• iceberg
  • boy with flowers
  • checking water quality
  • planet eclipse
  • solarsystem model
  • rangitoto trees
  • kids with test tubes
  • kids with earth
  • snowy mountains
  • teens in physics class
  • Rainbow Clouds

    Refraction and diffraction of light through ice crystals in the clouds

  • Philippa On The Ice

    Philippa On The Ice Philippa Werry at an Antarctic research camp 2016

New Zealand Science Teacher

Teacher Education in Science

Tell Science Learning Hub what you want in a webinar

Science Learning Hub (sciencelearn.org.nz) want your feedback in planning future webinar topics.

iStock 000060974094 SmallScience Learning Hub, New Zealand’s most comprehensive repository of science resources and online professional learning, usually broadcasts live webinars that anyone can tune into on a Thursday afternoon, at 4pm to 4.45pm. There’s no need to worry though if you can’t be there: all webinars are recorded and are available whenever you’re ready.

You can find all the webinars that SLH has previously hosted by going here.

SLH webinars often bring in guests for a particular topic: a recent example saw Dr. Kara Filbey of the Malaghan Institute host a talk on fighting infection. Dr. Filbey took the online audience through her current research focus - which involves examining particular worm species that are able to suppress their own immune systems, and how medical science could hope to mimic this functionality to create allergy vaccines - and fielded questions from netizens who’d tuned in.

The busy folk at SLH were able to create some activities and other resources arising from Dr. Filbey’s webinar.

Andrea Soanes is project manager of the Biotechnology Learning Hub part of Science Learning  Hub. She tells New Zealand Science Teacher why webinars are a great way to circulate knowledge.

“Webinars provide the opportunity, in a very short space of time, to prompt thinking. We all know  that teachers are incredibly busy, but they can log in every so often, tune into a webinar, or download one that they’ve missed - they’re all downloadable, so teachers can watch them at the beach, or at night when there’s nothing on T.V.

“What it does is that it prompts teachers’ thinking about how to incorporate the Nature of Science in their practice - it might inspire them to ask the question ‘what are some contexts that might spark students’ interest’.

“Teachers need to be excited about what they’re teaching, just as much as students need to be excited about what they’re learning. We hope that these webinars will, one, make knowledge accessible in a different way, in an audiovisual sense, and two, we want to excite teachers about the possibilities of teaching science in their classroom.”   

Some of the webinars may include input from teachers who may have used a particular resource, and can communicate with teachers who are considering using them - how they might have used the resource in their literacy, for example, or how they’ve been able to incorporate cross-curricular units.

Some of the most recent webinars to be posted on sciencelearn.org.nz are a series of three on the Aqua Republica ‘serious game’ - covered recently on nzscienceteacher.co.nz. One of the series features an in-depth discussion with one of the developers of the game, on how teachers can get the most out of it.

When asked about plans for future webinars, Andrea says that it’s all about meeting the needs of teachers, not teachers meeting their needs.

“We’re super keen to hear from teachers about what they would like us to feature in webinars.”

Andrea says too that something her and the SLH team are keen to get stuck into is bespoke webinar sessions for teachers from a particular school, who may need help with a particular focus of science learning.

“If there is a school which requires some science professional development, and they would like our support, we can run a live webinar recorded at the school. Of course, that means that the webinar can be shared with science educators throughout the country, and I think there’s so much potential benefit there - addressing real needs, that other teachers can relate to.

“Our site isn’t just about science, it’s actually about science education - so we can help with pedagogical things, and that’s really important I think. That’s something we’d be really keen to get into, if we get lots of bites from teachers.”

If you’ve got a suggestion for a webinar topic, or you’d like to discuss the possibility of the SLH team coming to your school and recording a webinar, get in touch with Andrea Soanes: andreaso@waikato.ac.nz

 

Post your comment

Comments

No one has commented on this page yet.

RSS feed for comments on this page | RSS feed for all comments

Up