Summary Page: Wind and Water Power
Term 3 starting 12 August 2009.

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Head to Fiordland to explore electrical energy generation at the Manapouri Hydro Station. Go deep underground in the south-western arm of Lake Manapouri to see the huge turbines up close. Ask experts about the environmental aspects involved in running a hydro station in such an environmentally sensitive area. Take a look at wind generation at the White Hill wind farm 6km south-east of Mossburn. Find out why this site is ideal for electrical energy generation. Climb to the top of the giant wind turbines to discover how the energy in wind is converted to electrical energy. Find out how the two power stations connect to your home via the National Grid.

Where you will go

Manapouri Hydro Station is located within the Fiordland National Park, a World Heritage Area. The hydro station was built deep underground and takes advantage of the natural 178 metre height difference between Lake Manapouri and the sea at Deep Cove in Doubtful Sound. Meridian's White Hill wind farm is sited on an area of mostly forestry land approximately eight kilometres by three kilometres. It began producing electrical energy in 2006 and its 29 turbines produce enough power for approximately 30,000 homes.

Learning Areas/Levels

Science: Physical World Levels 5-8

• Vision, Values, Key Competencies, Principles, Literacy and Numeracy

  By their nature, LEARNZ field trips integrate with the higher levels of the NZ Curriculum. Participation encourages development of the Key Competencies around Thinking, Using language, symbols and text, Managing self, Relating to others, and Participating and contributing. Teachers indicate this in testimonials. LEARNZ field trips have support and activities for Literacy, with opportunities to develop skills in Listening, Reading and Viewing and in Speaking, Writing and Presenting. More about LEARNZ as a Reading Resource and student writing opportunities with LEARNZ. Select LEARNZ field trips have support and activities for Numeracy, encouraging the development of skills in Number and Algebra, in Statistics and in Geometry and Measurement.

• ESOL

  As well as providing visual and audio material and access to real experiences, LEARNZ links well to ESOL Principles, especially Principle 3 Maintain and make explicit the same learning outcomes for all the learners. How can I make the lesson comprehensible to all students? How can I plan the learning tasks so that all the students are actively involved? Do my students understand the learning outcomes? Principle 4 Begin with context embedded tasks which make the abstract concrete. How can I put these concepts into a concrete context?

• What's in a Field Trip

  Every LEARNZ field trip has its own newly-built, self-contained web site ready for integration into your teaching and learning programme. Teacher Support has curriculum integration, resources, newsletters, support and evaluation. Prepare Students provides opportunities for student inquiry on two sets of image-rich background pages at reading levels 2 years apart, (students can click to have those pages read to them out loud), online interactive and other activities to check students' understanding, and a glossary. During the field trip there are live tweets on twitter, and daily additions such as a diary, video clips, profiles of the experts (ideal careers education), a photo gallery, and ambassador (mascot) page updates. Live web conferences via Adobe Connect enable teachers to managed students putting prepared and spontaneous questions to experts (recorded for replay). After the field trip, teachers are encouraged to take further action with their class in the community or to go on a related field trip, or to invite a guest speaker, or to present what they have learned to a wider group. Teachers also fill in an online evaluation (more about reflective practice), the field trip prize winner is drawn, and the final newsletter is sent. Content remains online for continued use.

• How teachers use LEARNZ

  View teacher comments in testimonials and in the LEARNZ Group on the VLN. There are two main ways teachers use a LEARNZ virtual field trip with their class. Firstly, a LEARNZ field trip is ideally an immersive, engaging, synchronous, online learning experience with real-time components and a myriad of opportunities for teachers and students. Secondly, and less ideal but still effective, a LEARNZ field trip can be used as a retrospective experience where the resources such as photos, text, activities, videos and audioconferences/web conferences comprise a unique collection of authentic, contemporary New Zealand teaching and learning material.

• What Now

  Not Registered with LEARNZ? Are you a New Zealand Registered or Provisionally-Registered Teacher? Register free with LEARNZ Now.

  Already Registered with LEARNZ and activated your account? Log in to your personal MyLEARNZ Control Panel and then enrol your classes at no cost in field trips. Note: Enrolment is only needed for the current and future year's field trips.

  Registered but need help? Check your email for activation instructions - contact us if the message did not make it to your email inbox. Log on to MyLEARNZ. Go to Getting Started.

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