Delivery
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.
Preservation is an important part of the Time Capsule unit. In another skills building exercise the students had to preserve a perishable object in resin . The requirement for this task was that students choose an object that had some personal significance to them, such as a flower, insect or piece of fruit. They had to use an appropriate method to dry the object before making the desired mould shape out of MDF.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.
