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STELR is a hands-on, inquiry-based and in-curriculum program designed to be taught within the curriculum so that all students participate in inquiry learning that engages students in STEM.
STELR is a project of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, which was a partner with The Royal Society of Queensland in 2015 in proposing a Queensland-focused library of educational materials – see separate post on STARportal.
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Enviroed.com.au is an educational portal for people interested in learn about the environment, focusing on South East Queensland including Moreton Bay and the Moreton Bay Region. The purpose is to highlight the value of online education for raising the appreciation of our natural world. This portal is under construction.
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WebSchool is a digital education platform, developed for use by students, teachers, parents and school administrators. Lead developer Dmitrii Khorvanskii, former member of The Royal Society of Queensland.
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Please consult the website for details of the Society and the stunning work that its members produce.
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The Copyright Agency’s Reading Australia portal by March 2021 was presenting 224 freely-available resources to assist with the teaching of books by Australian writers. Originally launched in 2013 to showcase Australia’s rich literary heritage and encourage more people to read Australian literature, Reading Australia has become a valuable asset for teachers looking to introduce homegrown titles into the classroom.
By March 2021, the number of subscribers reached 21,000 – 85% of whom are teachers, librarians and teacher librarians.
“Australian stories – in their diversity and vitality – reveal who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going,” says Copyright Agency CEO Adam Suckling. There are now 90 primary and 134 secondary resources, spanning Foundation to Year 12 and linking closely to the Australian curriculum and cross-curriculum priorities.
“English teachers, their schools and their curriculum authorities have become far more aware and responsive to the Australian literature landscape and are increasingly including more Australian texts into their reading and study programs,” says Phil Page from the Australian Association for the Teaching of English (AATE). “We are now seeing more inclusive local and state-based curricula and a broadening of the content of prescribed or recommended text lists.”
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The website of the Office of the Queensland Chief Scientist https://science.qld.gov.au/engaging-queenslanders/stem-education/learning-opportunities references a wide range of STEM activities and resources – some 280 learning opportunities as at January 2026.
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Following a brainstorming session held in July 2015 (see the website of The Royal Society of Queensland for details), the Society advocated for the development of a web portal to offer access to a range of authoritative materials and programs in science education in Queensland. This portal was to be differentiated from a plain Internet search engine or the national educators’ site Scootle in that the materials would be arranged within a coherent pedagogical framework and checked for consistency with the national and Queensland curricula. The Office of the Chief Scientist of Queensland endorsed the project and was in the process of securing funding but the Office of the Chief Scientist of Australia saw the benefit of creating such a portal with a national scope, and it took over development. The Office of the Chief Scientist of Australia outsourced the development to Engineers Australia which contracted the Zoo Group to design the platform. The STAR portal went live late in June 2017. COSMOS magazine published the story. The Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority described the portal as “Australia’s national portal for exciting and engaging STEM activities from around the country. This searchable database connects parents, students and teachers with their local and online STEM activities in real time”.
The leaders of The Royal Society of Queensland at the time felt that the platform, being national and also promoting commercial materials, was not quite what they had in mind; that there was still a need for a platform that Queensland teachers could trawl to find materials specifically relevant to their locality and their curriculum. The Society resolved to develop the Queensland Science Network as a Queensland-focused platform for educational materials. It has had the support of Education Queensland and the Queensland Curriculum and Assessment Authority in this mission. However, the Society has been unable to secure funding to achieve QSN’s educational potential. The establishment of the Office of the Chief Scientist of Queensland’s excellent repository (see invitation below) narrows the niche that QSN could fill, such as by calling up datasets and project materials from its member bodies.
The Annual Report of Engineers Australia for 2018-2019 includes statistics on the popularity of the portal: 933 activities from 294 providers, attracting 121,696 page views.
In mid-2025, the holder of the domain www.starportal.edu.au allowed the domain to lapse, which explains why the URL is now dead. This loss highlights the importance of civic organisations like The Royal Society of Queensland and the Royal Geographical Society of Queensland with long lifetimes (in those cases, crossing the boundaries of three centuries). QSN will endeavour to recover the materials on the site.
Leaders of former STARportal projects note:
In the meantime, the Office of the Chief Scientist Queensland has asked QSN to invite any leader of a project that was previously showcased on the STARportal to instead submit it to OCSQ’s Queensland-focused library of educational materials.
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Primary Industries Education Foundation Australia is a not for profit company that operates and manages a web portal called Primezone. Primezone provides teachers, parents and students, with an Australian Curriculum-driven range of high-quality, vetted educational resources relevant to primary industries, from Foundation to Year 12. Visit Primezone at www.primezone.edu.au