Using WOW material

Teacher: Kylie Merrick, HOD Fashion Technology

School: Wellington High School, Wellington

Play Audio Snapshot (6.6MB, .mp3)

Kylie Merrick talks about how she uses the WoW material from the Techlink website when planning and teaching a Year 13 project.

Welcome to this Techlink Podcast. In this Teaching Snapshot Kylie Merrick, HOD Fashion Technology at Wellington High School, talks about how she uses the WoW material from the Techlink website when planning and teaching a Year 13 project.

My Year 13s do a yearlong client driven portfolio and that consists of three internal achievement standards. These are all imbedded within their portfolio. There's also allowances for external standards if they want to do 3.6 or scholarship, so that can happen within there as well.

I have two pathways, so if students don't want to do wearable art, they can do a 'young designer made to measure' option as well. But students get to choose. They also choose their own client and I monitor the selection, just to make sure that the project they are going to undertake will have enough Year 13-level work being produced.

I let the students' portfolios grow and develop in an individual manner. But I keep a careful eye on making sure there is enough evidence for summative assessment. But I don't let the assessment drive the project, so often students might do work that doesn't get assessed.

So with my planning, my initial plan is I brainstorm out what they need to do with their Technology practice and draft a list of tasks and stages they need to undertake. I use this as a guide for later and it keeps track of things because things can get a little bit crazy when everyone is doing something different.

After I have done that, I have a look at the assessment and standards criteria under the achievement standards and work out what evidence I need to pull within their projects. At this point I look at formative areas for feedback to help students achieve higher levels. So when I have done this, I then go to Techlink.

The area I go to is the brown tab which is Curriculum Support. Under this area I look at Indicators of Progression and as this is a Year 13 project I look at Levels 7 and 8. So I look in here and it helps me refine specific objectives. And this is a really good layout for the Indicators of Progression. There's flow charts, so it's really easy to read. If you are familiar with it already, you can even go to the more advanced, comprehensive charts that they have. There's teacher education speak in it, but it's really easy to understand.

Once I have done this, I have a look at all the different curriculum sub-strands and for my Year 13 project I've used Tech Practice for Planning, Brief Development, Outcome Development and Evaluation. I've also used Tech Knowledge, with focusing on Modelling and Nature of Technology, the Characteristics of Outcomes.

I then integrate all of this back into that original list that I brainstormed. From here I write up a student portfolio guidebook, and in this little guidebook every student who gets one of these gets lists about research; it has links on here for Techlink and the different areas that we are going to use as well for our research. It has assessment information. It's just quite comprehensive.

So, where do we go on Techlink to start our research as a group in the classroom? There's always a springboard starting point and I like to use the Case Studies, under the Technologists' Practice and that's the green tab. I look in here and we work together as a group. We look at Zambesi with the Air New Zealand uniform and we sort of have a look. What's the common things? What's the process? What are the key points? Things the students will be undertaking and doing themselves.

Then I show the students the Stories of Creativity in the WoW section. So, if you go under the search area on Techlink and just type in WoW Stories of Creativity or you can just link to it from the home page of the site as well.

On here the students look at two other wearable art creators, that are real life creators and successful winners in wearable art and they just have a bit of analysis and critique of their process. And this is really informative, really relevant and there's lots of details and it's supported with pictures and quotes as well. From here we have a class discussion.

It's really important for students to research their peers and what they have done as well; what's been done before. You don't want to reinvent the wheel. So the students go and have a look in the Case Studies area, that's the green tab. And under there they look at classroom practice and materials. Specifically we look at two case studies; the WoW at Te Papa and Wearable Arts Collaboration.

Another area we go to is the Student Showcase, that's the red tab. Under here we go to Soft Materials and under there we look at Wearable Art Window Display and at Scholarship, at the scholarship work of Sophie Burrows.

The third area we look at is the Teaching Snapshots, that's the orange tab. And we go to the senior, Year 11 to 13 area and we look at Te Papa and beyond.

Under these three areas on Techlink, we look and discuss and critique the students' workbooks. We have a look at the problems they have faced, how they can learn from others' mistakes and issues, so they can avoid them and have a successful project. We look at the development of the outcomes. And there are segments of the students' workbooks and there are full workbooks. They are all in PDFs, so it's really easy to access, there's no changing the formats. And you can print them. If you don't have the use of a computer lab, you can download it, put it on your computer, plug it into an overhead projector and view it as a class that way as well.

All of the different student work in these areas have a variety of depth and the students in your class have a variety of understanding and pulling apart information. So it's really relevant, really easy to use and access.

From this point the students undertake their own individual practice and their own work for the year. But they do keep going back to those areas of Techlink where they find more information at a later stage when they need it.

For those students who go on to do external standards and the one I have been doing with this project is 3.6, which is explaining knowledge that underpins a materials outcome, we look back at the Case Studies area, that's the green tab, and the Technologists Practice. And they go look at Andrea Moore, Miranda Brown and different materials areas. They critique carefully, they analyse, they look at what the technologists in the real world have done, relate it to their own work and that's really informative. Especially if you are unable to go and visit a technologist in their own work environment.

As a teacher, I found it really important to be familiar with the case studies. So then you can use careful questioning to help the students pull the information they need. It's really easy to access, easy to understand and there's a diverse range of topics as well, so it covers the different Technology areas here. Also, like students' books, it's printable and you can get it in PDF. Also, some students might be scared of interviewing people, so this is an easy format to do it in.

For those students who do scholarship, we go and have a look at Techlink, under the Student Showcase, that's the red tab. And we look at Scholarship Exemplars. These have full workbooks on here and also include DVC/ graphics material as well.

Though some of the portfolios on here that are represented have more than the 3,000 word limit, they're still really useful. They are printable, you can look really closely at all the work, students get to see the higher level of thinking and bringing together of information in a combination of ways. And that's really important for scholarship.

I hope you enjoy and find Techlink as awesome as I do. Happy navigating.

Play Audio Snapshot (6.6MB, .mp3)