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Agriculture in Education 23

“That’s a learned skill though, and there’s a has also attracted funding from the Office of
bit of stuff in the ag community we’re not very Learning and Teaching.
good at sharing – this program brings students
into that environment before they’re there. “I knew we needed to get more breadth to
the farms – my goal was greater geographic
Many of them are setting foot on a farm for the coverage given the complexities and costs
first time, and this allows them to be prepared.” around student travel,” he says.

In the early stages of the project, Stuart only had An elaborate set up
access to farms in Victoria. He was working with A number of farmers across Australia and New
Professor David Shallcross and Jo Dalvean, who Zealand have allowed Stuart and his team on-
were working on a similar concept for a chemical farm to take photos. The use of multiple Go-Pro
engineering course. cameras or a high-quality digital SLR camera
with a fisheye lens and a GPS ensures almost
“(David and Jo’s) work could be adapted into a seamless panoramas.
4D farm, so the students could see the farm and
how it looked all year round,” Stuart says. “Where we take the pictures is quite important,”
Stuart says.
Sharing the project across Australasia
Now, the 4D Virtual Farm is being used and “We developed a suite of ten learning outcomes
bolstered by the participation of Murdoch that the project would help deliver. There was
University in Perth, Massey University in a lot of thought within our group as we came
Wellington, New Zealand, the University of up with the learning outcomes to give us what
Sydney and the University of Queensland. we needed to show in the pictures – it’s great
Thanks to this level of collaboration, the project having pretty photos, but they need to work for

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