Awapuni School, Gisborne

Special places in Gisborne

Research process

Mrs Birt was doing a study paper called Learning and the Internet and wanted to work with a group who would like to do some research.

A group of six of us met and heard about the idea of Living Heritage. We looked at the website and saw what other schools had done.

We brainstormed all the heritage ideas we had about Gisborne - places, people, buildings. Then we paired up and chose what we wanted to research. Next we wrote questions about what we wanted to know and thought about the key words to look up.

A few days later we all went down town to photograph our chosen projects.

We researched by using some books, websites like www.gpl.govt.nz for the H.B. Williams Library and www.tairawhitimuseum.org.nz for Wylie Cottage and www.doc.govt.nz for the Cook Monuments. We also used Matapihi and Timeframes to look at old photos.

Then we wrote up the information in Word and chose which pictures we would use. We learnt to size them and how to insert them.

As well while we were doing this we set up a blog site so that we could keep in contact with a group in Auckland whose teacher was doing the same course as Mrs Birt. We posted ideas about what we had done and they replied. It wasn't very easy as their times didn't match ours very well. It was fun though, and we liked seeing a picture of us on the web.

We drew a map of the North Island for our home page and also a picture of the Wyllies who lived in Wyllie Cottage. These were scanned in.

We checked each other's work to make sure it was correct before it was posted on the website.