Who Is Your Market?

This morning Catherine Fink came to talk to us about who our MARKET is and then, therefore, how we direct our products or services towards them.



We talked about WHY our product or service may be important.



We talked about what the DRIVERS may be for us, why is it important to us to create our product or service.

What VALUEs underpin what you are doing?



We have four amazing mentors for our group now - Catherine, Ben, Dave and Alison who will be walking us through different stages of our learning.

Abby, Oliver and Sam are creating an attachable scooter mudguard

Alice wants to create a mini moveable worm farm

Ida and Jacob would like our local supermarket to start charging for plastic bags

Rowan thinks orthotics are too expensive and wants to design growable orthotics

Tristan wants to create recyclable paper

What Would I Do If I Was Not Afraid?

We discussed this this morning after watching some young entrepreneur Ted Talks.

Amy - I would test my product of waterproof bike seats on heaps of bikes. I would prank the teachers.
Nerhys - I would do anything!
Sofia - I would probably dive off a cliff.
Jacob - I would send my book to a publishing company. I would start a youtube channel.
Ida - I would go straight into New World to try to get them to charge for plastic bags. I would swim in really deep water.
Jonah - I would send my Lego creations and designs to a Lego company.
Alice - I've forgotten what I would do! I would try to gallop on a horse. I would swim with dolphins.
Jack - I would probably make an obstacle course our of circular saws and try to complete it!
Oliver - I would try to zip line down power lines.
Payo - I would go down the big adventure park zip line.
Amy - I would try really hard ice skating moves.
Hugh - I would skydive or fly in a wing suit.
Sophie - swim with sharks.
Sam - speak in front of a large audience.
Layce - I would swim with stingrays.
Noah - swim with jellyfish.


Today we went backwards to go forwards. We discussed what problems we could actually solve that would effect a large local audience. We need to get a little more realistic now and see what could actually be possible! Could we lobby local supermarkets or cafes to think about what they use that harm the environment? Could we join together in a small group who are passionate about the same things as me? What is my bottom line for wanting to make a difference?

We also learned about the story of Pics Peanut Butter.

21 March    Gardens@Home

Today we discussed "Why We Garden" and began the design process of designing our gardens and a garden at school.
We spent time brainstorming and searching for ideas on the internet.  We shared some of these ideas. Over the next week the students need to continue to collect ideas for their project.  After interval we continued on our artwork.
You need to be thinking about where your garden is going at home and what you are going to make it out of.  Here are some action photos from Gardens@Home in Room 15.

S'Mart Tank Day 2

This morning we revisited our crazy brainstorms of last week. We viewed a Ted Talk where the man talked about making more from less. We then discussed problems that we knew about and that affected us. From these we brainstormed solutions.

Next we looked at advertising and discussed colours and what attracts the viewers' attention.

What problem did Charlie Chaplin have? Maybe we went off track a little after seeing this image!

We then started running with our ideas and creating an image and logo that would attract people's attention.

Did you know?

What a great session team!

Eco Energised!

Today, the Eco Energy group, had fun defining what energy was and investigating different types of energy.  Check out the TED talk on our Eco Energy page, about how one young man harnessed wind energy to solve a very important problem in his community.

We found out there were different types of energy, such as thermal, wind, fossil fuel, hydro, solar and bio energies.
This is what we know already.

What do you want to know more about?
Next week we have a guest visitor from Meridan Energy, talking about energy use in New Zealand.

Day One S'Mart Tank

This morning we went crazy!!
We watched a great video about a 13yr old boy, Richard, from Kenya who made a great invention to solve a problem on his land.
We talked about the engineering design process.



We discussed rules for brainstorming and then went nuts with our ideas.

We came up with ideas like edible toothpicks to secure wraps, edible books, automatic pens that write what you dictate, babblefish, robotic nanny, waterproof paper, drink dispensing helmet, golf ball detector, extendable pencil case, lunar panels, feet warmers, inflatable shoes, stretchable orthotics, stunt carts, rubbish compactor, walkable suitcase, moveable rubbish bins with sensors, massaging toilet, talking book, solar torch, auto rubbish bin, car running on pollution, tripod worm farm, vegetable flavourer, jet pack, sibling spray away.