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Education in the Community
In addition to managing the New Zealand Government’s oil, gas, mineral and coal resources, New Zealand Petroleum & Minerals is pleased to be active in community engagement through education.
Educational 'virtual' field trips
As part of the Ministry of Educations' Learning Experiences Outside the Classroom (LEOTC) programme, LEARNZ run a series of free online "virtual" field trips for New Zealand teachers and their classes. The field trips are aimed at pupils from all over New Zealand between the ages of 11 and 15, and cover a wide range of topics; from earthquakes and coal mining, to wetland ecology and animal conservation.
Watch a short video introducing LEARNZ
See the full range of field trips in 2011
Resources
The field trips use simple technology like the internet to take students all over New Zealand and to inaccessible places like Antarctica. The trips are run by specialist LEARNZ Field Trip teachers via their website.
Field Trip online resources include:
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Alvin the Ambassador |
Ambassador Programme
A popular component of past trips, LEARNZ teachers take along 'Ambassadors'. These soft toys accompany the LEARNZ Teacher and get to see, hear, feel and smell what the students at home can't. Each Ambassador also gets its own web page and email address.
Interactive learning
LEARNZ provide live interaction between remote experts and students, creating a real world experience. This has proven to engage and motivate students, increasing their knowledge absorption.
Home involvement
Statistics show that 27 percent of student logins occur after 3pm, most of these occurring after 6pm. This shows that that parents and family are potentially becoming involved, resulting in an even larger audience being reached.
Typical field trips have 100 or more classes ‘attending’, equating to over 2000 students.
There are currently 4075 registered teachers participating in LEARNZ from 1616 schools.
NZP&M involvement
New Zealand Petroleum & Minerals provided a volunteer geologist to help with a new virtual field trip focused on the Petroleum Exploration industry in New Zealand.
LEARNZ designed the trip, collecting the information and footage from relevant materials and experts supplied by the Petroleum Skills Association.
Over the three day field trip, LEARNZ made a series of short films talking to experts about various parts of the industry, including exploration, production, and products e.g. methanol and urea.
Our volunteer geologist was involved in filming three short videos covering:
These films were posted online each night so the pupils could watch them the next day by logging into the LEARNZ website.
Our geologist was also involved in the audio conferences with students. Their questions were recorded and posted online each day. Also, an electronic diary was written daily and a question board was available on the website.
Future Engagement
Feedback from both teachers and students has been positive, and there is potential that this trip will be run again next year. New Zealand Petroleum & Minerals have gladly offered time and resources again for next year.
Petroleum Skills Association
The Petroleum Skills Association is a collaboration of eight oil and gas upstream and downstream companies that is committed to collaborative and sustainable, skill capacity building, for the New Zealand Petroleum industry.
LEARNZ
LEARNZ was established in 1995 and currently has 4,075 teachers from 1,616 schools registered on their free, fully supported, interactive student experience website. LEARNZ also boasts the largest collection of New Zealand, contemporary digital resources for interactive education.
