ForestLearning has released three new ‘In the Classroom’ educational videos, to help teachers and students gain a better understanding of the benefits of forestry and where our wood and paper comes from, in partnership with George the Farmer.
The videos feature Simone and Ben alongside the much-loved children’s character and ABC TV star, George the Farmer, exploring key forestry and wood themes. The videos provide students with a visual demonstration of hands-on activities in ForestLearning’s George the Farmer Sustainable Forest Management Educators Toolkit, which was released last year for primary school students in Foundation to Grade 4.
For the uninitiated, George the Farmer is a character created especially for children, with a mission to help kids connect to the earth, food, fibre and farms. Based in Mount Gambier SA, the team behind George the Farmer have partnered with ForestLearning, the Green Triangle Forestry Hub and the SA Kids to Farms project to create a suite of fun learning resources, picture storybooks and engaging videos.
This latest suite of classroom video tools produced by ForestLearning accompanies the George the Farmer Educators Toolkit and provides teachers with additional aids for visual learners. More information about George can be found at www.georgethefarmer.com.au.
The themes and hands on activities covered in the three latest videos include:
Forester Sarah Madison of OneFortyOne plantations demonstrates for students some of the high tech that foresters use to count trees by flying drones or ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’ (UAVs) and how LiDAR is used for planning in forestry. Following this, George, Simone and Ben head to George’s paddock to count the trees themselves.
Schools can join in with Australia’s biggest tree planters – forestry – for Schools Tree Day and beyond by watching this episode. Simone, Ben and George discuss what makes wood a renewable resource, with particular focus on the fact that for every tree harvested, another is replanted or regenerated for future generations.
Simone, Ben and George explore the important role of trees in helping fight climate change by absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and converting that to wood. George and Ben meet with expert forester Clinton Sim (of Green Triangle Forest Products). Clinton measures the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e) a plantation pine tree has offset so far in its lifetime using the ForestLearning Tree Carbon Storage Tape Measure.
After watching the videos, teachers and students are invited to plant, count and even hug trees while simultaneously investigating their carbon storage capacity. These activities and more are free to download for schools from the ForestLearning website.
“If there’s one thing we have learned over the past few years, it’s that it is more important than ever to continue to develop initiatives and education tools that make learning for school children in classrooms accessible, fun and with an extension for hands-on practical learning. And what better way to achieve this that with George the Farmer!” said Beth Welden, ForestLearning Program Manager.
And if school students can’t get enough of George the Farmer, a variety of additional activities, videos, George the Farmer ForestryVR™ and educator toolkits can be found by visiting ForestLearning’s website and viewing the George the Farmer’s complete forestry educators toolkit. These resources are full of engaging, multimedia-rich student activities and projects, perfect for classroom or home school learning.
