An interactive museum created by primary school pupils is giving a technological twist to stories of the Great Pacific Migration.
Goldfields Primary School pupils spent the first half of this year learning about the journey of Polynesians across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand and have created Te Whare Taonga o Hiwa-i-te-raki, an interactive museum to share their new knowledge.
QR codes, 3-D mapping, Lego robotics and other technologies have been used by the children to add a new dimension to traditional papier mache and diorama displays.
Principal Anna Harrison said the pupils learnt about a range of aspects of the journeys people took to reach New Zealand, including making a fizzy drink from kumara and using constellations and birds for navigation.
"We’ve been exploring maatauranga [knowledge] - we’ve been looking at the Great Pacific Migration and how people first came to Aotearoa New Zealand and the journey that they took from Polynesia across the largest stretch of ocean in the world to get to such a remote place as this."
"We’ve got displays here from 5-year-olds who have used coding or built models or made things, physical things and we’ve got things right through to our year 6s that have built 3-D maps and have got Spheros and Blue-Bots and Lego robotics rocking round the Pacific on them — so there’s amazing things going on."
Year 6 pupil Bella Cornish (10) had used a Makey Makey, a tool which allows children to create interactive electronics, to present information on the different parts of a waka.
When viewers touched certain parts of the waka, an audio recording would play explaining more about the vessel.
"I enjoyed finding out all the information that I didn’t already know, yeah, I learned heaps," she said.
Te Whare Taonga o Hiwa-i-te-raki was opened by Central Otago Mayor Tim Cadogan on Monday night and runs in the Goldfields Primary School hall today and Monday and Tuesday from 4.30pm-6pm.
Entry is by gold coin donation.
