S'Mart Tank Action

This morning two of our groups got into the exciting making part of their design process. Our Kitchen Herb Gardens are on sale and selling well. This group has been planting herbs into the boxes made by Kiara and her dad to fill orders.

Our S'Mart Folder group has begun cleaning a plastic billboard that will then be made into the folders to sell to our junior families.

It is exciting to see the hard work of these two groups coming to fruition.

How to make a flax fish

Bees in business

In the Plight of the Bees we are making beeswax wrap with the help of Lilly's mum. Here are some photos

Kitchen Herb Gardens are Selling!

This amazing group of young entrepreneurs have their first sales of their product. They have sourced herbs for free and are creating the wooden gardens themselves with the help of Kiara's dad. This is the fun part! Check out their great gardens, they are selling for $25. Their website is also live!

Our Trash Lab crew are in the midst of working out how they can work alongside our S'Mart Community to get their project up and running.

Our S'Mart Folders have got the go ahead to offer these to new entrants at school. This is hugely exciting! They are also communicating with Duffy Books to work out how they can contribute some of their future profits to this great cause. This group's website is also live now!

Our S'Mart Sheets website is finally live!

Project Management

This morning Alison Low returned to teach us about Project Management.

Last time Alison came in she reminded us to talk about requirements so that everyone is on the same page and working together as a team. "What does 'done' look like?"

In project planning it is normal to work backwards from the end goal. What is needed to enable your end goal to be achieved? What order will these need to be achieved in?

The initial idea is usually really fun, however, to get there in the end you will need to go through a lot of hard work!

Each group were challenged to use sticky notes to write down every action that needs to be taken on the way to their end goal. They then put these into an order. Each group decided on a project manager and people who would take on each of the necessary tasks.

What a huge learning experience this morning has been. Thank you so much to Alison for your wonderful expertise that you bring to S'Mart Tank.

Building Websites

This morning we were fortunate enough to have Mel Opie come in to teach us about website design. We were asked to think about who our audience might be and how we might design a website that will be attractive to these people. We were asked to think about colours and that the most important part of our website was placed on the top left, as well as thinking about simplicity.

We are designing our free websites via wix.com
Alice Vetcher, From Smart Worms, talked us through the basics of design and how to get going in this area.

This was such an exciting two hours, the groups are on their way to creating their unique websites. Check back here soon to see some.

A huge thank you to Mel and Alice for facilitating this learning.

Plight of the Bees

BEES

Hello! We are the 2018 Plight of the Bees group.

We will be giving you weekly news from our
group and bee hive.

1.Mrs O. has bees at her house and she let
us have some honey to try and it was very,very
good.  

2.Rachel Knight has made bee suits for us
to wear and they fit well.

3. There are three different types of bees, there
is the Drone and they are the male bees and they
do nothing,

there is also the Worker bee and they collect the
honey

and there is the Queen bee who lays the eggs.

4. Our bees are starting to make honey
because
of a special person called Nick. He took our
hive
to
his house and our bees learnt how to make
honey.
Without Nick

our bees wouldn’t survive the Winter.

Here is a video of the bees

Pitching to our Mentors

This morning was an exciting time at S'Mart Tank. Each group presented their idea to our six mentors for them to select some of us to go further.

Ski Bike was our first product and we were impressed with the prototype Lennox had made. Our mentors asked who would be likely to buy these ski bikes.

Filter Water was next and there was a big discussion about the large number of opportunities for a product like this. How might it work? What would filter the water? Greg commented that this idea definitely "had legs"!

Grippy shoes did not have a prototype created but talked about their attachable product.

Trash Lab were next. They had created a mini Lego prototype of their idea that will enable students at St Martins to creatively play with products from this shed. The lack of playing area is a problem for us during the rebuild. This group has already talked with Mr Callaghan about working alongside the SMart Community to enable this to happen in our school. Rochelle was particularly excited about this idea.

Smart Sheet was next with their art sheets that would wrap around tables to prevent paint spillage on tables.

S'Mart Folders have already been on a trip to TwinNeedle to look at creating and printing their reading folders. These girls had a number of prototypes that did not yet work, as well as two materials that do. They were really well organised with why S'Mart Folder are a great alternative to the regular reading folders available now. They had even thought of donating some of their profits to Duffy Books.

Kitchen Herb Garden brought along their product to promote to the mentors. They were very clear on what their product is and the benefits of these herb gardens. Each of these herb gardens will be made individually by this group. They had already thought of costs and products.

Bike Seat Heat were the final group. These boys are all about keeping your bottom warm while cycling! This is a battery powered pack that heats up a bike seat.

It was great to see each student confidently presenting to the adult mentors - what a great skill.

The mentors discussed the pros and cons of each group and agreed to support the following:

• Trash Lab (Rochelle and Marty)
• Smart Sheet (Marty)
• Smart Folders (Alison)
• Kitchen Herb Garden (Greg)
• Filter Water (Craig)

Congratulations S'Mart Tankers!

Week 2 in Eco Energy- Our Trip to the Electric Bike Shop and Charging Station

Our first outing was down the electric bike shop in St Martins and then onto the EV charging station.
Pete (Leroy's dad) spoke to us about his biking passion and the problem of living on a hill and having to cycle up it with his children. So he built an electric bike. We learnt about how an electric bike maximises your effort when you ride. For 1km of effort walking your can bike 8km. These bikes are of course better for the environment- althought it takes the same carbon footprint to make an ordinary bike a it does a regular bike. Lots of the adults wanted to get one!

S'Mart Tank Update

This morning we made great progress towards our readiness to pitch to our mentors in a few weeks.

We have a couple of prototypes all ready to go - a ski bike that Lennox has created at home, as well as a kitchen herb garden. Google forms have been sent to survey potential customers about costs, ads have begun to be created, slide shows are nearly complete!

We watched a couple of videos on tech inventions.

I am hugely impressed by the work that some of the groups have taken on in their own time.

Energised by Electricity

It was all go in the Eco Energy Group on Thursday morning!  We learnt more about electrical circuits - loads, components, electron and how we can create our own electricity even!  We had Tim and Moby explain a few concepts before we had hands-on activities to explore for ourselves.   These were creating static electricity, making a circuit board with foil and wires, fruit and veggie powered circuits with readings from a multi-meter, electro-magnets and using our circuit kits again.

Comment below, tamariki, about one thing you learnt about electricity last week.

NEXT WEEK:  We are off on our walk to The Christchurch Electric Bike Shop near New World and also checking out the electric charging station on the other side.   Remember to bring your fleece.

Alison For S'Mart Tank

This morning we were lucky enough to have Alison, Evelyn's mum, talking to us about the Design Process. She was great at keeping us on track with our ideas.

We had to answer the following questions in our groups.

What does it do?

How does it do it?

How is it similar to other designs?

What makes it different from other designs?

What does it look like?

How is it made?

What could go wrong, and what preventions are in place?

We now have a short time frame to be ready to pitch our ideas to our mentors in Week 6. Some groups are flying ahead with their prototypes.

Martyn for S'Mart Tank

This morning Jack's dad, Martyn, an engineer, came and talked to SMart Tank.

He talked about asset networks. We need our assets to be built to last, otherwise we get problems like flooding, collapsed bridges, burst water pipes etc. Councils try to look after these assets for us.

As a group we are looking to create some new assets or perhaps look after these.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

Mobile technology has helped us to check on assets much more easily.

Martyn's job is creating software to help businesses manage their assets.

We need to make sure we're passionate about our idea.

Rochelle and Greg for S'Mart Tank

This morning Rochelle, one of our mentors, came in to share her expertise with us at S'Mart Tank.

She talked about sustainable business - green, eco or social business. Businesses that are not just about the product and the profit, but about the community also. Maintaining a profit while also not hurting the environment.

• Recycling
• Using local products
• Taking responsibility for the whole life cycle of the design
• Not having a single use product
• Not adding to landfill
• Long term effect of our product or service
• Are the resources sustainable / recycled?
• As an entrepreneur you can also think about your environmental and/or social impact

Rochelle talked about a circular economy. Where businesses are sustainable and have minimal environmental impact.

NZ companies are ranked on their 'green-ness'.

• Being sustainable can give you an edge in the market, consumers want to make a positive choice
• We have a moral and ethical choice to make

Rotorua's Zipline Tours is a zipline that takes you on a tourist tour! It is exciting but they also trapped rodents and encouraged wildlife to return to the areas to enable them to be allowed to use the forest. What an awesome idea! There was a huge change in the wildlife which was great for the environment but also made more people come and be part of their tours. School groups, businesses and individuals are getting involved in their own community. An amazing example of a sustainable business.

We can make a huge difference to our futures.

Greg owns a New World supermarket.

Greg told us that the South Island Pak n Save and New World supermarkets alone, they use one million bags every week!! They are aiming to be plastic bag free in one year. This is going to be a huge change in habit.

Many different companies are trying to get into this market.

What happens to the cardboard and plastic after use? We need to try to recycle as much as possible. Companies are paid to recycle.

The evil skip goes to landfill! We need to be educated around this, how can we do this?

Inside there need to be separate bins for rubbish, recycling, paper and green waste.

Along the aisles they are trying to reduce packaging and waste. Project Naked is trying to remove all plastic from produce.

What ideas do we have to reduce supermarket waste?

New World work alongside Help For the Homeless to pass on leftover food.