Two years later…
In July 2008, two years after publication of this case study, Barbara reflects on the Te Papa Souvenir unit.
Barbara is still in her position as HOD Technology at Queen Margaret College, and since publication her enthusiasm and professionalism have been acknowledged both within her own school and nationally. She was awarded a QMC Travelling Fellowship, which enabled her to attend the 2007 Pupils' Attitudes Towards Technology (PATT) Conference in Glasgow, and at the 2007 TENZ National Technology Education Conference in Auckland she was presented with a TENZ/IPENZ Award for outstanding Technology teaching. In May 2008, Barbara was awarded the Independent Schools of New Zealand (ISNZ) National Excellence in Teaching Award for Exceptional Performance for Years 11-13.
What worked particularly well in this unit?
In reflecting on the planning and delivery of the Te Papa Souvenirs unit, Barbara is quick to identify the importance of the capability and enthusiasm of the group of Year 11 students she had that year. This enabled her to set high expectations of student achievement in terms of both their ongoing practice and the prototype souvenirs. The students more than matched her expectations. and four of them subsequently moved through the Year 12-13 Technology programme and achieved Scholarship awards in 2007.
What should teachers be looking to get out of the unit?
Barbara believes that 'Souvenirs' is a context that will work successfully in any school environment "I think it suited Year 11 really well as a good technological practice topic. We were lucky in that we had a high-profile client organisation, and got practical input from people with product development experience."
However, despite the advantages gained from this specialist input, Barbara is certain that it would be relatively easy to identify a suitable client/stakeholder group for the students to work with in any type of school.
Barbara's planning ensured that the Te Papa client group met with the students at three stages during the project, to give targeted and detailed individual feedback. This ongoing interaction set valuable deadlines for student encouraging them to keep up-to-date with their work and to produce something of quality to put in front of the visitors. "It made it real for them. The client wasn't mum or nana, who'd usually be happy to accept the finished product without to much criticism, but representatives of a high-profile organisation and the responses had to be of real quality. That really lifted the bar and made it a much more interesting topic for the students."
Barbara also emphasised the importance of incorporating the skill-building component. In the Te Papa Souvenirs unit students worked on an extensive range of new skills, but a teacher adapting the unit could change this to suit available resources and the needs and abilities of a particular group of students.
How has the unit evolved since?
Barbara subsequently delivered the unit with her Year 11 students in both 2006 and 2007. She was not able to use Te Papa Store as the client organisation, so chose to focus on a different stakeholder group – international students within her school.
"We have a reasonable-sized group of international students so there was plenty of opportunity for stakeholder interaction and flexibility in the selection of individual opportunities to be addressed."
Although Te Papa was no longer a major stakeholder, Barbara continued to visit the store and get input into product development from the staff. "But we didn't have any follow-up interaction while the students were developing their products, which limited the depth a bit."
Barbara decided not to teach the unit to her 2008 class. "I'm always trying to plan units of work progressively across year-levels and, to be honest, I was feeling a bit 'souvenired out'. I'm now planning to re-focus the unit and do it in Year 12 next year, working with another one of the local museums – one with a different core theme - and approaching it as a conceptual design project."
Lessons learned that have influenced future planning and delivery?
As outlined in the case study, the 2005 Te Papa unit developed into a much larger project than originally envisaged and Barbara had to re-negotiate the year's plan with her class. This necessitated a mid-course planning re-think and she has now moved from three projects to two in all her senior courses.
An important change to her ongoing delivery has also been the embedding of an ongoing reflective component into all of her courses.
"That use of reflection is pretty much standard now – right from Year 7. With all of my classes, every Friday I put a few points up on the board such as: 'What problems did I have this week?', 'What do I need to talk to my client about?' or 'What am I most pleased about?' – it depends on the topic. Students write a reflection on each point – how much they write depends on how much they'd like to say."
Barbara has also consolidated her approach to intellectual property (IP) issues in technology, and finds that the IP material on the Techlink site is a convenient starting point.
"It depends on the project, but we always have some kind of IP or copyright input. This half-year the Year 11 class are doing a fashion item, so we're looking at their rights and obligations as a designer. It's never on a big scale, but I always try to make them think about IP in some way."
