Kiwi school weatherstation/energy project - practical cross curriculum learning

At our remote rural school “Te Kura Toitu o Te Whaiti Nui-a-Toi” we have installed an IROX weatherstation and have erected a pole, sensors and solar / wind energy to power it and other science / electronic equipment.

Project details at http://www.kaitiakitanga.net/projects/1-3-1%20ponga%20whare-energy.htm

We currently have AUT tertiary students helping us set up an old Toshiba Laptop (Windows 98) with the Weather Capture > Weather Display > Weather Display Live software to support this. We plan Weather Capture will provide us with the 5 minute RECORD file accessible for short term science projects using additional IROX wireless sensors. Weather Display will transfer hourly weather records to our main server from where students in all our classrooms can access and process it with Excel for their projects. We FTP weather and webcam information to our Whirinaki Rainforest Community web portal site at www.whirinakirainforest.info/weather each half hour. We want to run this installation on solar / wind power only, so intend that the laptop wakes up for only for a few minutes to do this. Has anyone else has already done this sort of thing who we can share with please.

This and other home made equipment associated with it will be a foundation that will encourage self directed project based learning across the curriculum including science, climate change, technology, ICT, maths, statistics, literacy, language, arts, culture, collaboration and leadership development; all of which are embraced under Kaitiakitanga - our sustainable futures initiative www.kaitiakitanga.net We would like to network and share with other schools globally who subscribe to this broad approach to learning.

Hi there! It looks like you have a very interesting project going. I have seen a couple of post on this forum from people who have gone ‘green’ with their computer. I haven’t located the posts yet, but I am sure they will be happy to chime in when they read this topic.

Welcome from Tokoroa! I will follow this thread and see what options are out there… interested to hear what the gurus say.

TokKiwi