Educational Resources
We've developed a variety of activities you can run in a classroom or at home with your children, workshops that last an entire lesson, and supported multiple professional learning and development opportunities. Whenever possible, we aim to make these freely accessible so that you are able to learn, use, and modify them to fix your context. Please feel free to explore them on this and the linked pages. You may be surprised where we see earthquakes and tsunami linking into your classroom as natural hazards aren't just a topic for science teachers!
Please note that all of our resources have been developed to be used in the New Zealand Curriculum. If you are unfamiliar with the New Zealand Curriculum, you can learn more about it here (link).
If you have any questions, please reach out. We would be happy to help tailor these resources to your class or discuss the possibility of coming to give a workshop in your community or classroom.
Rū Seismometers
Meet Rū, the seismometer shown to the left, named after Rūaumoko (the Māori atua of earthquakes)!
Rū is a TC-1 seismometer, which is one of several types of seismometers that have been built to teach people about how seismometers work. This type of seismometer measures vertical ground motion and is connected to a screen so that we can see in real-time the local ground motion (including people jumping!).
At R-CET, we make Rū seismometers for free for schools that are located in communities in Tai Tokerau where we are installing research-grade seismometers. If you are interested to see if your school qualifies for a Rū, please reach out! Even if your school does not qualify for a free Rū, we might be able to make something work out.
Several of our primary school educational outreach workshops are designed around Rū seismometers, and we are designing resources for many subjects that utilise Rū data. We have previously used a Rū to teach Level 3 Mechanics and even in university tutorials about natural hazards.
To learn more about the origins of Rū, please visit https://ru.auckland.ac.nz/.