental educator, science communicator, citizen science advocate, and ecologist roles. These days, Jessie is researching how to design enticing technologies that support learning about calls of the wild by exploring audio recordings. Additionally, she regularly consults with groups looking to engage their communities with nature for fun, scientific research (i.e. citizen science), and conservation. With her interest in engaging kids with nature, Jessie advised on the curriculum development of the UN Environmental Programme and TED’s online Earth School initiative and led the Earth School quest focused on citizen science. More broadly, Jessie has also been involved with the Australian Citizen Science Association since its inception in 2014 and is currently serving as ACSA’s International Liaison. Feel free to follow what Jessie is up to on Twitter or LinkedIn.

Outdoor learning can have a positive impact for teachers and educators on their practice, health and wellbeing, professional development, job satisfaction and more. Learning outdoors can support curriculum delivery. Not only can lesson plans be easily mapped to the Australian curriculum, but outdoor learning supports increased interest in learning which in turn achieves greater learning through improved engagement.

Outdoor learning has positive impacts for children – it works on their intrinsic motivation for learning, provides enjoyable lessons, increases creativity, and activates thinking outside the box. It also improves children’s health and wellbeing, social skills and behaviour, and furthermore has been proven to encourage better attendance, teamwork and to reduce bullying.

This webinar will include a Q&A session at the end of the session.

This Inspiring Australia initiative is supported by the Australian Government as part of National Science Week.