Back to nature
The town of Hamar has long been an advocate of using nature as a classroom and has established Hamar Nature School to help facilitate this. Along with Prestrud Elementary School, they have started using Wittario.
The town of Hamar has a school without children - Naturskolen (Nature School). To be more presise, it has no children of its own but function as a resource center for all the school children of Hamar. The shool has a large garden and facilities for outdoors activities. Naturskolen mostly makes use of the outdoors areas close to the regular schools or they take to the woods.
Naturskolen plan to have Wittario as part of the toolkit offered to visiting classes.
We feel that this tool is a great supplement to our regular offering. Having a digital tool, while still utilizing what nature has to offer as a classroom, is very promising, says leader of Naturskolen Hans Christian Johnson.
Naturskolen bought 4G iPads with especially tough casings for this purpose.
We felt that this setup would be easier for us, as we do not have fixed classes, says Johnson.
Test run
During late 2020, both Naturskolen and Prestrud Elementary School participated in a research project funded by Wittario and conducted by Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. 5th grade at Prestrud was the first class to test the platform and cold and humid autumn climate did not dampen the spirits. Immediate feedback was very positive - both being outdoors and how tasks were presented and solved.