Bye bye billabong

The extensive clearing of native vegetation for sheep and cattle grazing has filled Australia’s precious waterholes with sediment, threatening the survival of the wildlife which depends on them.

Global food security – play to the rescue

Crop losses due to plant pests and diseases have a huge impact on global food security. Jonathan Marshall from Bondi Labs introduces the Plant Doctor Game, an educational video game that trains local agricultural workers in developing countries to diagnose destructive crop health damage.

Have you used a quadratic equation lately?

As we look towards the future of education in Australia, Jonathan Marshall talks about our current classroom education model and why it needs to change.  

It seems like only yesterday my high school maths teacher was insisting the endless hours spent on ‘learning’ quadratic equations would be invaluable in life. Well 25 years later and I still haven’t used a quadratic equation – or any calculus for that matter.

Though the truly sad thing is, perhaps if the teaching of quadratic equations had been more effective and engaging in high school they just might well have been.

I will never know.