Apocalypse Theories Post 5

It is going pretty well with our exhibition. We have started to develop a wall with everyone's ideas and shortly we will start allocating tasks and sorting groups out. Students keep volunteering their own or their family's expertise so we need a section where they can put this up. Lots of different "jobs" are emerging too which should go on our learning wall. For example, at least two students have parents who work at Massey University and Te Papa and would have some useful advice about how we could do our exhibition. I want some interested students to go and talk to them, perhaps take some photographs of the classroom space, and then report back to the class. A lot of students are interested in this part so today I asked them to write a justification as to why I should choose them. It may be a case of choosing the best justifications to talk to the adults but then taking the whole class to Te Papa to look at the techniques used for engaging visitors.

Speaking of the audience, this is a really important part of the whole exercise. They have identified who they want to come but I also want them to do their market research. What would teachers/older students/parents want or not want to see at an exhibition about apocalypse theories? An important job will be for a group to find that out and report back.

One student raised an important point - some of the stuff about apocalypse theories is incredibly depressing. He was right - we need to balance a sense of hope with the reality of some theories. I played a 10 minute clip of a documentary about the possibility of a meteorite strike and then asked, if someone was to do this topic, how could we achieve the balance? The same student suggested it could be about "the circle of life". The reason we are here is because the dinosaurs were made extinct through a meteorite strike. No species lasts forever - this is what makes our existence possible. Well, that was pure genius.

I want students to curate this exhibition and decide where displays go and why. Perhaps the team that goes and speaks to the Massey lecturer and Te Papa expert could do this. And we will need an editing team to look at people's text when the time comes.