The recently launched  New Zealand Science Learning Hub www.sciencelearn.org.nz aims to spark fresh thinking and engagement in science education for New Zealand schools.

The Hub has been developed by the internationally respected University of Waikato - for clients the New Zealand Ministry of Research, Science and Technology (MORST). 

Working with a national network of leading science educators and subject experts, and in close collaboration with award-winning elearning company CWA New Media, the Hub offers a media rich environment through which contemporary themes can be explored by teachers and learners.

Through Contexts such as Icy Ecosystems, Earthquakes, The See Through Body and The Sporting Edge, the work, people and organisations of New Zealand's world-class science sector can be discovered.  Freshly commissioned teaching and learning resources, articles, videos, people profiles, interactives, animations and illustrations support each Context with more Contexts in development.

The 2lst century learner is surrounded by an increasingly complex world of science knowledge and understanding. To acknowledge this, the newly launched NZ Science Learning Hub www.sciencelearn.org.nz has the goal of sparking fresh thinking in science education in school students and teachers.

The Hub aims to encourage young people to re-engage with science & technology, and to discover its wonder and challenges for themselves. It also provided their teachers with quality assured content - written by leading science experts and educationalists - which reflect New Zealand's world class science research sector.

Launched in July, the NZ Science Learning Hub is already playing an important part in the learning lives of young people, and their teachers.

The integration of ICT in New Zealand classrooms is accelerating as a broadband connection to the school becomes commonplace. The NZ Science Learning Hub builds on the growing ICT confidence of teachers, and the innate web 2.0 savviness of young people, to offer an engaging, web-based environment packed full of rich media content.

Incorporating features such as video footage shot on location around the country, a range of people profiles accompanied by behind-the-scenes photos, interactive timelines for use to springboard discussions, and a library of vivid images, illustrations, diagrams and interactives, the Hub emphasises the need for learning content to be contemporary, intriguing and student-centred.

An special feature on the site is Connections - a flash-based visual search tool that invites visitors to the site to connect the dots, and discover the linkages between the featured contexts - "The See Through Body", "The Sporting Edge", "Icy Ecosystems: Antarctica" and "Earthquakes".

The Hub demonstrates that science can be made relevant, engaging and intriguing for all learning audiences. The world is rich with stories of persistence and discovery in the science sector, and how the small, everyday efforts of people working in the sector can lead to breakthrough moments.

The NZ Hub is a national initiative whose reach across the school sector of New Zealand is enabled through funding through the NZ Ministry of Research, Science and Technology. However the Hub comprises a mix of technology, methodologies, processes and 'know how' that could used at a range of levels.   

Science is universal, and small or large groups working in science educatoin or science research can all play a part in pooling and sharing their knowledge through the web 2.0 enabled tools and processes which underpin the Hub. 

The key components for anyone wishing to achieve similar goals to the Hub will be a love of science, a desire to share their knowlege.  They will need processes of quality assurance and inclusiveness to ensure that content is authentic and curriculum relevant, and they will need to develop strategies for collaboration to harness and leverage the knowledge available to them.    By actively and consciously "connecting the dots" between people,  knowledge institutions and science organisations, magic can happen.

The NZ Science Learning Hub is packed full of up-to-date, quality assured, and purpose developed rich media, interactive and written learning resoiurces to support ICT-enriched teaching and learning programmes

The web-based Hub is an open initiative which can accessed anytime, anywhere - in schools, the community and at home. It continues to grow with new location-based video content and behind the scenes stories that support real-world contexts added daily.

New features coming soon will include SciTV - an online television environment to present content produced by students and teachers - an expanded MySci area to support online collaboration between students and teachers, a teacher resource exchange, e-collaboration tools and functions, online mapping, visualisation tools, an expanded Connections, plus live data streams from science sensors around New Zealand, and more.

The NZ Science Learning Hub has only begun to realise the potential that web 2.0 and web 3.0 thinking can bring to teaching and learning in the 2lst century.