Tech-savvy kids from all over NSW had a virtual classroom visit from Sydney Swans players Ed Barlow, Jude Bolton and Jared Crouch last week with the help of smartboard technology.
"Team Swans is going to places that I always dreamed of taking it to with this smartboard technology," Crouch said.
"We were able to be in hundreds of classrooms across NSW, and able to see and hear hundreds of students at once. It was an amazing experience to have that many kids to be talking into their microphones and cameras and being able to answer their questions as if we were right there with them."
Each classroom was linked to the session via webcams and microphones, with the players able to see and hear from each of the schools throughout the session.
"We could see a changing combination of schools, and they got to ask us a lot of the questions about our eating habits, before games and in pre-season for example, as well as about life as a footballer, our training regimes and everything else in between."
"The mode of delivery was amazingly different, but the message was still the same. We talked about healthy eating, which is a simple choice. We also talked about friendships and the type of friend are, the type of friends you surround yourself with. Your friends have a huge bearing on the choices you make throughout life, so we encourage the kids to think more about it in order to make the right choices.
"We also encouraged them to start thinking about what they want to be in the world, about their aspirations, and we shared our own stories about being boys in primary school dreaming of being AFL football players, and the steps we put in place to get there.
"Their dream doesn't have to be sport, but a lot of the messages we put in place through the program allow them to be the doctors, nurses, teachers, whatever it is that they want to be."
