"Talking to the River", School Journal, level 3, June 2018
25 June 2018
This story is about a farmer and a group of engineering and computing students from Victoria University of Wellington who collaborate to gather data about river pollution and publicise it.
You can find the article and the teaching notes here: Talking to the River, School Journal, level 3, June 2018
Other useful resources
Exhibition sees artists from around the world stay at Parihaka marae
The students who attended this event learnt about electronic systems to monitor environmental factors such as temperature, light, and moisture. There are some other environmental projects discussed in this news item.
Learning with the internet of things in primary and secondary
These students were using the internet of things including environmental monitoring of water levels at intermediate and secondary schools.
PledgeMe RiverWatch – Making a big splash to save our rivers
Watch a video on Riverwatch and see the successful fundraising campaign.
Discussion questions
These could include:
- What were the environmental issues that Grant Muir was concerned about?
- What were the four main challenges that the students who designed the prototype had to address?
- What were some of the specifications the students needed to address when they designed the app?
- Functional models are representations of potential technological outcomes and they exist in many forms (e.g., thinking, talking, drawing, physical mock-ups, computer aided simulations, etc.) Functional modelling is used to test design concepts to see if they are suitable for use in the development of an outcome. What were the different types of functional modelling that the students used when developing the app?
- What were the benefits and limitations of the functional modelling carried out?
- Prototypes are the first versions of fully completed technological outcomes. The purpose of prototyping is to test the outcome. Why do you think that both functional modelling and prototyping were both needed to support decision making when developing the app?
Indicators of progression for discussion starters
| Component | Indicator | Level |
| Characteristics of technology |
| 3 |
| Technological modelling |
| 2 |