If you've not used the Hub before, we recommend starting with this article How the Hub can help – it’s full of short, helpful videos. The recorded webinar Science support at your fingertips is a great place to find out about the site's newest capabilities.

Index

Accessibility

This website and its content have been developed with reference to the New Zealand Government Web Standards.

Accessing content

The Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao contains a wide range of rich media content in formats using G Suite applications, Microsoft Office products (Word, Excel and PowerPoint), Adobe products such as PDFs, Flash, HTML and video content. Note that we are working on replacing all of our Flash content.

These formats may require appropriate software to be installed on your computer. If you have any difficulty opening a file, make sure that you have the latest version of the relevant application on your computer.

Browser compatibility

This website requires a modern web browser to function correctly. If you have any difficulty accessing content, check that you have the latest version of your web browser. You can find a link to the latest version of your web browser here.

Collections tool

The Hub collections tool has been developed to support teachers with their science planning and teaching. It is also useful for all users to be able to save, sort, classify and annotate resources. Students can use the collections tool for class tasks such as research or as a study tool. Collections can be private, or you can collaborate and share collections with others.

For information on how to create collections with notes, sharing and collaboration, see the Creating collections article, which includes a how-to video.

The Science Learning Hub team has created some collections for you to use – you will find them within the related content boxes on some of our resources. Just click the copy button to add them to your own collection. The periodic table of elements collection is one example – there’s a full list of these public collections in the Creating collections article here.

If you need more help navigating through your collections, please just ask the team – enquiries@sciencelearn.org.nz.

Contact

See our Contact us page for the various ways you can contact us. We are always happy to answer any questions you may have about our website.

Unless otherwise stated, copyright of all material on this website is owned by The University of Waikato Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato. Please see our Copyright page for additional information.

Selecting the blue 'i' icon under a media item will give you additional copyright information.

Download warning

You may get a warning message when opening a link within a downloaded document from the Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao. If this happens, please select OK to the question “Would you like to open this file?” This is a standard behaviour that gives users an opportunity to confirm if they trust the source of the download.

Downloading a video

Where applicable, there is a download option for our videos. If this is not displaying, this is due to third-party copyright restrictions. All content is copyrighted for use within the New Zealand Science Learning Hub video clips only.

Glossary

Read Using our glossary for information on how to make the most of our glossary. Our main search does not include glossary terms but we do have a basic search in the glossary section.

Print settings

All printers have different settings, and the width of the page you wish to print from the Hub could be outside the printable area, meaning some text is missed off. When you choose print in your browser, look for the properties or options dialogue box and choose ‘scale to fit’ or set scaling at 85% – this will make the whole page fit to the printer paper size.

Privacy

Please see our Privacy page for further information. You can download our full privacy document here.

Professional learning and development (PLD)

We offer a range of opportunities to support teachers’ teaching science by increasing their own science knowledge and understanding and providing access to a wide range of pedagogical, planning and webinar resources. Find out more here.

Referencing Hub articles

All articles on the Hub are authored by the Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao, unless otherwise stated on the page. The date of publication is printed at the bottom of each page. Where a page has been updated, use this date.

For example, you might reference the article Adaptations of marine organisms as follows: Science Learning Hub – Pokapū Akoranga Pūtaiao. (2019). Adaptations of marine organisms. Retrieved from www.sciencelearn.org.nz/resources/142-adaptations-of-marine-organisms.

Registering and favouriting

Registering an account for the Science Learning Hubs is easy and free – sign up with your email address or your Google account. Registering and logging in to the site provides additional features, such as the ability to ‘favourite’ content to find it quickly later and to create collections.

Once you are logged in, just click the star to favourite a page. Logged-in users can find their favourites through the bar at the top of every page.

Search

The search function can be easily accessed by using the magnifying glass icon in the header or from the Home page. Initially three results are suggested but to see more, select ‘See all results’.

On the search page you can use the filters at the top of the page to narrow your search results. Or use a combination – for example, you can search for a term/phrase and limit the results to type, level or curriculum strand. Your search can also be narrowed by selecting a topic or concept.

The search is intuitive in that it includes alternative spellings and accepts terms with or without macrons.

For advanced searching, use these search tips:

  • Search for a phrase by putting quotation marks around your search terms – for example, "Magnetic resonance imaging". This stops resources, with just one of these words, from appearing. This method can also be used to find the exact spelling of a term.

  • Prefix a search term with the minus sign to exclude the term from the search results. For example, waves -ocean will exclude most articles about waves on a beach.

  • Prefix a search term with a plus symbol to ensure the term is included in the search results, for example, disease +kiwifruit will return results that only cover kiwifruit disease.

The numbers in the brackets by the various filters indicate the number of results under that filter.

Social media

The Hub is active on social media, and we view it as an important tool for us to interact with communities and disseminate science and education information. Find out more here.

Strands

Strands are part of the New Zealand curriculum requirements and you can search for content using the NSC strands in our search. You can find more information on the strands here.

Topics and concepts

The resources are curated under topics and concepts – find out why we do in this PLD article Science topics and science concept.

Transcripts

Selecting the blue ‘i’ icon under a media item will take you to a page that includes copyright information and, for all our interactive and video content, a full transcript.