Find Urban Camp at the National Education Summit Melbourne
Urban Camp will be exhibiting at the National Education Summit Melbourne on Thursday 3 and Friday 4 September 2026 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre.
The Summit brings together teachers, school leaders and education professionals to explore new ideas, practical resources and programs that can enrich student learning. For Urban Camp, it is an ideal opportunity to introduce more educators to one of our most exciting curriculum-linked activities: NASA’s GLOBE Goes to Camp Trees program.
Step into our urban forest
Visitors will find Urban Camp at Stand E24, although our stand may look a little different from a traditional exhibition booth.
We have designed the space to transport visitors into the environment where the learning takes place. Large-scale images of trees, students undertaking fieldwork and Melbourne’s city landscape wrap around the stand, reflecting the journey students take through the program.
The design is deliberately immersive. We want teachers to immediately see that this is not a science lesson confined to a classroom. Students head outdoors, investigate Melbourne’s urban forest and use technology to collect meaningful environmental data.
A video presentation and examples from the program will help visitors see how the experience works in practice. Members of the Urban Camp team will also be available to answer questions and discuss how the activity can be included in a school’s Melbourne camp itinerary.
Helping students become citizen scientists
GLOBE, which stands for Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment, is an international environmental science and education program supported by NASA.
Urban Camp was the first camp provider in Australia to offer GLOBE Goes to Camp. Our staff have been trained to deliver an engaging, hands-on program adapted for Australian schools and our local environment.
During the Trees program, students learn how scientists investigate and monitor the natural world. Using iPads, they measure trees, record observations and explore the role trees play in the health of our cities and planet.
The information students collect can be uploaded to the international GLOBE database, contributing to a body of environmental data used by students, educators and scientists around the world.
It gives students something increasingly difficult to create in the classroom alone: the knowledge that their work has a genuine purpose beyond completing an assignment.
Why we are attending the Summit
We want more teachers to discover that a Melbourne school camp can deliver much more than sightseeing. The GLOBE Trees program combines science, sustainability, mathematics, technology and outdoor learning in one accessible experience. It also gives students the chance to see themselves as active participants in science, capable of observing their environment and contributing to something larger than themselves.
For students, the program turns Melbourne’s parks and urban landscape into a living laboratory. Students can then continue making observations and contributing data after returning to their own communities.
If you are attending the National Education Summit Melbourne, visit Urban Camp at Stand E24 to meet our team, explore the program and discover how your students can become citizen scientists during their next Melbourne camp.
The National Education Summit Melbourne is being held at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre on Thursday 3 and Friday 4 September 2026. Entry to the exhibition is free, with registration required through the National Education Summit website.