The Australian Museum in Sydney has thrown open its virtual doors to people learning from home, working remotely or just craving food for the mind.
Through its new portal, Australian Museum Inside Out, it is offering a world of virtual tours, online exhibitions, citizen science initiatives, podcasts from experts, educational activities and more.
And if you want to help any young students in your life, and/or their harried parents, the portal is a great resource.
It is supported with detailed information and fact sheets to complement teachers and parents wanting to utilise more resources, becoming a one-stop-website for learning requirements.
Parents and teachers will be able to engage with a variety of 3D images from the museum's collections, such as birds-eye footage of daring expeditions.
Highlights for at home and complementary online learning resources at the museum include:
Homeschool help: Discover fun and informative online resources for teaching curious kids about science, nature and culture. Activities include test tube volcano making, bug collecting and creating artworks from recycled materials.
Collections in 3D: See rare and unique specimens and cultural objects using 3D photogrammetry capture.
Daring expeditions: See amazing footage from scientific expeditions, such as this stunning journey to Balls Pyramid to rediscover the phasmid.
Fact Sheets: See a huge variety of student- and teacher-friendly fact sheets for discovering more about fossils, bugs, minerals, culture, habitats, animal lifecycles and sxcience.
Podcasts: Listen in on some of the most incredible stories and histories in these fascinating 45-minute podcasts.
Citizen science: The museum has a many important citizen science projects, in which everyone is invited to get involved. They include:
Digivol: This online platform invites volunteers to transcribe data from natural history collections and archives for anyone in the world to see.
FrogID: The first national frog count and scientific rescue mission, which uses smartphone technology to enable citizen scientists to record frogs for identification by museum scientists.
#CapturingClimateChange: This is a dynamic online photographic exhibition where the public are invited to submit photos that symbolise the impacts of climate change in their environments - and the solutions they see.
"Our digital team has turned the AM website and archives literally 'inside out' over the past couple of weeks ensuring access to content is easy and that each click allows you to go deeper into our resources," museum chief executive Kim McKay said. "And it will be updated and added to on a regular basis."
While the museum closed its doors in August last year for the $57.5 million Project Discover renovation, it's 250-plus staff only moved to working from home in late March when the impacts of Covid-19 hit Australia.
It plans to reopen to the public in spring this year once people are again able to visit the state's cultural institutions and construction is completed.