#36 Education Everywhere: The Success Story of Virtual Excursions Australia

In this exciting episode of "Why Distance Learning," we delve into the fascinating world of Virtual Excursions Australia with co-founders Karen Player and Ben Newsome. Their stories highlight the transformative power of digital technologies in education, providing insight into how virtual excursions can bridge gaps in access and enrich learning for students across diverse geographies.

Karen and Ben share the origin story of Virtual Excursions Australia, born from a casual conversation at a tech conference and fueled by a shared passion for enhancing educational outreach through technology. They discuss the challenges and triumphs of their journey, emphasizing the critical role of technology in facilitating impactful learning experiences outside traditional classroom settings.

Throughout the episode, both guests reflect on the dramatic shifts in educational practices prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, noting the surge in demand for virtual learning solutions. They explore how this shift has not only persisted but evolved, with more educators embracing digital tools to complement and extend their teaching.

Listeners will gain valuable insights into the mechanics of running successful virtual programs, including the importance of interactive content, technical reliability, and engaging presentation skills. The episode also delves into the specific strategies for enhancing participant engagement and ensuring educational content is both accessible and impactful.

This episode is a testament to the innovative spirit that drives educational technology forward, making it a must-listen for educators and technology enthusiasts alike.

Guest Links
Virtual Excursions Australia - https://dartlearning.org.au/provider/virtual-excursions-australia/

Host Links:
1. Browse amazing virtual learning opportunities at Tami Moehring and Allyson Mitchell's CILC.org

2. Seth Fleischauer's  Banyan Global Learning helps schools leverage technology for teacher and student wellness including AI literacy PD for teachers and, for students, live virtual learning experiences in Character Education: banyangloballearning.com

Creators & Guests

Host

Allyson Mitchell

SF

Host

Seth Fleischauer

TM

Host

Tami Moehring

What is Why Distance Learning??

The Why Distance Learning? Podcast explores the transformative power of live virtual learning and its role in shaping the future of education. Hosted by three seasoned distance learning experts, this podcast delivers insights, promising practices, and inspiration for educators, content providers, and education leaders integrating live virtual experiences into teaching and learning. Each episode features interviews with content creators, industry professionals, field experts, and innovative educators who are driving engagement, equity, and innovation through distance learning. By challenging common perceptions and uncovering the realities of live virtual education, Why Distance Learning highlights its true impact and explores how it continues to evolve in an ever-changing educational landscape.

Hosted by Seth Fleischauer of Banyan Global Learning and Allyson Mitchell and Tami Moehring of the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.

Seth Fleischauer (00:01.335)
Hello everyone and welcome to Why Distance Learning, the podcast for educators who are engaged with live virtual learning experiences, whether they be content providers who produce and facilitate or educators who want to complement their curriculum and learn more about the medium. We interview content providers, industry professionals, field experts, and educators who love and use live virtual learning. And this week, our guests are Karen Player and welcome back to the show, Ben Newsome.

Allyson (00:26.519)
Hey!

Ben Newsome (00:27.607)
G'day!

Karen Player (00:28.755)
Hello!

Seth Fleischauer (00:30.263)
Ben, you are our first repeat guest, so kudos to you. You are just that cool. I think you should feel good about that. You know, like life's accomplishment sort of thing. Twice on wide distance learning.

Allyson (00:33.815)
Woo!

Ben Newsome (00:43.127)
I'm very happy to be here, especially last time I was in my fancy VC room. This time I'm in my den with the lights that aren't working because the ceiling came in a couple of months ago. But we're here in voice and lovely to be here again.

Allyson (00:50.879)
You

Seth Fleischauer (00:55.275)
That sounds like a story, but let first let me welcome Tammy and Allison. Thanks for being here.

Ben Newsome (01:00.407)
Hehehehehe

Allyson (01:02.135)
Yay, hi, so happy to be here.

Seth Fleischauer (01:06.519)
So Karen and Ben, sorry, sorry. Cut off Tammy, I didn't hear you right away Tammy, sorry. Tammy, why don't you just pretend I just welcomed you.

Tami Moehring (01:07.174)
Same here.

Tami Moehring (01:19.334)
Sounds great. Well, I'm excited to welcome our guests to the podcast. As Seth said, Ben is a repeat guest, but I'll just go ahead and give you a recap of his amazing biography. Ben Newsome founded Physics Education to deliver science education across Australia. Having now reached three million kids since 2004, he's a qualified science teacher. 2013 Churchill fellow.

2020 AMP Tomorrow Maker, 2015, 2016, and 2018 Australian Small Business winner for Children's Education Services, a 2020 WSABE outstanding, outstanding business leader of the year, 2019 Black Town Business Person of the Year, and a receiver of several pinnacle awards from the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration.

Ben is a founder of a nonprofit virtual excursion in Australia, is a board member for educating for leadership, is an advisory board member of the Center of Interactive Learning Collaboration, an ambassador for the Association of Science Education Technicians and a part of the NSW Churchhill Fellows Association Committee. And he is an author also along with so many other things, including having his own podcast.

We are so excited, but also on the podcast, as Seth said, we have Karen, and I'm gonna tell you a little bit about her. Karen Player is a founder of the Australian Environmental Education and co -founder of Virtual Excursions Australia. Over the last 20 years, Karen has become a leading expert on using digital technologies, especially virtual excursions to deliver quality learning experiences to students. As the co -founder and chair of Virtual Excursions Australia,

Karen has been involved in the training of countless organizations of best practices in engaging audiences and technical requirements to ensure successful digital delivery.

Allyson (03:17.207)
Yay!

Seth Fleischauer (03:18.295)
Well done, Tammy. And my, those are fantastic bios. I want to get person of the year for something. I just feel like that's a great award. So both of you are founders of Virtual Excursions Australia. That's what we're here to talk about today. And, excuse me.

Karen Player (03:18.387)
Thank you.

Ben Newsome (03:27.351)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (03:40.567)
And I was wondering if you could just tell us the story of how it began. And I think I'm tossing it to Karen because we haven't heard from you yet on the podcast. Ben, maybe you can fill in the blanks as we go.

Karen Player (03:51.219)
Yeah, Ben can absolutely fill in the blanks because he was there. So we had been working together for quite some time with digital learning and we were going to a Queensland tech conference called Questnet. And I think this one was up in Cairns, which is sort of Northern Australia. And we were going out after one of the sessions and sort of talking about what was missing and we had a lot of...

other content providers, it was just the right time for us, 2012 or 2011, with lots of other organizations across Australia ready to sort of try to do more. So we were up there, we actually had another person with us who was a bit of a tech advisor. So he actually worked with the behind the scenes technology. And most of us had no idea about that side of it. We knew the education, the...

the front -facing side, we knew how to engage children, we didn't know about this. So he kind of walked us through the big expo and would tell us, you don't need to talk to them, they're server racks, you don't need to talk to them, they're cables. these people do that. It was really, really very, very helpful. So we were all out after the conference, having a few drinks or two to celebrate all of our learning. And we came up with this idea. So it was really a bit of a collaborative effort. So,

Allyson (04:57.207)
Hahaha!

Karen Player (05:15.059)
Ben, myself and Steve Bancroft is the, all the co -founders and Steve Bancroft just still sits behind as a bit of our tech side. So he doesn't do any of the front -facing stuff, but you know, he does help us when there's new technology coming up going, this might be good. Very, very handy with the crossover leading, well, after COVID when everyone was scrambling for systems that they could use at home. Very, very helpful with, you know, what, what new cameras and lightings we can do to set up portable studios at home.

Ben, I'm sure there's lots of gaps in there. It was a rememberable night.

Ben Newsome (05:44.983)
Yeah.

Ben Newsome (05:52.199)
for sure. I mean, we've been hanging out just like Karen had said, for a couple of years, every month we would meet as a kind of a meeting of best practice of minds between museums, galleries, zoos and whatnot. And we thought we really need to form a something and that something became virtually Scourgeance Australia. And I think Karen, you're a bit remiss. We also got to go diving on the reef because Kansas really far north in Queensland and diving's around our corner. So we went on a dive together too, which is kind of...

Karen Player (06:14.067)
Thank you.

Karen Player (06:19.539)
We absolutely did. And it was the three of us that went on there as well. And, you know, virtual excursions Australia came out a lot from what we were already doing at that event is how we can help other content providers not make the same mistakes over and over where we can sort of start and, you know, advise and help as a community. So that's really how it came about. And it was a little bit rare. There was a lot of kind of big organizations across Australia that were involved, but because the people

that were in Virtual Excursions Australia were the deliverers, were the content providers. We really were very open to sharing. There wasn't anything that was like, we can't tell them because they're a competitor because we weren't seeing it like that. We were seeing that we were all lifting ourselves up together.

Seth Fleischauer (07:05.719)
Yeah, it's interesting. I feel like in education, regardless of if you're not for profit for profit, there is that that general feeling that we're all in this for the kids, right? We're all in this for learning in general. And so there is a sense of wanting to share and help each other and share best practices. And I do understand that that is one of the sounds like the core purpose of virtual excursions. Australia is to give support to content providers to help people.

Karen Player (07:17.555)
Go.

Seth Fleischauer (07:34.391)
understand best practices, share with each other their best practices, even as those update as time goes on. I'm wondering if we can dive into those for a little bit. Let's say I'm a new content provider and I'm coming to Virtual Excursions Australia. Hey, how do I do this good? Right? Like I want to teach some kids. How do I do it good?

Karen Player (07:56.083)
Well, we've got a lot of resources that we've developed over the last few years. So especially at the beginning of COVID, I think we was maybe 200 different organisations from big or small that were, we sort of were funded to be able to deliver.

training programs to them. So I think we did sort of just best practice on engagement, you know, 101 of technology and how to establish partnerships to be able to then deliver programs. So especially for small organizations, it might be, you know, volunteer organizations, they might want to partner up with a bigger organization that has a little bit of that budget or a little bit of that tech or can share their room to enable them to be able to deliver different programs there. So we really...

Allyson (08:31.831)
I'm going to go to bed.

Karen Player (08:40.883)
did a lot during that time to help support, because it was a big event coming for us into National Science Week. So the big National Science Week body inspiring Australia, New South Wales was able to help fund us to support all of their, I guess, content providers that would do face -to -face sessions. So how to transition to online. And that was really rewarding. And it was really great to see such a big variety from big and small organizations. You know, everyone was very willing to.

Allyson (08:59.607)
Hmm.

Karen Player (09:10.707)
to learn, but out of that, we ended up with a whole lot of resources. So we've got manuals, we've got videos. So they're on the website that anyone can get access to, but we also help new content providers with extra information. And they can come to our meetings as well, where we do a little bit like this and chat about what's coming up and those kinds of events as well. So a lot of support that we provide. And we also provide access to some of our infrastructure and marketing.

side of it as well to help support them get started.

Allyson (09:45.175)
I wonder just because with the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration where Tammy and I are both based, we do similar types of things. And it's interesting when you talk about the post pandemic, the digital pivot, if you will, and the results of what that is. And then also thinking about how this was established prior to that. So I wonder, how do you feel your conversation changed?

prior to March 2020 because Tammy and I will joke sometimes like we were waiting for people to be like, yes, the green lights mean it's gonna start and don't worry, add the dots because that's an IP address and it's like the Jetsons but if you FaceTime, I promise you're doing the same thing to then making, helping people understand it's like click the link, I promise it's gonna work out if you just click this link, you can trust it.

Seth Fleischauer (10:26.743)
Thank you.

Allyson (10:42.071)
So I wonder how do you deal with those that maybe were fearful of the technology prior, and then maybe there is still a fear or a challenge because 2020 does remind you of a time that might have been a challenging experience. So I wonder how do you kind of talk to those that are trying to get involved with virtual excursions, Australia?

Karen Player (11:12.979)
Do you want to take that one Ben or?

Allyson (11:14.295)
I'm gonna go.

Ben Newsome (11:14.551)
Yeah, I can, for sure. I think he's mentioned 2020, everyone listening in just start shuddering slightly. But yes. That's right.

Allyson (11:20.279)
Yeah, I know. I'm like, I don't want to cause more fear. We can all still get to Google.

Karen Player (11:20.659)
Yeah, yeah.

Karen Player (11:24.947)
I remember the phone calls Ben. I remember Ben and I, yeah, Ben and I were on the phone for, yeah, just pretty much almost every day during that time. I think I spoke to you more than I spoke to my husband in the first three months of 2020, just to get the momentum going. So if you want to talk about people, I might talk about teachers.

Ben Newsome (11:28.663)
Hehehe

Ben Newsome (11:32.183)
suddenly.

Ben Newsome (11:37.495)
It was extraordinary.

Allyson (11:41.815)
Yeah, like 16 hour days.

Ben Newsome (11:42.135)
yeah, we'll talk about people for sure. I mean, yeah, what happened, I mean, prior, okay, we can, it's kind of like a three act piece. So before 2020, it was, okay, I'm being made to do this. How do I do it? Or I could do this, but I'm not sure if I want to, please convince me. That was kind of the vibes we got. We got some people who would definitely say, hey, I really want to join and I want to learn how to do this. We'd show them, but there was a reticence for sure.

Allyson (11:50.903)
Yeah.

Ben Newsome (12:12.599)
Then 2020, the reason why Kara and I were on the phones a lot is suddenly everyone realized that we're going to need to do this, whether we like it or not. And people started searching for people who knew how to do it. And our names kept turning up, which meant emails and phone calls at all times of the night. It genuinely was a 24 hour piece. I didn't really sleep properly for several weeks trying to support not only my own organization, but effectively many, many, many more. It was just, it was extraordinary.

That was a, I've got to do it. How do I do it? And their eyes were rather wide trying to go, just give me the stuff, give me the stuff. Now I suppose here it's, Hey, I know this works. I know, I know everyone's been doing this. I want to get on board. What do we do? It's more of a more considered approach. It's not, there's no longer a, should I? And something in, in, in a lot of ways it can be almost referred within it. So we work with.

Allyson (12:44.119)
Yeah.

Allyson (13:02.263)
Mm -hmm.

Ben Newsome (13:09.559)
the New South Wales government through a group called Dart Learning, distance and rural technologies. They often will refer them to us to say, look, hey, if you're going to go set up for doing distance learning, this is the group that works effectively as, you know, it is a best practice place. So go have a chat with them and they'll set you on your path correctly. So I have seen a bit of a mindset change. I haven't had too much reticence. By the time they contact us, they pretty much are going to do it.

They're more, they're more want to know what do I go by and what do I need to do? What do you reckon Karen?

Karen Player (13:44.787)
Yeah, I agree. It gets to that point that yeah, I'm already down the rabbit hole. I've already sort of committed to doing this. And I think there was a big cost thing as well. What I've certainly seen is a lot of smaller organizations coming through now because they can do it remotely. They can do it at home. They don't need to buy a massive, big codec operation to deliver. They can do it using one of the...

the web -based packages. So that's been really great to see that change. Yes, Ben.

Ben Newsome (14:18.583)
I was just thinking that's exactly how I started way back. Cause I came to you, Karen. Cause I remember, I would say this is when you're working at the Australian museum a long time ago. I knew about these things called Tanbergs, sorta. And I went to go see what, how do you do a virtual learning program? I think I watched you for about, like, there was one session, this thing was on minibase or something. And 10 minutes in and went, yep, got it. And while you were presenting, I started looking at how do I buy the thing?

because I was like, if I'm in, I just wanted to see how to do it. That's what we needed. We needed someone to show.

Karen Player (14:51.795)
Yeah, you didn't need a lot of convincing because you can educate underwater. I'm pretty sure you have. So yeah, it's a lot of people really is that they can see it and they can say, okay, it's not this weird foreign thing. And this was using, you know, the hard hardware. We, my first unit was a tanberg trolley. And the only reason I started was because I unpacked the box. Some, it had been bought.

Ben Newsome (14:58.679)
I have.

Karen Player (15:18.963)
And it was in the loading dock and I'm like, what's this is still here. What's going on? It's like, well, no one knows how to use it. I'm like, well, can I have a go? So I unpacked it and that's how I ended up where I am. Cause I was the only one that wanted to see what was inside.

Allyson (15:31.447)
Yes, that is amazing.

Ben Newsome (15:32.023)
Yeah, the barriers to entry. It's real, the barriers to entry was so big. I mean, we, when I had to say I was still running and to this day still running physics, but then we had to run a double copper wire to our building back and forth so it could actually do it. So we had to get this dedicated line. And I remember talking with the guys going, well, you might be theoretically outside of the realm of physics to be able to do this from your distance to the exchange. And so.

Karen Player (15:36.531)
And yeah, and the rest is proof. Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (15:59.767)
Physics with a pH or with an F?

Allyson (16:00.887)
You're like, excuse me. You're like, well, I will put the F on that. Yeah.

Ben Newsome (16:01.911)
With the real pH. It was no longer the fun physics. So I was like,

Karen Player (16:02.419)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.

Seth Fleischauer (16:05.207)
got it okay physics with an F is the name of Ben's organization keep going

Karen Player (16:07.395)
Thank you.

Allyson (16:10.743)
You're like, so this will work. Yeah.

Ben Newsome (16:11.735)
Hahaha!

And yet, all is real. And so I did it. And so I had to suffer the packet loss. So those data people would go, yeah, yeah, yeah, no packet loss. So I had to suffer a bit of data loss because of their distance. And nowadays it's just wifi in your home and off you go.

Allyson (16:30.071)
Right? Sometimes I'm like, remember these freeways we had to set up through these lines? And you're just like, now we have all these different traffic jams once in a while, but it's so great the way things move. so exciting.

Seth Fleischauer (16:30.935)
I'm.

Ben Newsome (16:36.119)
Mmm.

Ben Newsome (16:41.783)
Mm -hmm.

Seth Fleischauer (16:46.103)
I want to get back into a little more into recent history because we're in a trip down memory lane. You can go there with Alison for a really long time, start talking hardware and she's like, she's all over it. But in this recent history, it strikes me to hear your story because I feel like the story of what happened in the US during the pandemic is that the

Karen Player (16:53.523)
I'm going to go to bed.

Allyson (16:54.679)
It's the museum person in me. I can't help it.

Seth Fleischauer (17:09.527)
People did not take that extra step of like, let me find someone who's an expert in this so that I can learn how to do this really well. And it was just a bunch of triage. I think that like a lot of principals, especially were like, hey, look, I'm paying all these people to figure stuff out. Like they made as well, just like figure it out on their own. I'm not going to bring in any expert to do this. Like we're just going to do this as long as we have to. And then we're going to stop doing it. Of course, some schools that was a year or more.

here in Oregon. It was it was like a full year after they took six months off for you know, just figuring out what they were going to do. It sounds like your story is a little bit different, where maybe because of the size of Australia, maybe because you guys were already established as these people who could provide best practices for people, maybe things are better networked. And so they had better access to you. But if you were helping a bunch of people get up and running with this, it seems like

that's something that's a step that a lot of people in America didn't take. And I think that unfortunately in America, we have this situation where a lot of people didn't have a great experience during distance learning. It's a big reason why this podcast exists, because we want to educate people about how this can be done well after there was an experience where maybe they didn't feel like it was done very well. But I'm wondering if you can like give us your impression of how you think the pandemic affected the virtual

conferencing for education culture within Australia. Was it a net positive? Did it create more opportunity? Are there more people who are now a part of this group of people who acknowledge that this can absolutely transform education? Or are you still battling an uphill battle trying to convince some people that, hey, there's actually a lot here. You should take a look.

Karen Player (18:56.275)
That's a great question. I think it's both. We tend to have a lot of issues getting teachers involved when they were using hardware and things wouldn't work in the school and they didn't have support. So if they had a bad experience then, they were out and it was really hard to get them back. During the pandemic, it was far easier. They were all kind of, there were lots of schools ready. And because Dart Learning is actually part of the New South Wales Department of Education,

and they'd been supporting content providers and having a really great booking portal for such a long time. It was already there. So it was really helpful for them.

So we found that it wasn't too much of a problem getting teachers involved. There was a really great system that they were used to and that they just continued and their numbers just absolutely skyrocketed. And what we're seeing is it hasn't dropped. It's still, you know, on not as straight, but it's still going up where teachers are coming back. And we find it's often the teacher based. So one teacher loves it, will do lots of things.

But if a teacher has a bad experience or thought, no, it's just a pandemic problem, then they would stop and go back to what they were used to. So very, very tricky. We also found a huge increase in homeschool market. And I think it was something like, you know, 10 to 15 % increase in homeschool families post pandemic when they've gone, well, maybe this traditional learning wasn't what was working.

Allyson (20:08.631)
Mm.

Karen Player (20:32.339)
and we will have students that had started with us during the pandemic and I still see their names pop up as we do our program. So it's been amazing to see that continuation, but we still had that same battle of people doing just a talking head and not thinking about lighting, not thinking about sound. So there's still quite a lot of those ad hoc delivery.

Allyson (20:58.807)
you

Karen Player (21:00.531)
around. It definitely hasn't gone away and that's one thing that we, Ben and I, continue to try to do is like, you know, it's better for all of us if it looks good and sounds good.

Ben Newsome (21:11.447)
yeah in total

Seth Fleischauer (21:13.079)
Yeah. And, and so I, sorry, Ben, you go.

Ben Newsome (21:16.407)
And in sort of to add to that, one of the things I'd say would happen would be different versions of knowledge base. So what I mean by that is how well protected their meeting rooms might be. And so we would sometimes be presenting into a space where we knew full well the way that was set up. It was asking for a potential security disaster and they would not listen because we weren't part of said group. And so it was really difficult to explain to them saying, look,

You know, you really need these security settings because if you don't, you could have these things that we like all those things that people are saying they might've heard about those zoom bombings and whatnot. They were completely and utterly predictable. They were going to happen. They're always going to happen when a billion people go online. We could see it happening as distance learning professionals. We knew it was going to happen. The trouble was that during the PC had a lot of people with very fancy badges saying, no, I have the fancy badge. Therefore I know I'm right. And it caused a lot of problems. Now wind it forward to now.

Allyson (21:54.743)
Mm -hmm.

Ben Newsome (22:11.639)
People are more security conscious, which means we can go into these sessions far more. And people know that cyber security is a real thing. It's now, it's a safe thing to deal with. I guess the, that's kind of like there's pros and cons. Everyone's online. Sometimes they create these little fifties whereby, no, no, no, you have to be on this platform because if you can't be on this platform, we won't let you in. And that is a bit difficult because prior to web conferencing,

there was all this hardware, they kind of had to shake hands and talk to each other. Now it's a little bit more challenging when you wanna do cross border programs, nationwide programs, you might then these get a little bit more technical and maybe you need to do streaming into a service so that everyone can consume their content. But as a whole, everyone's happy to click the button and go in now. And it has made it easier, but it has come with a, cause you can click the button, is the button now well protected.

Allyson (23:06.239)
Right. Trust the click is a hard thing. It's so hard. Because even in an email, you're like, how many times I send Timmy an email? Like, should I click this? Do we like this? Is this not just to confirm? Is this what we want? I also wonder, with you both being able to give the professional guidance for an appropriate delivery, what is your practice with that? How do you provide that feedback?

Ben Newsome (23:09.911)
Yeah, that's right.

Ben Newsome (23:19.927)
Hmm.

Allyson (23:35.735)
You know, I went to art school, so I feel like critique and putting like, you know, a painting up, you're like, okay, just time to, you know, tell me how I could have done it all the ways different. So that but that's a certain type of training, I guess you have to go through. So I do wonder and having the experience of having to work with individuals that had those badges, or, you know, we're at a different type of experience level, but held a different role. Sometimes that

feedback could be a challenging moment to try to explain the virtual adaptation. So I wonder what are some of your best practices or promising practices in helping field specialists really be able to communicate over this forum?

Karen Player (24:22.195)
Yeah, and it's something that I still continue to hear is like, but it's always going to be better if you're there in person. And as you mentioned before, Australia is huge and we can't just be there in person, even for schools down the road. If they've got us there and there's a hundred kids and we're trying to show something this big in person, it's really hard to see. So one of the ways I make my...

virtual sessions engaging is I've got live animals. So I do a frog one and I've got a live frog and we feed it on camera. And so, you know, on their big smart board, it's the whole screen of this, you know, massive frog. Whereas if I was doing it live, it would be this big. So, you know, I use lots of props and stuff. You can see that, you know, I've got a few of them around the room just now. So I refer to what I'm talking about and I'll show things and have questions so they can put stuff in the chat.

and they can ask me questions in real time that I can answer. And that will often help with the engagement or a lot of mini beast things, it'll be, just yell out at your screen, if it loud enough, I'll still be able to hear. So getting them to do actions and calling out, because how many legs does an insect have? I'm pretty sure most of them are gonna give me the answer that I'm after. And they can put it in the chat as well. So I kind of do a lot of that sort of, I like it loud. I like it if they're in the classroom that every other classroom is going, what are they doing?

Allyson (25:42.007)
Yes!

Karen Player (25:46.291)
and I'll get them to talk about animal poo and things like that and you'll poo out very loud. But you know, it's stuff that you're not allowed to do most of the time. And I think it's hilarious. So that's one of the ways I do it. I know Ben's got some other exciting things that he needs. But again, it's just that engagement and having fun. I tell a lot of stories as well. So about things that I did growing up, I tell a lot of scuba diving stories. And so it makes it really personal and it really sort of has that two way.

Seth Fleischauer (25:46.807)
Yeah.

Karen Player (26:15.827)
And there always is, have you seen a shark? And they think that should be scary, but it's the most exciting time. What about you?

Ben Newsome (26:18.487)
well, for sure. I mean, like, I think about my ones. For me, it's what is it other learner experience? I mean, we're so caught up in ourselves that we forget about people who are actually watching, consuming us. So I think about, well, what's their experience? What do they get to do? How do they get to get involved? What is a design for learning that works for all different levels that might be experiencing said content? Sometimes the silly little things actually matter.

Allyson (26:34.199)
I'm out.

Ben Newsome (26:47.863)
So when we do training, I often, and Karen, you've suffered me in doing this multiple times now. I often have, I deliberately put on camera, even zoomed in nice and tight, baking powder, it's white, on a white plate. Then I'll get a white spoon with my white powder on my white plate and I put it into a white cup. And the point of that is, is no contrast. You can't see what you're doing very well, especially if you're vision impaired. So.

Allyson (26:52.791)
Hehehe

Ben Newsome (27:16.727)
Contrast your stuff, contrast your colors. And if you're gonna show a thing, I know it's a podcast, most of us are listening to it on podcast, but I'm holding my hand on my right hand side. Now the reason I said that is that some of you can't see me doing it. So you now can imagine me holding up my hand on my right side. Now, if I'm partially off camera, which currently I am right now, and I'm wiggling my pinky finger, no one can see it right now because it's off camera. So be aware, where are your things? Another thing is, if you're zooming cameras in, don't forget to funnily enough zoom out.

So I've seen some people who will zoom in and they'll be talking and now they're talking to somewhere else. They've forgotten where the camera is. So it's sort of if all things are, it's really well set up distance learning studios. Frankly, it's like talking to a mirror because you read it in a lot of ways. It's far more important to watch yourself than it is the far side. Unless the far side group is doing something important where you need to see what they're doing. It's more important that you can see what they're seeing.

Seth Fleischauer (27:46.903)
Hehehehehe

Allyson (27:51.831)
You

Ben Newsome (28:15.991)
So just be aware of color contrast. Where is the thing that you're showing? I mean, and I suppose if it's for those camera nerds out there, rule of thirds matters. So if you have your eye line one third down the screen, it's far more nicer than your head at the bottom of the screen or at the very top of the screen. It's just things like that matter.

Allyson (28:36.599)
You

Seth Fleischauer (28:40.183)
Yeah, so we've kind of navigated in and out of a couple of spaces here in this conversation. You are both content providers, Karen with Australian Environment Education and Ben with Physics Education, but you've collaborated on Virtual Excursions Australia, which provides best practice support to other content providers. What else does Virtual Excursions Australia do? And...

Can you maybe like transition that into a golden moment story? Right? This is a question that we ask on the podcast where we're looking for an example of a time when like, my gosh, this is exactly what this technology is for. Look at this shining golden moment. So what is virtual? What else does virtual excursions Australia do and what are your golden moments with it?

Karen Player (29:28.947)
So one of the key things that we do is put on events. So we hopefully get grants where possible to run events. Some of them we just run ourselves, often just things that I like to do. So we just finished our C -week in March and we had four or five sessions in a single day. And we just get different content providers to deliver one of those programs and we cover the costs.

of the content provider so it's free to students. So we try to do three or four a year. Really a big key one is for National Science Week, which is SciFest. And I assume this isn't gonna come out yet. So by the time it comes out, I can announce that we have got a grant for that one. So we're gonna run 15 programs over the five days of school days of SciFest. And we've...

Ben Newsome (30:13.431)
Thank you.

Allyson (30:14.231)
Yay!

Karen Player (30:22.995)
We do Earth Science Week as well. So, you know, we're constantly looking for sort of funding opportunities to allow us to do these free programs for students to get involved. And I think SciFest during COVID was something like 20 ,000 students were involved over those sessions. So it was pretty exciting. And I think one of my golden moments is probably quite, there's two actually. There's one from a really, really long time ago when I was actually face to face with

a group of students in, it was Aubrey or Wagga, which is down sort of South, New South Wales. And I was chatting away and this kid says, I know you. And I said, I've never been before. What's going on? He's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen you before. It's like, what? It's like you were on the TV. Like, what are you talking about? And he had seen me do a video conference in like 2010. and remembered me from that. And it was only a few months later at the time.

But it remembered that and it had remembered that experience and he goes, and now you've come to my town. So I was really excited that, you know, that there was this opportunity to have those both of those things at the same time. But more recently was one of our, I think it was one of our CyFest trivias that we did. So we do these lunchtime trivias and we integrate Kahoot into our Zoom. And I think we had like 500 students with a unique Kahoot.

Seth Fleischauer (31:27.255)
Hehehehe

Karen Player (31:50.547)
sort of login in the webinar that we're talking about and sort of doing it all together. And it was just, it was so amazing to have so many students involved at the same time. And I think it was our first session for SciFest, for National Science Week. So it was just really amazing. And the enthusiasm that was coming back through the chat, through the Zoom was incredible. And yeah, so it was really, really fun. And I think that was probably the golden moment.

I definitely, when I'm having fun, I know the students are having more fun as well.

Ben Newsome (32:25.303)
And for me, there's so many other things that I can think of. Gosh, golden moments are hard. I mean, in numbers, I mean, when you think about the global nature of conferencing, I mean, I remember presenting into an event into Hong Kong where Hong Kong families joined and the organizers said, no, no, there's going to be a lot of people. I went, okay, cool. And so I'm presenting a program which normally would be to maybe 100 kids, maybe 200 kids, some of that, and 5 ,000 joined.

and the polls were insane. Like just watching it go up and down and everything else was like 5 ,000 kids right across Hong Kong were joined in. And some of them were whole school groups. So it probably wasn't 5 ,000, probably far more. And it was just so vibrant and going, my gosh. And also because of the global nature of it, I'd speak then I'd get translated too. So it was just a really, really good awareness of, hey, this is a global thing that can be done. You can teach from anywhere, which is neat.

Seth Fleischauer (32:53.431)
Meh.

Hehehehe

Ben Newsome (33:21.143)
I missed one of the golden moments actually, but I'm going to mention it because it kind of does show what's cool about this medium. Virtual Discourses in Australia worked with two dinosaur museums recently. One is a local one, Australian Aged Dinosaurs Museum. And the other one is from Canada, the Royal Terrell Museum of Paleontology. And we kind of had a dinosaur smack down. So the idea is that they get kind of, you know,

Allyson (33:42.839)
Yes!

Seth Fleischauer (33:44.695)
Hehehehe

Ben Newsome (33:46.967)
you know, a roar off, so to speak. So yeah, the idea is that they can have these two decent dinosaurs like going, which one's tougher? And that's got this real, I really love the dynamic when you have opposing opinion, just going at each other. Like that to me is just kind of fun. And again, I mean, there's no way on earth in any other platform, unless you flew one of those museum types to the other museum, then you get a group to then bus in to go to both, because both are regional museums, you have to now catch a bus to those places.

Seth Fleischauer (33:49.623)
I'm good.

Seth Fleischauer (34:00.631)
Hmm.

Ben Newsome (34:17.271)
You can't experience that. You're never going to have that happen. Period. Which means this is the medium that those golden moments can occur. It is only that medium that can get you across the world in any way, shape and time with a click of a button. And that's why I love this.

Karen Player (34:33.779)
Yeah, it was an amazing session, I have to say. And they were very friendly. They were really excited to learn from each other as well about the different dinosaurs. And, you know, I do love dinosaurs and I learnt something new as well. So I have to say I was just giggling in my seat about how, when it happened. It was great.

Seth Fleischauer (34:50.455)
Hehehehehe

Allyson (34:51.063)
That is so exciting. I wonder if you ever think consider archeology and paleontology, having them come up and talk about what they dig for. Because I always think about how sometimes that gets mixed up. my goodness. I'm so excited about everything you all do. It's so, so exciting. I'm like, let's collaborate now.

Seth Fleischauer (35:09.727)
Yeah, Ben when you were...

Ben Newsome (35:13.455)
I can see it.

Seth Fleischauer (35:16.983)
Ben, when you were talking about the opposing viewpoints, when I thought of one of the trips that we do called Tahoe the Turtle, and it's, there's like a little turtle puppet and then there are two field teachers in two different locations, like in real life, in potential habitats for the turtle. And the turtle wants to relocate and the students have to like choose which habitat is like the better place for the turtle to go based on like, you know, climate and weather and predators and food available. And we've done it from like probably, I don't know,

Ben Newsome (35:38.455)
That's cool.

Seth Fleischauer (35:45.303)
30, 50 different locations over the years. We've been doing it forever. And we're just like, who's got, who's near a pond who could do this? But it's, you know, it's amazing because like, there's also that cultural element of, yeah, the students are like learning about science and, and environmental science and learning about this, this turtle and its needs. But they're also experiencing these two different ponds or lakes or rivers in these two different places. And the people are speaking to that local context and.

Now you can do that on YouTube, but it's super, super different when you can be like, hey, that thing right there, can you turn and show us that thing? Or you have an interactive opportunity to really dive into what it means to be there. And that's yet another benefit of this. And that brings me to our final question, which is our titular question, which is why distance learning? Why is this medium so important?

Ben, last time you were on the show, I believe your answer was why not. So I'm encouraging you to have a different answer, but I'll go with Karen first.

Allyson (36:41.015)
Hahaha!

Ben Newsome (36:42.775)
Yep.

Karen Player (36:48.571)
I'm pretty sure I've heard Ben say exactly that. And I do agree, like for us in Australia being so big and a lot of rural and remote areas, for me, it's equity of learning and equity of access to great content. And that's really why we've always been involved to, you know, we love it when a school next door wants to do a session, but we love it even more when there's a school that's got six children.

Ben Newsome (36:53.559)
Yeah.

Seth Fleischauer (36:53.719)
Hehehehe

Karen Player (37:18.035)
you know, 100 miles from a major town that is never going to have an opportunity to see, you know, two dinosaur experts from two parts of the world talk. And if that's something that they're passionate and they love, that's an opportunity that they'll remember for a lifetime. And so these learning opportunities that we can provide just mean that, you know, it's anywhere, anytime.

So yeah, absolutely, why not? And we should all be doing as much as we can to support students from across the globe and especially in those remote areas.

Ben Newsome (37:54.711)
Yeah, and for me, it's straight up access. It's a playground. I mean, if I think about the number of providers, not just under virtual excursion Australia, but across the CILC and beyond, there are hundreds of opportunities for any learner to get anywhere around the world with people who actually curate the objects, who actually look after the objects, who actually understand them thoroughly.

possibly built them. I mean, imagine we can read a book, but why not talk with the author who wrote it? We can learn about a painting. Let's actually talk with the artist who created it. I mean, to me, it's a possible, it's kind of like getting behind the back curtain. Like everyone wants to get backstage when they go to a concert, yet very few of us are prepared to pay the money or do we have the connections to get backstage? This is the connection. This is the opportunity for people to get to museums and galleries and all these things.

that they wanna see and those artifacts and the people who actually know them far more intimately. I mean, I feel that all those providers that do this sort of work are really co -teachers with the teachers in the classroom. They're not just an enrichment opportunity whereby when the screen goes off, we then move on to something else. If accessed and used effectively, these opportunities are far bigger than the one hour you might have with them. So it's a, I think it's an awesome moment.

Seth Fleischauer (39:18.303)
Beautifully said, both of you. Thank you. Before we go, where can our listeners find your work on the internet?

Karen Player (39:28.243)
Okay, so Virtual Excursions Australia is where you can find about that network. All of my stuff is on Australian environmental education. And yeah, I think we're everywhere. We've got the website and YouTube. So one of the other aspects of Virtual Excursions Australia is we record a lot of our sessions. And then they're freely available after the event. So we've got heaps of content on the Virtual Excursions Australia.

YouTube channel that are from either some of our trivia sessions but also some of our Earth Science Week sessions, Sea Week sessions, they're all up there for people to gain access to at any time. So we wanted to make sure that it's not just a one -off, that all of that collateral is there for teachers to use and students to get access to at any time moving forward.

Ben Newsome (40:19.959)
Awesome, yeah, just use your favorite search engine, type in virtual excursions Australia, you'll find us in some way, shape or form. If you wanna find what I get up to outside of that, it's physics education, spelled incredibly poorly, with an F not a P, F -I -Z -Z -I -C -S, F -I -Z -Z -I -C -S for those people here. But either way, if you look up VA, virtual excursions Australia, you'll find out what Karen and I get up to and we hope we can work with you.

Allyson (40:29.091)
You

Karen Player (40:31.443)
Hehehehe

Allyson (40:35.831)
Hahaha!

Allyson (40:44.215)
And we'll have the links in the show notes. So if you wanna search, you can, but we'll also make it easy for clicking where you can find the podcast.

Seth Fleischauer (40:47.447)
Awesome.

Seth Fleischauer (40:55.639)
Show notes and on cilc .org slash podcast where you can find all of our episodes. thank you as always to our editor, Jimmy Heberling. If you'd like to support the podcast, please do tell a friend, leave it a rating or review. Please follow us. And if you want to know the answer to the question, why distance learning, check out the people we highlight on this podcast. These are the people who are leveraging this amazing technology to truly transform the learning experience.

Why distance learning? Because it's accessible and it's awesome. See you next time.

Allyson (41:25.591)
Yay, bye!