GAME CHANGING AUSTRALIAN BASED TOURS RELEASED IN NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK

Latitude Group Travel is proud to announce the release of our latest suite of game changing Australian based tours, featuring experiential learning activities linked to the Australian curriculum, in years 7 to 9.  We have also developed amazing Australian based tours for years 10 to 12, using a combination of the Australian Year 10 and the states’ Years 11 and 12 curricula, to ensure we can meet the needs of schools across the country.

As with all our tours, we can custom design a new tour or makes changes to an already existing tour, to meet each school’s individual requirements.

While this article focuses on the STEM tours and our new Innovation and Enterprise tours, we have designed tours for every subject, or groups of subjects, including an Arts and Performing Arts combination tour, where each subject has its own focus within the combination tour.

ABOUT US

Latitude Group Travel is at the cutting edge of tour design and delivery. Our focus on experiential learning and our ability to combine subjects on tour, but still providing activities for each subject while the group is travelling, is second to none.  Rather than sightseeing, our tours are full of hands on, real world, learning activities that engender true learning outcomes, which support classroom learning.  Our principle aim is to create tours that add specific educational value to each student, and we believe that it is imperative that we meet each stakeholder’s needs in the design and delivery of our tours.  This results in parents paying for tours that have real educational advantage, schools offering outstanding educational tours (specific to them), that can be utilised for marketing to prospective students, and teachers heavily involved in the planning process, knowing that their students will return with enthusiasm for their subject, and having learned a great deal that will open their eyes to a world of possibilities!

STEM TOURS

There has been a common misconception that an Australian STEM tour could not offer the same educational experiences as that of a USA or European based tour.  Through months of in-depth research, we have been able to create two amazing tours for Years 7-9 and Years 10-12, that include some extraordinary hands on activities.  These activities cover the following areas:

INNOVATION & ENTERPRISE TOURS

In recent times, schools have shown a great deal of interest in our Innovation and Enterprise Tours. In response to that interest, we have developed Years 7-9 and Years 10-12 Australian based Innovation and Enterprise tours.  The intention of our younger years tour is to teach students how they can bring their ideas to life. The tour begins with a two day “Kids Invent” Program run by industry specialist Dr Mark Glazebrook, who also runs his own Girls Invent programs at schools across Australia and internationally.  We are incredibly excited to have him on board, not only to run this program, but also to act as the Tour Director.  As a result, he will be with the group throughout the entirety of the tour, bringing the different activities into perspective and sharing his vast knowledge with the group.

The tour highlights the lifecycle of a product, including how it’s manufactured, branded, marketed and advertised, as well as how the prototype is designed and produced.  It includes numerous visits to organisations across several sectors. This includes a Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) organisation where students will observe how goods are packaged and delivered. Additionally, we have a fun, but challenging, competition day involving pitching to potential investors. Time will also be spent at a start-up hub and an innovation centre. All in all, students will have a wonderful time learning how they can truly bring a product to the market.

The senior years’ Innovation & Leadership Tour focusses on developing the students’ leadership skills, through tailored workshops and experiences.  These include an intensive course in Innovation and Leadership, followed by a workshop in Innovation and Strategy.  Additionally, the group will spend two days in an outdoor education environment learning leadership skills. Visiting innovative organisations is also an imperative component of this tour. In accordance, we have identified various cutting edge businesses, including a social enterprise, a start-up hub and a manufacturing organisation – all highly innovative – where students will tour the businesses and have an interactive Q&A with senior management.  Other opportunities include speaking with a patent attorney (patents/trademarks), a chartered accountant (business structures/mergers & acquisitions) or undertaking a range of workshops at the Reserve Bank. After learning how to pitch and develop their pitch deck, students have a competition day pitching to venture capitalists!

 5 DAY REAL WORLD DESIGN AND ENTERPRISE THINKING CHALLENGE

Finally, we can’t finish this article without announcing our newest Real World Design and Enterprise Thinking Challenge.  This Challenge runs for 5 days at your school and is a combination of learning Design Thinking, while focussing on solving a real world problem.  Among other skills, it teaches students how to pitch to the right people, to fund the solution they have developed. The program requires 150 students and can be run either in term time, or in the school holidays.  More information can be obtained by calling the people listed below.

These STEM and Innovation tours have been designed to include interstate travel, but can be customised to run intrastate, should borders closures not permit interstate travel. Should you wish to discuss these, or any other Australian based tours for 2021 or beyond, please contact either Jenny Murphy or Ricky Craw on 03 9646 4200. We would be delighted to assist you on your journey of discovering extraordinary educational travel within Australia.