You can contact LEARNZ, part of CORE Education, at:
Postal Address:
PO Box 13 678,
Christchurch 8141,
New Zealand
Resources that we used were excellent, thought provoking and have my whole class sold on taking care of kauri. Teaching kit very helpful, well thought out, age appropriate.
Linking a community issue with young adults (in this way with LEARNZ), has been empowering for the students. They are able to contribute to conversations outside the classroom using science and cultural based knowledge.
Very informative as to what is happening on our doorstep, and we did not know about it. We are now going to contact DOC in our area and finding out more that we can do to help locally. All children saw things they related to, and saw the relevance of what they were learning. Nice to have the extra background from maori perspective.
Easy to access and structured well for independent work. Just the right level and interest.
They (LEARNZ virtual field trips) are informative and they reinforce what I am teaching. We had watched with real disappointment the Kauri Grove in Cambridge and our local area die in last year's drought.
It is visual, relevant, easy to access, and makes good use of technology to be virtually there. Very relevant and topical in Northland.
Kauri is one of our taonga, and this field trip supported our role as tangata whenua and kaitiaki. A great resource and easy to use with the class who learnt so much about the kauri and the disease affecting it.
Great that kauri dieback was in the news, while we were studying it on the virtual field trip. Good integration with Literacy, Te Reo, Key Competencies, Science, and Environmental Education. Wide range of topics, relevant, real life and happening now.
It illustrated clearly community engagement, ecological sustainability, participating and contributing. Students were interested. It also helped in the Nature of Science ... seeing how the community can work with the scientists on an issue.
We live in the north and are surrounded by Kauri trees. Our students are now aware that kauri trees are under threat as they did not know this initially. I feel science is a very important part of the curriculum and want to encourage students to interact with the New Zealand environment. We are now going to visit the local bush and observe our trees.
Students were motivated by the field trip and made gains in reading, research, and critical thinking.
The visual and aural activities of the virtual fieldtrips, real time and recorded, are an immediate way to bring the wider environment into the classroom. The field trips and their material are flexible enough to give opportunities for a variety of uses in the classroom.
Related to our personal environment, local issues, and experiences at camp. Very relevant to developing a MLE and BYOD environment. Combined literacy, science, social science. Andrew (the LEARNZ Teacher) was friendly, engaging, and related well to students and experts.
Fitted in very well with our non-fiction reading strategies and gave information that we weren't aware of. Also topical with the news broadcast about Coromandel.
We found it an effective way to learn. It focussed us on our work and was more interesting than just picking up a book. We would use LEARNZ again because we get to learn more about what's outside of our local community.
LEARNZ adds a rich IT experience to the class learning, that relates to local topics and utilises local expertise very well.
We learnt things that were directly related to our topic of kaitiakitanga and sustainability. It is great to have the background information, videos and photographs that support a NZ topic.
Photos generated a lot of discussion.
We used this field trip to help us cover our Deep Learning Topic of Past and Present. it was very helpful in many aspects as we also wanted a science based focus in this area. The activities and background pages were useful for self management.
Engaging and relevant. My tamariki loved learning about the kauri. The field trip allowed them to engage with and utilise the learning we were doing in the classroom.
The field trip was yet another way to utilise the tools in our digital classroom. My recommendation to colleagues is this resource, while valuable when it links to current teaching and learning, has also proven to be excellent for use with smaller groups to extend critical thinking and learning linked to a real context.
Hearing from experts is fantastic from a multi-layer perspective - from learning about future careers (scientists, DOC rangers, visitor centre staff) to the significance of the kauri to NZ was excellent. The (bilingual class) children really enjoyed hearing guest speakers present in Te Reo, present their mihi and hear first hand how important the kauri was and is to them.
My students enjoyed it and learnt so much. They were inspired and did their own projects on kauri dieback. They learnt to do inquiry learning. They enjoyed the videos and doing the activities to test their knowledge.
My class always enjoys the Learnz Field Trips, regardless of the trip we enrol in. The LEARNZ teachers are so enthusiastic, it really teaches the children things that I can't.
We linked this topic to our class Māori studies so the Māori children felt the significance of the Kauri to all. The field trip inspired the class, expert on topic made class listen more, audio conferening was a new skill and helped their questioning skills. Class logged on at home to look at resources. Thought ambassador traveling with you was fun. Keen to read next diary.