What can a soldier's button from the 1800s tell you about early Hobart?

Who walked the land called lutruwita — Tasmania — and what was it like before Europeans arrived?

These are some of the questions answered in a new online educational resource being launched for teachers around the country.

The project is a collaboration between museums, cultural organisations and ABC Education to create digital books — digibooks — to engage students in a range of subjects.

The digibook tells the story behind artefacts like a soldier's button found at Risdon Cove in early 1800s. ( ABC News: Dan Broun )

It's an initiative of ABC Education, which has invested resources and engaged four regional content producers in Hobart, Perth, Bendigo and Darwin.

ABC content creator Dan Broun is the one-man band producing the Tasmanian digibooks.

The first digibook titled "The Colonisation of Hobart" covers Aboriginal history, the arrival of Europeans, the Black War, and what life was like for convicts and industries like whaling.

"Tasmanian perspective of Australian histories and culture will be regularly represented as a matter of course," he said.

The first digibook contains 34 individual videos and teachers may use one, three, ten or all, depending on their lesson plan.

'Australians know very little about Tasmania's first people'

Mr Broun expected the Aboriginal history unit would be widely accessed by teachers.

"Australians know very, very little about Tasmania's first people and, even worse, there's not enough known right here," he said

"The first resource attempts to represent the palawa people's experience as the British invaded their lands.

"It tells the story of events that led to the near-genocide of the palawa people, but also of how their culture survives to this day and grows stronger.

"Now students across the country can reach that story at school and at home and, similarly, Tasmanian students can find out about the experiences of Aboriginal cultures in other parts of their country."

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Content aims to prompt further enquiry

History is just one of the themes in the series which will also branch into immigration, geography, climate and the environment.

"The content is designed to sit at the centre of a teacher's lesson plan, or to supplement it. All the resources contain curriculum-aligned material," Mr Broun said.

"Often the content is designed to be the trigger for further exploration by the class as opposed to being a complete resource.

"For example, a single historic object or image will then prompt a number of enquiry questions to build a class project around."

Artefacts like Aboriginal stone tools are explained in the digibook. ( ABC News: Dan Broun )

All of the content has been methodically fact-checked and attributed.

It is produced professionally with subject matter linked directly to Tasmanian public institutions and the landscape.

"For Tasmanian students and teachers, it's a real treat to see the places they recognise in their learning and to use the resource to understand their own history and place better," Mr Broun said.

"By comparing and contrasting the differing experiences of Tasmanian communities compared to those of Bendigo or Darwin, Perth, Melbourne or Sydney, teachers and students can broaden their learning on bigger topics, such as the Indigenous histories of Australia, or the differing climate types around the continent, or stories of immigration and geography."

'The hard part was deciding what to leave out'

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So how do you make history interesting and how do you tell the story of pre-colonial Tasmania?

"It was a mixture of research, planning, partnering and learning," Mr Broun said.

"Building formal partnerships with places like the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, the Port Arthur Historic Site or relationships with others, such as the Maritime Museum of Tasmania or nita Education.

"Listening to what the experts have to say, all the while ensuring the content will link to the curriculum by addressing various inquiry questions in the appropriate way.

"Meeting people so passionate and so informed on their areas of interest is always such a treat."

The long-term project has already faced some practical challenges, some of them out on location.

"I had a couple of shoots that were wind-affected, which can be difficult to manage as a one-man-band production unit," Mr Broun said.

"Other than that, I've had the same thing that afflicts most productions with interesting content — figuring out what to leave out.

"I'm hopeful this position will continue to feed Tasmanian stories into the national curriculum for a long time to come.

"There is so much Tasmania can contribute."