Digital Discovery Day

Posted on 12 April 2013 by Admin

Today 50 New Zealand educators have flocked to the new National Library building in Wellington for Digital Discovery Day. The National Library Services to Schools team are hosting our visitors for workshops, discussion and presentations on 21st century literacy and the use of digital resources in the classroom. 

Our DigitalNZ session looked at the 'information age', 'digital literacy', and how DigitalNZ works. We also had a chance to play with DigitalNZ services by creating sets of content for the classroom.

Download the presentation slides and the instruction sheet we used to create sets.

A group of people sitting in a workshop at tables in an office.

Making sets. Source: Wendy Mac

Check out resources curated by our attendees: 

Six thumbnail photos of the pink terraces.

Pink Terraces set by wizzyrea.

We also spent time brainstorming on how DigitalNZ and digital inquiry skills could be used back in the classroom. Some suggestions were 

  1. Teaching kids to use keywords and filters

  2. Use it for inquiry learning

  3. Ask your class to create sets in a group

  4. Ask kids to compare and contrast different items in a set 

  5. Pull out interesting examples of language from old newspapers or advertisements

  6. Use it as an introduction to research

  7. A "then and now" exploration

  8. Ask kids to find items about their family and place (sense of history and belonging)

  9. "A picture says a thousand words" exercise

  10. Use the filter to find items you are allowed to share and remix

  11. Teachers can find resources to build new re-aligned curriculum lesson plans

  12. Use it to link to resources about current events (for example, sinking of the Wahine)

  13. Use it as a base for a 'triangulate' search (always search DigitalNZ + two others sources)

  14. Teacher creates a set to share with the class before a lesson

  15. Post this site in your LMS or 'resources' page for teachers

  16. Create an interesting and topical set for the school blog or Facebook page (ANZAC?)

  17. Use it to showcase places and resources kids would not be able to access in person 

  18. Building sets of images before or during lessons

  19. Use DigitialNZ to supplement limited print resources 

We can't wait to see you try some of these out! Get in touch with us at any time if you want to know more about how to find, share and use New Zealand digital content in the classroom. 


We've turned off comments here, but we'd still love to know your thoughts. Visit us on our Facebook Page @digitalnz or on Twitter @DigitalNZ to share any ideas or musings with the DigitalNZ team.