You can contact LEARNZ, part of CORE Education, at:
Postal Address:
PO Box 13 678,
Christchurch 8141,
New Zealand
Teacher testimonials
ShakeOut
It helped with critical thinking, managing personal plans and responsibility in a disaster. A great way to have a different teaching medium with other experts to answer questions and supply information.
The content was very appropriate as they were able to relate it to their own experiences, having experienced a 5.8 earthquake the night before. The audioconference was an excellent opportunity to focus on asking quality questions with a purpose and to interact with experts.
The field trip connected the students to issues about earthquakes in a practical way. It was also great to connect with children who have been in earthquakes - this gave a realism and reality to the trip. Andrew (the LEARNZ Teacher) is marvellous - he really helps to ignite curiosity in the students.
It was good to have a child's perspective in the videos and background pages were good science information. The field trip enabled and empowered students to have an understanding of others' experiences and the impact these experiences have on themselves and the world in which they live.
The field trip allowed children to think deeply about emergencies, which was relevant to what we were learning in class about preparing an emergency plan. It was real life experiences from children to children which was great and the children were engaged because it was with other learners at their level.
Enjoyable to hear first hand accounts - made it more real for the children.
It supported the Shakeout event we were participating in. It also supported the curriculum well. Visuals are excellent and information is current. The videos led to good discussions and recall of prior knowledge.
Relevant to topic at school and it was all current. Great tool.
This field trip was a short mini-unit to prepare students for the national shake out drill and was in addition to our School Curriculum plan.
LEARNZ is doing a brilliant job and this is a fantastic resource for all teachers and students. Excellent contextual learning, and made really good links to the NZC. I loved how there was appropriate Māori and Pasifika language included to support our learners, while the inclusion of both easy and more difficult support materials allows for differentiation.
We had been involved in the Geohazards VFT so the children were well briefed and ready to take part in ShakeOut. The class really looks forward to taking part in the LEARNZ trips.
We are a sole charge school of 12 students and I was able to adapt the content to suit all levels within my class. This was our first live field trip and the students really enjoyed it and got a lot from it. There were lots of comments over the week about how 'cool' and 'fun' it was.
My Yr 5&6 class were very engaged with this field trip. The information was easy to access for the students who find reading difficult (great to have an NZ voice reading the background pages), but there was enough for my high achieving students as well. The live audio conferences were very useful - next time we will definitely put ourselves down for a speaking school role!
Great to follow this field trip while preparing for Shake Out on Thursday. Engaging way of learning for students. Lots of great information given and the opportunity to ask questions of experts.
Brilliant! It was my first time but it was a great way to get detailed information from an expert, live. The children in my class were asking loads of questions relating to answers given, which gave them lots of things to think about! The field trip related to "Participating and Contributing", as all my children got involved in thinking about their own emergency kits and some said they needed to get one.
The field trip was a great lead in to the Shake Out drill earlier today and complimented our topic on civil defence. Related well to Science - Natural disasters as well as civil defence and emergency management.
Smart Motorways
The class found it effective as the resources invited collaboration and discussion. It was a new context that demonstrated science in action. Learning areas could all be linked and the key competency of self management was explored.
Kea
Other than learning about our environment, we also used it in our creative writing unit.
We are currently studying adaptations and how animals/birds suit their habitat so the Kea was a great case study. I find the newsletters great - very detailed and a great prompt in the lead-up to field trips.
It was wonderful having a bird students already had contact with to focus our inquiry skills of research, communication and self-regulation. There is an excellent balance of texts and photos which can be related to all the learning needs in my class. The field trip was so relevant and the format easy to use.
Found the SOLO based questions for the videos useful for guiding students, really helping slow starters and students less engaged in science. The activities and quizes were also useful for year 10 science.
My students learned heaps about kea and the amazing people working with them. Students love these virtual field trips which provide for different levels of learning at the same time. We asked questions, did shared and independent reading, did shared and independent topic writing, art, technology, poetry and incorporated measurement and mapwork into this study topic.
Geohazards
Used for Science/Geography/Earth sciences - natural disasters as well as Maths/Science - data collection and interpretation.
Virtual Great Walker
Students were really interested in the content which we used as part of our weekly reading programme and to support digital literacy. We also set it up for independent learning so students could gain self-management skills.
Opera
The children really enjoyed this unit, as there was lots of awesome information relevant to them putting on our school production next term. I will use LEARNZ again because I love the field trips!