Building the Spatial Capability with FREE Resources for Queensland Schools
We are excited to announce our continuing partnership with The Surveyors Trust for 2021. This will support the development of geospatial skills in Queensland schools, through the Digital Technologies and Geography curriculum in particular.
This partnership provides Primary and Secondary Schools with access to curriculum mapped resources and additional support for teachers to bring geospatial skills into their classroom.
Geospatial skills are an important technical skill of the future. Current and future technologies, and business processes will rely on location and spatial information (like GPS) to function correctly. Examples include: any form of delivery services (Uber, driverless cars, parcel tracking), automation, earth and inter-planetary observation, space exploration, building and construction, which will require these skills.
The Surveyors’ Trust is committed to ensuring that our future workforce understands the importance of these skills, and teachers are given the support to teach them.
Here are the three main areas where QLD schools can get involved:
1. Lighthouse Schools Program
This is for High Schools.
Seven sponsored places are available for QLD High Schools into our Lighthouse Schools program. This provides intensive 1-1 support to connect industry with the classroom.
Each school is provided support via our Lighthouse Schools Senior Teacher for curriculum development support, access to our Industry network, and other Teacher PD and student incursion support.
The value of each sponsored place is $15,000.
More information is available here. EOI’s are open here.
2. Online Professional Learning – ORBIT
This is for all schools.
Every QLD teacher (Govt, Catholic, and Independent) are eligible for free access to our online professional learning platform, Orbit. The programs and resources are fully mapped to the Australian Curriculum and includes lesson plans and activities.
This is valued at $240 per teacher. Currently there are over 550 teachers from QLD using the resources.
3. Coolest School Competition
This is suitable for Years 1-8.
The Coolest School Competition gives teachers all they need to understand how to bring spatial technology into their classroom, through a fun competition run in Term 2. This uses our Map My School resources.
Step by step set up instructions are provided on the use of free software, along with a curriculum mapped unit of work with detailed student activity ideas around the mapping of the amount of shade on their school grounds.
The competition will run in Term 2, 2021.
4. Pippa and Dronie Book
This is for early Primary years.
The Surveyors’ Trust has again sponsored 300 of our Pippa and Dronie books to be provided to QLD Schools.
These books are supported by curriculum mapped resources and provide a fun way to introduce drone technology and strong female role models to early primary school students.
The sponsored books will be distributed via our education partners.
The book can be purchased here, and the resources are freely available.
5. Industry Spotlight
Over 2020, we will continue to feature women in the Survey and Spatial Industry who are doing amazing and interesting things. Too often the stereotype of a surveyor and spatial scientists doesn’t meet the interests of today’s generation. We want to change that and showcase the many and varied career opportunities available!
Here are some women we have already featured.