You can contact LEARNZ, part of CORE Education, at:
Postal Address:
PO Box 13 678,
Christchurch 8141,
New Zealand
Teacher testimonials
Wetland Biodiversity
Very hands on feeling to videos and a very good learning experience all up! One of my sons loves animals and the outdoors. Living in New Zealand we all should know about the importance of these areas.
This is awesome (one student, Jack, many times over)! Being my first Learnz fieldtrip I was a learner too, and found it well prepared with invaluable information to add to our Wetlands unit. The managing self aspect came into play here as well for my Year 4-8 class.
Opera
It was an opportunity for students to experience something they may not have ever been able to, had it not been for this field trip.
Smart Motorways
Traffic in Auckland is a big part of our lives so my boys could relate to this topic in real life. The background pages, pictures and videos held their attention. My boys enjoyed the smart motorways trip - they learned so much.
The brilliant thing about this field trip is that it used a wide variety of media to hook the students in. One student even said "I didn't know that motorways were so interesting". There was something for every style of learning and all Key Competencies came into play as students worked together and individually to complete components of this field trip.
The children loved this field trip. We integrated it into our reading programme where we focussed on the reading strategies of: Summarisation, Synthesising, Making Connections, Inference. The structure of the field trips makes my life easy as far as planning goes. The fact that the children can log on at home is great. The parents love logging on and listening to the audio conferences.
It was an engaging way to up skill students by involving them in an audio conference and getting their parents to complete a public survey. It was also a great way to understand changes occurring to our local motorway.
High Country
Exceptionally appropriate for this age group - particularly the videos, web board and photos. The class also loved having Walt (the class mascot) there.
Antarctica
The field trip supported the development of Key Competencies, and provided up-to-date information relevant to Education for Sustainability.
The LEARNZ virtual journey to Antarctica was great because EOTC is not possible in Antarctica for a school classroom to do for real. The opportunity to hear real scientists talk to the LEARNZ representative, Shelley Hersy, was very valuable and also helped us form some of our science goals.
For my Year 4 class enjoyed the learning experience. The virtual field trip raised their awareness of how special and unique Antarctica is and made them think about being the guardians of the area.
This field trip was very appropriate for my Year 4 class as we used it under the theme of Kaitiakitanga. I feel the effectiveness (of the virtual field trip) can be gauged by the involvement and the questions asked by the children, and this Antarctica study has really had them enthused and doing independent research of their own. It is fascinating to discover how much knowledge the children take home and discuss with their families.
Very appropriate for year 7/8 students. They absolutely loved being able to look at the resources, especially the photo/video content. It gave maximum opportunity to discuss what they were looking at and learning.
My Year 3-4 students found the field trip extremely interesting, particularly as we had an ambassador join Shelley on the trip, too. We used the background pages for our reading programme and used the videos. There was a high degree of curiosity from the students, and their questions were answered at their level.
Great for Nature of Science. Also enviroscience topics. The kids were really interested - we found all the science fascinating and it was delivered in a way that made it understandable for the class. Also just the glimpse into life in the Antarctic.
This field trip supported our science and geography topics. We found the videos very informative. It was great to listen to scientists and the artist giving us a glimpse of what living and working in Antarctica is really like.
It takes us to a place we have never been and experienced before and it gives us more insights of what's happening there. It's incredibly interesting.
Great for students to have new people connecting to them in a different way, linking many aspects of the curriculum in a real setting.
The field trip was extremely appropriate and challenging. Very effective. My class really got into it - it was so well organised for teachers and students.
This is a rich experience for students who know NZ but are often living offshore.
The whole field trip has added a sense of authenticity to student learning. This really is a wonderful way to give us invaluable learning experiences - students have been so engaged and have been thinking of their own experiments to test some of the things that they have learnt.
I run the GATE programme and we do Future Problem Solving so the ecological sustainability was particularly relevant. A great teaching tool which is motivating for students.
Provided real meaning and connections to topical subjects like global warming. There was a high level of interest about Antarctica from the students.
ShakeOut
The kids thought it was a cool way to learn and they also said that the Shakeout drill now made a lot more sense i.e. why we do it. We found that the variety of different ways the information was presented made it interesting and accessible for all levels.
This was my first time on LEARNZ and I loved it. Apart from the well-prepared unit as such, the level of motivation for the kids was instant, high and continued through-out the whole series of lessons.