Techlink :: Classroom Practice :: Materials

Gisborne Girls' High School is a decile 4 school of 876; 47% Pakeha, 48% Māori and 5% other ethnicities. The students mainly come from two local intermediates and country school pupils will often have done their technology at one of these. Students coming into Year 9 find that there is a big jump from what they have been doing.

The school works on a system of modules (8 - 10 weeks) for all subjects. Technology is a compulsory subject at Year 9 (2 modules) and Year 10 (1 module) with optional modules also offered.

Some twelve years ago when Heather McIntyre was Year 9 dean she had her students make a time capsule, consisting of a manila folder containing writing about themselves and their experiences. This was opened during the Year 13 dinner or at the end of the girls' schooling. The students really enjoyed opening their capsules and it became an annual thing which all the Year 9 deans did during school camp at the beginning of the year.

Heather noticed that this tradition had faded out over the last few years and that nobody did it in 2005. She thought "it was just a neat thing to do" and knew that the students had found it exciting opening the capsules and seeing what they had written all those years earlier. She 'grabbed' the time capsule as an opportunity for something that could be done in Year 9 technology classes.

Heather came to technology teaching through a degree in science, maths and statistics from Massey University and a stint with the Department of Statistics before overseas travel. Back in New Zealand and working in accounting she decided it was not for her and headed to Auckland Training College.

Maths, accounting and enterprise studies teaching were followed by a year doing a postgraduate diploma in business administration. Arriving back at school after the introduction of the Technology Curriculum Heather asked to join the school technology team which comprised mainly science teachers at that stage. She has been co-ordinator since 1997 as well as co-ordinating the Gisborne outpost teacher training programme.

Heather McIntyre: "I've been really lucky that I've had good professional development. The hardest part of the challenge is trying to upskill in terms of teaching kids skills"

Teacher Steve Lawrence started out as an electrical technician apprentice at Portsmouth Naval Dockyard, eventually graduating from Leeds University with an honours degree in Science. Teaching in the United Kingdom was followed by a move to Campion College, Gisborne where he taught science and senior biology for eight years.

Steve shifted to Gisborne Girls' High School in 1995, becoming Assistant Head of Department Science two years later. After a break of three years teaching in England Steve arrived back at Gisborne Girls' in 2005 as a part time teacher in technology and science.

The unit is planned for a Materials Technology environment with the focal point being individual capsules containing a collection of items relevant to that student. There is scope to use any material even textiles, although this is less likely unless a textiles teacher is involved because of the physical location of the workrooms.

The technology department has a lot of teachers who are part time or teaching across several departments and who don't therefore have much time for writing new units. Heather and Steve designed the programme so that anybody else teaching it would feel comfortable with the required skills and would not be required to make much additional input.

There is a part time technician with a range of practical skills who is available to help if anyone else teaches the unit and needs specialist skills. The technician is shared with the science department but the two Heads of Department have agreed to be flexible and swap times around when required.

When trialling the unit Heather and Steve found that the containers were not always particularly brilliant and sometimes ended up being fairly crude such as the use of plastic containers from home. The next version put more emphasis on the students developing their containers.

Steve had done a unit where he got the girls to preserve something from nature in resin to tie in with the preservation aspect of the Time Capsule unit. Pupils would later ask staff "When are we going to do the subject that has the resin stuff?" When it was decided to change the order in which students worked through the unit, in order to capture their enthusiasm for the hands on elements, the resin preservation skills were made a part of the overall unit.

The Tairawhiti Museum was an obvious point of contact for Heather with its display collections, preservation requirements and permanent education officer. This was easy because she already knew people there and had previously taken students to the museum for various activities so knew this fitted in with their purpose.

A handbook was produced for the students which outlined the unit with guidelines and assessment procedures.

Goal setting was emphasised as an important part of the unit. At the beginning of each period the students were either set goals by the teacher or set their own. Time was allocated for reflections on the previous period's achievements.

Changing the unit around to start with workshop skills, leaving more theoretical work for later, meant the students were given their first brief, a name stand, and set to work designing them. Specifications were given for materials (MDF wood plus a meat skewer to hold a card which would be produced on the computer) and size. Students were told their name stand had to represent something about themselves as individuals.

This work allowed an opportunity to teach workshop safety and familiarisation to the students before they started using the tools and machinery to produce their name stands.

After removing the mould students mixed up liquid resin (containing a hardener) and injected it into the plastic.

The visit to Tairawhiti Museum gave the class the opportunity to view different kinds of collections. Museum staff talked about preserving materials for archives and photo preservation.

The short time period before opening the capsules meant that preservation was obviously not a real problem for the class. However they still needed to think about factors that might influence durability of the capsule contents. Physical aspects such as light, damp, heat, corrosion and insects had to be considered when planning what materials to use for the capsule and to contain the contents within.

The class also spent time on artefact development research, where each pupil had to choose a technological artefact, such as a cell phone, and show the development of the artefact over time and the effects on society. This linked with discussion on the contents of time capsules and whether contemporary video/audio equipment would be usable in the future.

Before moving on to personal work the students were asked to design and make a class time capsule. This could simply be a box or plastic lidded bucket decorated to reflect the theme and would be used to store the individual capsules. The class would then decide where to store the capsule for safe keeping (in this case the storeroom).

In developing their brief each student had to include a broad conceptual statement about what they were developing and then consider the specifications. The students had to decide what materials to work with (metal, wood, papier mach&eactue;, etc) and consider size, shape, cost, time and safety factors as well as the theme and preservation of contents.

Steve Lawrence: "Time Capsule is a very flexible context that can be moulded to student individuality, resource availability and teacher strength."

Planning for practice had the students producing detailed diagrams of what their capsules would look like with notes to describe them. They had to include details of the contents and how this material would be developed or gathered. Lists of materials needed with quantities and costs had to be provided along with step by step instructions on making the capsule. Students had to specify any help they would require in learning or practising workshop skills.

When their work had been approved students moved on to the outcome development phase with the expectation that they would produce a high quality product. At the end of the project students had to evaluate their work by analysing their artefact against the specifications of the brief.

Student comment: " I thought it was fun as I could be destructive by cutting, wood burning, hammering and nailing things and it would turn out looking good"
"I enjoyed Time Capsule because I was able to make it in my own way."

The unit allowed teachers to enthuse students with the practical materials skills while moving them on to process skills at a much higher level than they had experienced before.

Starting in 2006 the unit is being delivered through all nine classes as part of the Year 9 core curriculum. Students will open their capsules when they leave school; this is not part of the Year 13 dinner now that the capsules are bigger so students will come back to get them.

There is flexibility within the unit in that where there are different mixes of students in a class the teacher is able to pull out parts of the programme or push the class more in terms of what they produce. Steve found that able students could extend themselves both in their selection of content and containers for their time capsule. He comments that a very wide range of ability and motivation could be accommodated while creating the capsules.

Production of a booklet outlining the unit was a time consuming job but now that the bones of the unit are there it can be rehashed when required. Steve felt that the descriptors at the back for assessment purposes were too 'teacher speak' and difficult for the girls to get their heads around so rewrote it in more user friendly terms.

Involvement in Beacon Practice has improved the junior programmes in terms of the quality of the content. It has also made it possible to give a higher level of support to teachers in the department.

It is planned that students will visit the East Coast Museum of Technology as well as Tairawhiti, using this visit to concentrate on changes in technology.

If time allowed the class time capsule section could be expanded with more development of the actual capsule and on its storage; one suggestion being that it could be buried and marked with a mosaic plaque.

Steve notes that recycled materials could also be incorporated into the unit and used to make the time capsules.

Technology classes have been taught during a school option band which has made it difficult to plan for progression, with students beginning a unit with varying levels of technological experience. However the technology department has asked that time table changes in 2007 will have technology classes taught during the core band. This will make it easier to plan the class's progress relative to other Year 9 technology units. The Time Capsule unit may be delivered differently depending if students are doing it as a first or second technology unit.