You can contact LEARNZ, part of CORE Education, at:
Postal Address:
PO Box 13 678,
Christchurch 8141,
New Zealand
Teacher testimonials
Whats the Plan Stan?
I find the teacher support section very helpful and have never thought, "I wish they had this here". Students were able to read and understand the easy background information and were able to discuss the ideas put forward, then form evacuation plans for school and home.
Field trips like these help build connected, lifelong, sustainable learners.
Very useful for convincing children that we really do need to prepare for a disaster. Being an e-learning class, we made a disaster plan for our own family. The variety of content is more engaging than normal classroom activities, and this helps to motivate priority learners.
Sustainable Wai
We are looking at our local river and the field trip gave us a context in which we could link our reading programme and link it through science. The class was engaged and went onto the images and background pages during independent learning times. Awesome trip - thanks Andrew and team.
My students love working in pods learning and researching on all the background pages and then seeing the real life videos. To the LEARNZ team thank you for such an awesome resource, that I love using with my students!
It allowed for huge flexibility. Our unit is based around the Place and Environment AOs of the Social Science learning area, and it was perfect. Kids were very engaged and particularly looked forward to the daily videos.
This field trip was excellent and a fantastic opportunity to talk to inspiring, knowledgeable and caring experts. My students now have clarity around the direction for their action plans, therefore the field trip was effective, appropriate and supported the Principles, Values, Key Competencies, Learning Areas and Vision of the NZ Curriculum. Being able to re-watch the web conferences with the additional notes and links is really helpful.
Share the Road
Thorough integration of curriculum elements. For this field trip, we followed a pattern in class inquiry and core subjects.
Roads and road safety and public spaces are a part of everyday life, so it was great to think about and talk about how this effects us and how our behaviour effects others, in a meaningful way. I love, as always, the Learnz topics and the framework provided to have some interesting conversations, share ideas, and expand our knowledge in fun and interesting ways.
It allowed us to complete learning in technology, ICT, science and maths.
Spirit of Adventure
It showed the children working as a team in real life situations. I have also used it as part of my group reading material.
Very useful videos, students enjoyed them. I have got a few dyslexic children so videos and live interviews were really helpful to get them involved in learning.
Map my Waahi
Not only were we able to see mapping and other tasks being done in the field, but being enjoyed. Life long learning was modelled.
The way the field trip was structured caught students attention and kept them interested. The emphasis on local history, starting with Maori legend worked really well. Lots of interest in being able to plot the trip using the mapping tool.
This trip was useful in discussing the topography of New Zealand, prior to guiding the students into thinking about natural disasters as part of our Cause and Effect inquiry. We found the web conferences most helpful.
The students have continued, even after the end of the field trip, to explore their own passions around mapping, e.g. mapping their own whanau story. My Maori students showed full engagement in this trip, especially when listening to the oral stories of the local area. LEARNZ definitely supports my teaching, by providing a wide variety of resources and experts to support the class inquiry learning.
Love the links to tikanga and Maoridom - something that is a focus for us as school right now, but can be hard to do in an authentic way. This field trip helped us to achieve that. Students also hadn't thought of 'mapping' beyond the one on the wall so this opened up a whole new world for them.
Kauri
It was easy, engaging and grabbed the students attention. Covered all areas well as we were able to use it as a hook in, therefore allowing students to explore further in areas of interest as well as share with the wider school and community.
Linked through te reo me nga tikanga Maori - caring for our environment. Redwood Forest is in our area so able to connect to it through this field trip. Related to the NZ Curriculum - Community engagement, Cultural diversity, Future focus and the Vision - Confident, Connected, Informed, Contribuors.
Natural Hazards
Participation was great as we got to go Iceland!
This trip generated a huge response and the students loved being in Iceland. I was constantly asked if they could have more time researching-looking at videos and following their own Inquiry trail on this topic. All key competencies were used.
The kids actioning the Key Competencies through a field trip was new and interesting for them.
Absolutely ideal for my year level 3 & 4.
Supported collaboration, inquiry, and taught specific knowledge about the subject.
The experience has provided me with another tool to help teach my students and provide them with another learning tool to learn. Students are beginning to thinking more critically about the world we live in and how it all works. Seeing themselves on screen talking to experts and listening to other schools ask questions, that were answered, was very helpful.
Ecological Restoration
I have been using LEARNZ for over 10 years - it is so awesome. Extremely beneficial in helping students see real life issues outside of the classroom.
The link to Te Reo vocabulary was great. The videos, ability to listen as well as read the texts, the quizzes and diaries were all great. They encouraged me to hand over responsibility for learning more to the children and gave them ownership of the tasks. Some more introverted children shared some great findings from the field trip.
Excellent resources, great engagement from the learners and provoked good thinking surrounding our own restoration project. Fully supported the science learning areas of Living World (Ecology L1-6) and Planet Earth & Beyond (Earth Systems L3-4).
It was awesome to see students a similar age taking action in their communities. Worked really well with our science focus of protecting and creating habitats.
My class were very engaged in the web conference. This trip supported the science learning area and the children were keen to learn more.
The photos especially helped my ESOL students to learn about New Zealand and its environment. We will be going to Natureland as an actual field trip later in Term 4 and a bird sanctuary, which will reinforce the concepts we have looked at during the Virtual Field trip.
Freshwater Ecology
We were teaching about NZ Rivers as a module class, combining Science and Social Studies, so it fitted the achievement objectives perfectly for our subject areas. Awesome!
Land Sky and Space
My class as a lot of different levels of learning so having Learnz in my reading programme helps with coordinating groups and keeping students interested in Literacy Numeracy and Inquiry. They used thinking in many ways and there were different topics for different learners.
Excellent resource, Learnz is so integrated into our schooling now we call it a learnz week and we have learnz books. We love it.
Adapting after Emergencies
It was topical and led to deeper thinking from my students about coping with an emergency. ALL students from varying abilities could access this interesting and challenging material. The audio option on Background pages was great and well used by my children. My students loved the chance to use and connect with Te Reo in a real context.
Great Safety management ideas came through and layering on what we've learnt in Stan the Plan Learnz. Kia Pakari resource was fantastic. We had some great discussions on how different people help in the community and key messages endorsed such as - have a grab bag etc.
The field trip has been a great next step in learning from experts and hearing stories from our own back yard. Each morning of the field trip the kids have arrived enthused and ready to see what Andrew will be sharing with us today.
This field trip ended our term long unit on preparing for an emergency. It was spot on for my year 4-5 class, giving us a chance to hear from experts and people who experienced the earthquake. It also allowed us to ask questions and clarify our understanding. This has opened another door for me. It was so interesting, meaningful and relevant. It shows how technology can be used to extend learning. The students loved it - all rating the experience 9 or 10 out of 10. Thank you.
Living in Kaikoura it was good for my students to be able to look back and see how far they have come. It is so great to have the work done with linking it to the NZC.
Students were engaged with the topic and it was great having experts to answer their questions. Interactive activities have been helpful to scaffold learning for all students.
This field trip covered Science and Social Sciences and gave the students the information they needed to be able to make personal links to the learning. LEARNZ takes our learning and understanding beyond anything we could hope to offer our students - the field trips are a valuable part of our global learning program.
Matched well with the NZ Curriculum in Social sciences and Planet Earth science. My children did enjoy using the Maori vocab.
Kōkako
My students felt like they were there. It helped my students to connect with real life issues that are occurring now in real time. Great connection with tangata whenua.
This Kōkako field trip heavily support our focus on māori perspectives and tikanga practices surrounding nature and our syndicate mountain. The videos and background sheets are also excellent and catered for the range of levels in my class.
Students interested, good to have Māori view, overall great learning for kids. Relevant and NZ based learning about the Living World and conservation.
LEARNZ field trips like Kōkako are great for inquiry projects to show children another way to find information and to feed into passions.
Authentic context and linked to our inquiry for term 2. Useful for promoting Key Competencies - we used thinking, managing self, participating and contributing.
This field trip was perfect as we are researching New Zealand, in particular birds. It helped us to learn about kōkako but also allowed us to value the kōkako on a personal basis.
Perfect as we were exploring Predator Free NZ as an inquiry unit. Great to see the relevance of our tracking and trapping in our local school bush area. Good that our kids also saw that people have paid jobs doing this work. It's real-life stuff!
The field trip catered for a wide range of abilities. Introductory video, photos and captions were brilliant to help construct questions for the videoconference. I found the SOLO taxonomy excellent. Having the Māori words with the correct pronounciations was fabulous.