You can contact LEARNZ, part of CORE Education, at:
Postal Address:
PO Box 13 678,
Christchurch 8141,
New Zealand
The smart motorway is a great example of looking at significant issues, with a Future Focus, that involve our citizens and how the problem of traffic is being tackled globally. It was great to have the activity sheets to record our thinking while we were listening to the audio conference.
We are studying Structures and Smart Motorways tied in well with our schoolwide topic. The field trip made the children think at a deeper level and apply knowledge gained to other areas of the curriculum. The activities and videos supported the context well. The children enjoyed sharing what they had learned on the Field Trip with their families at home.
Covers real life examples for the maths learning area. The field trip encourages independence and enterprise and promotes confidence. It also allows learners to collaborate and work in a group.
The students were motivated by the fact that this was real time learning about a new technology in NZ. Helped to inspire the students into inquiry based projects related to our term's concept of 'Movement'.
Appreciate the personal interest taken by the (LEARNZ) teachers to get our school on-board and recognized. It really opened up a field that is related to real life. Broadens our experiences and much cheaper than an onsite visit, although the latter is not to be overlooked. Some sites are not accessible to general public.
We were able to relate this situation to those we know more about in Auckland. As our topic for the year is responding to challenges, we were able to see how this is being effected in the area of transport.
My son has a keen interest in engineering and this was a fantastic opportunity to go behind the scenes of motorway infrastructure and find out how a smart motorway works. He found the videos very interesting, particularly the one about construction and planning.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Students followed the technological process by looking at the different roles of the people and the components of the smart motorway, and related these to its purpose. Thank you - the whole resource was able to be used and made into differentiated activities for my students.