Catherine Shaw

And so we step up their exposure to technology through the years.

Our kids are great digital natives, actually.

We've got students who use their iPads for citizen science.

They know how to snap a photo and we know how to upload that to iNaturalist to identify an insect that we didn't know.

I didn't know the name of that insect, but we know how to find out.

Every student in our school knows how to contribute to the Aussie Bird Count.

Yeah, how to participate in citizen science using technology.

And yes, our high schoolers do write essays like every other high school student.

So while they're sitting under the trees, they're perhaps not writing an essay.

But they could be while they're under those trees gathering the geographical or scientific data that they need in order to write the essay.

And they will write a more meaningful essay because of the firsthand experiences they've had out there writing about something that they have no knowledge of.

One way is actually written into our teaching programs.

And that might not just be a science lesson.

It could be in English or it could be in mathematics.

So a good example might be our year three students have been looking at Jeannie Baker's beautiful picture books.

I think every child in Australia at some point has read Where the Forest Meets the Sea.

But they've been looking also at books like Circle, which feature a bar-tailed godwit and its journey from Alaska all the way down to Australia.

And so when year three are on their adventure days then, they're looking for bar-tailed godwits, which they know about from the book.

And their maths lesson on the adventure day is actually looking at the different lengths

and shapes of shorebirds and how that beak is designed to reach the prey and the shellfish that are available on the wetland and estuary kind of areas around Port Macquarie.