Hosted by OSOS , contributed by Siligardou on 21 January 2020
"The city of the Sun" (https://fsiligardou.wixsite.com/dreamcity?lang=en) was created by students of the 6th grade of the 2nd Primary School of Voutes during the school year 2018 - 2019.
This is a project done in the courses of Informatics, Physics and Arts with the coordination of Fotini Siligardou (ICT Teacher) and Efi Adamantidou (Teacher of 6th Grade). Students have been inspired by their place, discussed problems that concern it and created a city that exploits the main source of life on our island, the Sun.
Осетити
The first step of the project was to choose the topic. The discussion focused on main aspects of the community that pupils are living.
Pupils used drawings and Padlet to express their ideas. We begun with the reflection:
"Me in my island, my island in me"
"Me in my city, my city in me"
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Their Padlets can be found here
After creating their Padlets each pupil identified his/her most important topics. The whole class discussed about what are the most common ideas among them and if they feel the same or not. The most common ideas were the lack of greenery and the Sun's underutilization as a source of energy for the island.
Замислити
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At this point pupils begun to think of solutions focusing on the main probems that have discovered in the previous phase.
Why is green so important?
What are the gardens on the terraces?
How we can harness the energy of the Sun?
Internet, drawings and Padlet helped them to present their city as they would like it to be and suggest solutions.
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The Padlet with pupils' solutions can be found here
Креирај
1. 3D Design of the dream city
After pupils came to what they want their city to be, the next step was to design it in 3D. To do so, they used the Tinkercad Online Tool.. They designed every part of the city, houses, parks, traffic lights, traffic signs, school, playground, many trees and flowers. They also designed a sign to inform city residents about the temperature and a car charging station.
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2. 3D Printing the city
Each piece of the city was printed on the 3D printer of the school. Depending on the case, some pieces were printed with color while some other whites. Then students painted the white ones in the Arts lesson.
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3. Solar Energy and Automations
The dream city will use the sun as a source of energy. The Sun is an inexhaustible source of energy that does not cause any pollution. To convert solar energy into electricity students used a solar collector. To store electricity, they connected the solar collector with a rechargeable external battery.
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For all the automations of the city they used the Arduino UNO microcontroller. Arduino was programmed with the Scratch4Arduino software (S4A). In order all city automations operate autonomously, they used wireless Bluetooth communication. Through bluetooth was also controled the movement of their car.
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Light leds were used to illuminate the houses and roads and connected to the Arduino microcontroller. Traffic lights were programmed to work for cars and pedestrians. Programming was done using the Scratch4Arduino software (S4A).
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The temperature sign informs city residents about the weather. They used a temperature sensor to measure it, and they programmed with arduino to turn on a light on the temperature display plate according to the temperature value given by the sensor. They used 4 temperature ranges from very low to very high.
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4. Motion of the cars
For moving to the city, pupils' suggestion is to use a bicycle. For the case when it is necessary to drive by car they built a vehicle using the Lego WeDo2 training package. They programmed it using the WeDo2 software. The car uses two motors and rechargeable batteries that can be charged at the charging station they have built.
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5. Bees for life
Pupils' last construction was a bee. When the bee visits a flower stops to get pollen making the distinctive sound. Bee's selection is symbolic, as seven species of bees have been declared extinct in recent years, and in many countries large bee populations have disappeared mysteriously. The disappearance of bees will have incalculable consequences for the planet, as they are responsible for the pollination of plants. For the construction pupils used the Lego WeDo2 training package, a motor and a motion sensor. For programming, they used the WeDo2 software.
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The final model of the dream city:
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Pupils shared their work in 9th Studet's Digital Creation Festival and tried to inspire other students and the local community to improve their city as well. They presented their ideas and run all the automations of their city with the visitors and answered their questions.
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They also shared their work and dreams to NOTOS TV and ERT TV
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