Explore Collections to Classrooms with students and identify two or three objects connected to your inquiry. Students record one question each object gives them. Establish with students which questions are appropriate for AI and which require community expertise, museum specialists, or primary sources.
Students observe, handle where permitted, photograph, and sketch. For each encounter they note: what is it, what does it tell me, and what question does it give me that a screen could not? When the AM Learn team speaks, students record what the museum itself says. That account is a primary source.
Students bring photographs and questions to the AI prompts below. The prompts are designed for questions where AI is an appropriate research tool. Questions about the meaning, whakapapa, or cultural significance of taonga are directed to the museum's own resources, knowledge-holder voices, and iwi sources, not to AI.
Students complete the Experience Trace Scale. The evidence of thinking from the visit sits alongside whatever AM Learn programme the class has been using.
The museum holds one of the most significant collections of Maori and Pacific taonga in the world. These objects carry whakapapa, histories of navigation and migration, and the living cultures of Maori and Pacific peoples. The AM Learn team and the museum's knowledge-holder resources are the appropriate authority for understanding what these objects mean. The handling collection allows direct physical engagement under the guidance of museum educators.
The museum stands on a volcanic cone. Tamaki Makaurau's position within one of the world's most active urban volcanic fields is a scientific story told in the landscape itself. Marine natural history of the Hauraki Gulf, and the evolutionary histories of moa, tuatara, and other taonga species, are represented at real scale in the collections.
The layered histories of Tamaki Makaurau are held in objects, documents, and images: Ngati Whatua, Chinese and Pacific communities, European settlement, the New Zealand Wars, the First World War and the Gallipoli campaign. The War Memorial galleries carry the names and stories of New Zealanders who served.
This digital resource allows students to engage with specific collection objects and their stories outside the museum. It is designed for the Aotearoa New Zealand Histories curriculum and includes voices from knowledge-holders connected to the objects. It is not a substitute for the museum visit but a companion to it.
Taonga at Auckland Museum carry whakapapa, mana, and the authority of the communities they come from. The appropriate sources for understanding the cultural significance, stories, and community connections of taonga are the museum's own educators, knowledge-holders, iwi, and the museum's curated resources.
AI tools are not appropriate for this work. They are trained predominantly on general internet text, do not hold community authority, and can produce accounts of taonga and te ao Maori that are inaccurate, decontextualised, or culturally inappropriate.
The AI prompts in this protocol are designed for questions where AI is a legitimate research tool: geological and ecological science, colonial and military history, institutional analysis, and source methodology. Students are explicitly directed away from using AI for taonga-related questions. That direction is itself a taught skill.
These prompts are for questions where AI is an appropriate research tool. Questions about the meaning, whakapapa, or cultural significance of taonga are not in this section. For those questions, students use Collections to Classrooms, the museum's knowledge-holder resources, and iwi sources. Where a prompt asks students to compare AI with another source, the other source takes precedence.
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How many volcanoes are there in the Auckland volcanic field and when did they last erupt?" Then ask: standing on Observatory Hill, what did it feel like to know the hill itself is a volcano? What did that add to the AI's answer?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What animals live in the Hauraki Gulf and which ones are most at risk?" Did seeing specimens at real scale in the museum change how you feel about these animals compared to reading a list?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "Why do museums collect and look after objects from the past?" Compare the AI's answer with what you saw and heard at Auckland Museum. Did the museum give you a reason the AI did not?
Each student shares the one question their favourite exhibit gave them. Type it into AI together. Is the AI's answer satisfying? What would you need to go back and find out? Who would be the right person to ask?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What were the New Zealand Wars, when did they occur, and what were their causes?" Compare the AI's account with what the museum showed you. Whose perspective is most prominently represented? Whose is least visible? What does the AI's account include or omit?
Choose one community whose history is represented in the museum. Ask a gen AI chatbot about their experience in Auckland in the 19th and early 20th century. Compare the AI's account with what the museum's exhibits showed you. Where do they align? What did the museum hold that the AI did not?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How does Auckland plan for volcanic risk given that the city is built on an active volcanic field?" What did standing on Observatory Hill add to that question that reading the AI's answer could not?
Choose a historical event or period represented in the museum. Ask a gen AI chatbot for an account of it. Then find what the museum itself says in an exhibit label, an educator explanation, or the Collections to Classrooms resource. Where do they agree? Where does the museum's account go further or say something different?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How has the approach to collecting and displaying Maori and Pacific objects in New Zealand museums changed since the 19th century, and what has driven those changes?" Evaluate the AI's account against what you observed at Auckland Museum and what you know of current museum practice. Where is the AI accurate? Where does it oversimplify?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What is the historical and methodological case for treating museum objects as primary sources?" Evaluate this against your experience at the museum. What does the object itself add that the AI's explanation of its significance cannot?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "What was the ecological condition of the Hauraki Gulf before European settlement and what changes have occurred since?" Apply this to what you observed in the natural history collections. Where does the AI's account match the museum's evidence and where does it diverge?
Ask a gen AI chatbot: "How has the commemoration of New Zealand's participation in the First World War shaped national identity?" Apply this to what you encountered in the War Memorial galleries. Whose sacrifice is most visible in the memorial record? Whose is marginal or absent? What would a more complete memorial record look like?
| Level | Years 1–6 | Years 7–10 | Years 11–13 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Student describes one object or exhibit from the museum that they could not have experienced properly on a screen, and says one true thing about it. | Student describes a specific object and explains what its physical presence at the museum adds that a digital version of the same object cannot provide. | Student analyses why the physical encounter with a specific taonga or specimen produces a qualitatively different understanding from digital or AI-mediated access to the same object. |
| 2 | Student can say in simple terms whose story the object or exhibit tells, and why it is at Auckland Museum. | Student explains the historical or cultural significance of a specific object and identifies the community, event, or context it comes from. | Student situates a specific object within its broader historical, cultural, or ecological context and identifies the interpretive choices the museum has made in how it is presented. |
| 3 | Student can say which questions from their visit were appropriate for AI and which ones needed a different source: a museum educator, a book, or a community expert. | Student documents at least one question from the visit that AI could help with and one that required the museum's own resources or knowledge-holder voices. Explains the difference. | Student critically evaluates AI's account of a historical or scientific question against the museum's own interpretation and, where relevant, the perspectives of the communities whose stories are represented. Identifies where AI is useful and where its limits are. |
| 4 | Student explains why being at Auckland Museum gave them something they could not have got from a screen, and what the physical encounter added. | Student articulates what direct encounter with museum objects and educators adds to learning that digital resources and AI cannot provide, and why that matters for the specific inquiry they were pursuing. | Student articulates the difference between encountering an original object, engaging with a digital resource, and querying AI, and explains what each produces that the others cannot, with reference to specific examples from the visit. |
| 5 | Student identifies one question the visit gave them that they still want answered and says who or what would help them answer it. | Student identifies a question raised by the visit that remains unresolved, proposes what source or expert would help answer it, and explains why that source is more appropriate than AI for that particular question. | Student proposes a research question arising from the visit, identifies appropriate primary and secondary sources, and explains what additional knowledge from knowledge-holders, archival research, or specialist expertise would be needed to develop a well-evidenced response. Reflects on the appropriate and inappropriate uses of AI within that research process. |