Five year 11 students from The Mendip Studio School, Radstock, have been announced as finalists in The Amazon Longitude Explorer prize, a national innovation competition.
The students, Ed, Amalia, Alex, Joe and Otto have entered their idea for developing electronics and environmental education, based on schools in tropical habitats and the use of Raspberry Pi powered remote sensing.
Amalia explained, “as a team we have diverse skills, I am the team artist, Alex is in charge of electronics design, Otto is our rainforests expert, Ed is our engineer and Joe leads on communications.”
Alex added “The electronics for the project is a range of sensors that can be placed in rainforests so that downloaded data can be shared by children across the world to better understand real rainforests.What makes the idea really special is that we will be working to help school students in tropical forests develop the skills and knowledge to design, build and manage the devices themselves and so develop educational benefits alongside the environmental ones.”
The team will be working on their presentation alongside students from Mendip Studio School’s partner schools in Rwanda and Sarawak.
