Learning by filming

Year 10 students from Wellington College worked with a professional film director to capture some of the work one of their teachers had been doing at NIWA. But holding a camera wasn't the only thing they learned.

Transcript

Michael Saywell (Year 10, Wellington College): We went to NIWA to interview Andrea Shaw, a teacher from our school who took a year off to do a Teacher Fellowship at NIWA to learn more about her science. We interviewed her to find out exactly what she was doing.

Hugo Dobson (Year 10, Wellington College): I learnt a lot about the science, about the sharks, especially in the Wellington area, and about the Fish-Bol project. By filming it, it was a lot easier to learn.

First of all, we had to understand it. Then we had to take it a step further and try and present the information to other people, which meant that we got a really thorough knowledge of what we needed to know.

Michael Saywell (Year 10, Wellington College): I learnt quite a lot about applying the scientific method to real experiments, not just applying it in the classroom.

Hugo Dobson (Year 10, Wellington College): Being on-site definitely made it a lot more relevant.

Michael Saywell (Year 10, Wellington College): Because often you get told in a classroom that they dissect a fish to get DNA, but you don’t quite see how, say, a centrifuge works.

It’s good to know those things, just so you have another piece of the puzzle to link into your mind and make it easier to remember.

Hugo Dobson (Year 10, Wellington College): I was really interested when Andrea was cutting up the sharks, just seeing the actual animals and doing the dissecting.

Michael Saywell (Year 10, Wellington College): I’ve always loved being in the lab, because I’ve always loved the scientific equipment and data collecting. So I thought that was quite cool, having the various things, especially from other experiments. Like they had a huge freezer which was at -200-ish ºC, which is really cold.

They had huge bins saying ‘biohazard’ and carcinogen warnings. I just loved that atmosphere.

Hugo Dobson (Year 10, Wellington College): Just being hands-on and doing it for real was really cool.