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Education in Agriculture 25

“We could show shearing, for example, in a at any time year-round without actually being
360-degree video,” says Stuart. “You’re seeing on the farm. They are appreciative that farmers
everything in the shed, and there’s nothing you have opened their gates to allow them that
can’t see. If you’re in an 8-stand shearing shed, opportunity, and Stuart says the participating
and you run the video for ten minutes, you could farmers get something out of it too.
see the whole thing.
“Most of them at this time seem pretty pleased
“That’s a really good way of seeing if it’s at being involved,” he says. “It works for them
appropriate or not – it’s up to the viewer to make having this visual cue – contractors benefit from
their minds up, but at least you can show that’s the illustration of properties, as an example.
what standard shearing looks like.”
“As well, when you’re going through those tough
In the early days, the creators of 4D Virtual Farm times, it’s nice to look back and see it was green
imagined that the project would be run from once, and remember it’s probably going to get
each university through a desktop application. green again.”
However, advances in technology mean that
the program is now available to everybody via a The potential for the project to go live to a wider
cloud-based webapp. Its creators are committed audience could mean great things for helping
to the longevity of the project and consistently urban Australians understand their agricultural or
work to ensure it remains of use to all participants. rural counterparts.

“It’s mobile, accessible from OSX (Mac “One of the problems agriculture has is ‘selling
computers) and also uses the Gyro function on its story’ to those outside of it,” Stuart says. “We
iPhones,” Stuart says. “We’re trying to develop a think we can make a difference to our students –
learning resource that is as flexible as possible. but is this something we can use to educate the
The goal was to develop something that works broader population as well?”
for everybody, being able to see it as a virtual
tour.”

While the project has already been very
successful with the development of eight 4D
farms in Australia and two in NZ, and with
students responding positively to material to
be embedded into next year’s curricula – there
is still much to achieve. It’s a unique story that
Stuart and his collaborators are hugely excited
about.

“As far as we’re aware, it’s the only project in the
world doing this – you can never be entirely
confident – but certainly it’s the only one I’m
aware of,” Stuart says.

Something for everybody
Participation in the project by farmers has been
mutually beneficial, he reckons. Students and
teachers are grateful to be able to be “on-farm”

>>> Back to table of contents The Australian Farmer • Issue 2017