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.