Project Noah and other apps

We have looked at a number of different applications for mobile devices and phones to help with the work we are doing at Gordon St. If you have an iPod Touch, iPhone or Android device you can try out the Project Noah app, its free to download or visit the iTunes store to get it for an Apple device.

The best way to find out how to use it is to get it and test it out! Have fun and let me know how it goes. If you post your 'spottings' on the map we can all see what you have discovered.

If you don't have a suitable mobile device you can still participate by using your computer, the school computers or at the library, go to Project Noah and enjoy.

"Project Noah is a tool to explore and document wildlife and a platform to harness the power of citizen scientists everywhere."

Update

It is nearly the end of term and the fences are up and the planting plan in development. There has been some graffiti in the past couple of months, but we are painting over it as quickly as it goes up. This will be less of a problem once the planting has established and started to grow up the fence panels.

Next year will be exciting as some of the ideas start to develop, these include more planting to provide shade for the water in the storm drain, building the insect hotels,a bioblitz to determine what currently lives in the area, plans for a bridge across the drain and backyard safaris.

We are always happy to look at new ideas, so if you have any flashes of genius over the holidays let us know.

Fences

The painting of the fences has nearly finished and some images below of the completed sections. Once the native planting plan is finished we shall begin to plant the fence line. As the plants grow they will add another layer of protection to the fences, as long as the plants aren't nicked like last time! And by coincidence the paint colour is called Gordon's Green.

Kids Restore New Zealand

We had a visit from KRNZ Trustees, Ruud Klienpaste and Scott Bremner on Tuesday. They were coming to look at the work being done and talk to students about their ideas. It was really helpful to meet with them and it has generated more ideas as to the work we can be doing.

Fence

The first stage of the fence protection system is up. We now need to decide on whether to paint the exposed fence before we begin the planting along the fence line. Overtime the plan is that the plants will use the fence sculpture as a support to grow up, so adding a further barrier to stop the graffiti vandalism. Also if we can raise further funds we will begin adding more sculptural elements to the fence reflecting the biodiversity of the region.

Enviro Mini Golf

Students from last year who developed ideas for a mini golf course with an environmental theme are putting in an application to the WWF Environmental Education Action Fund. The images below are some of the initial concept ideas and if they are successful with their application then we could be having the first enviro golf championship next year!

GigaPan

GigaPans are large quality panoramas, which you can click and zoom in to see incredible details. It is much easier to explore them than describe them. So click here and have a look. Being able to produce these for the Gordon St. Project will be of great value, not only to explore the Gordon St. area but also across the region. They are also developing macro Gigapans, so you can explore images taken using a microscope to explore the microscopic world for example a barnacle. Sounds boring? Well have a look here.
Other developments include using the same concept but applied to time lapse films and an interesting education project, you can watch the video below. Lastly they have just finished a Bioblitz using peoples gigapans and when there is more information on this I shall put here. Overall the system provides huge potential for us to use in all sorts of creative and exciting ways.

Robot Snake

What Can't They Do?

Resonating Bodies

"Resonating Bodies” is a series of integrated media installations, community outreach projects and educational initiatives which focuses on biodiversity of pollinators indigenous to the natural and urban ecosystems of Canada, with special focus on the city Toronto.
From their blog . Lots of interesting information and ideas.

E.O. Wilson - "Lord of the Ants"

We only got to watch a short bit of this film during the workshop, so you can watch the whole thing here.

Insetct Hotels

The competition, which was organised to celebrate 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity and coincides with this year’s London Festival of Architecture, saw five shortlisted entries built across the City of London’s public gardens.
A two foot high hotel, which takes its design inspiration from children’s fable Hansel & Gretel and was constructed entirely from scavenged waste material, was crowned the ‘public’s favourite’ following an online vote.
More information here

Pestival

From the Pestival website

Pestival is a mobile arts festival examining insect-human interactivity in bioscience, through paradigms of contemporary art, cinema, music and comedy as well as direct scientific demonstration and educational projects.

Pestival brings together eminent international artists and scientists, along with local and global communities, to collaborate on cutting-edge interdisciplinary art projects, placing the natural world under the microscope in order to further public understanding of our place within the biosphere.

Visit their website for loads more information, videos etc. about Pestival. One day we may have an exciting event like Pestival?

Simon Faithfull - Artist

Simon Faithfull
Mobile Research Station no.1
2009, SKULPTURENPARK BERLIN_ZENTRUM

Hubert Duprat - Artist

For more information about the artist click here

World Flag Ant Farm

Yukinori Yanagi - World Flag Ant Farm

Workshop Information

We have been running workshops this week, so students can develop an application for funding. They looked at a wide range of insect and environmental based work as well as visiting Gordon St. Staff from the school worked on drama, poetry and discussion based work exploring environmental issues. Students made some short films, took 100's of images and tried out some mobile apps.

The following links and information are taken from the workshops and made available for the students to further develop their ideas.

Playground

Henri van Zyl an engineer based in Whangarei came in to school to day to talk to the Playground group. It was a chance for the students to have professional input to their work and has given us valuable feedback. We are now going to organise a weekend workshop to develop the ideas, build a model and get the project moving along.

Once this has been done we can then get costings sorted out and visit the Council to present the ideas, get feedback and fine tune the designs. Then it will be a simple case of getting loads of money to build it!

We will stay in contact with Henri, so he can continue to give advice on the students progress.

This work will be also form part of the students application to the Neighbourhood Engineers Awards.

Biodiversity

As part of the students work developing ideas for the area, biodiversity as been a underlying theme. It has helped them when working on their individual parts of the project to keep in mind how it will affect all the other work going on.

This approach is equally important when applied to the graffiti on the fences. Rather than just deciding to remove it and hope it stays clean, developing a fence protection system will provide a better solution. It has taken longer to design and plan but hopefully the approach will pay off over time and the other benefits will make the whole project successful and sustainable over the years.

Recycling Fun

One of the problems we have been looking at, in Gordon St. is rubbish in the storm drain and combining this with recycling. As there are at present no rubbish bins at the site and recycling provisions are limited in the area. Students are looking at ways to make recycling fun and ways to encourage people to put rubbish in bins.

Fence Designs

The fence structure has been made and the shapes, which will be attached to the fence, have nearly been completed. Then the graffiti will be removed before the fence is put up.

Project Prezi

If you do not know, a Prezi is a presentation tool. The Gordon St Project Prezi,  gives an overview to the project and future plans. I tried to embed a copy on the blog but it does not view properly at the moment.

Blog Tree

This image is a graphical representation, in the form of a tree, of the blog and all the links etc.

Videos

A couple of videos from the BBC via YouTube. One on moving sculptures, taking inspiration from movement and animal forms. The other how looking at termites can help our building design, so if we give insects hotels they, in turn, can help us build better houses.

Fence Design

We have got the basic fence protection system designed. It is a representation of DNA and will act as a barrier and provide support for the planting scheme some of the students have developed.
Once the structure is up we plan to have a community sculpture workshop, so people can make sculptural elements to be attached to the structure. These elements will be based on the native flora and fauna of the Kaipara region.

Insect Hotels

Another application we have completed is for insect hotels. Our local council have a small biodiversity fund and we decided to apply to start building the insect equivalent of The Vegas Strip at Gordon St. Once insects in the neighbourhood hear about it, there will be no stopping them!

Bioretention Scheme

We have just put in an application into the Where There's Water fund for our bioretention scheme.

'The Fun Theory'

I showed students two of the videos from 'The Fun Theory' site, the bottle bank and rubbish bin, which they enjoyed seeing. After further discussions with the group, they felt that they would like to try their own ideas of making something following the simple statement from The Fun Theory site.


"This site is dedicated to the thought that something as simple as fun is the easiest way to change people’s behaviour for the better. Be it for yourself, for the environment, or for something entirely different, the only thing that matters is that it’s change for the better."

They have worked on some ideas and we hope to get these going later in the year.

It is also a theory we shall test out on a number of other parts of the project, so it will be interesting to see how it works out.

New Year New Update

The summer holidays have been hot and dry, hot and humid and lots of wind. So it has been good to test out the vertical garden and how it holds up in the conditions. Still plenty of salad, but I have transplanted the grasses and the spring onions are a little large!

There has been a bit of a problem with a black slime, which I have cleaned off, but have not got to the cause of yet. The whole thing probably needs cleaning out and starting again in the spring. But I also hope with applications for funding, that the idea of the community vertical garden can be realised.

Plans are at the engineers for the DNA fence system and hopefully we shall be getting that sorted soon. Other applications are underway for the various separate elements and we plan to develop an application for the Community Environment Fund. This would enable us to expand ideas that have been developed at Gordon St. to the wider region.