Biomimicry -learning from nature

"Nature does it best."  Some designers look to nature for solutions to problems and for new design ideas. We looked at how velcro was invented after the Swiss engineer George de Mestral got burs stuck to his trousers and dog's fur. He was curious as to how it worked and spent the next few years developing his ideas and finally creating velcro.  We studied some 'biddy-bids' with magnifying glasses to see what we noticed.

We came up with ideas of animals that could have traits that could help us develop inventions to help people in many areas. 

We looked at many examples of designs that have used ideas from nature. There are some great resources out there - one of them a book written by Dee Pigneguy, who happens to be the Grandma of one of our students! Check out this peek inside 'Nature's Techno Tricks' for lots of amazing biomimicry information.  

If we look closely enough at nature imagine how many ideas we could get for designs in the future!

Other points of view

This week we looked at other points of view.

The seniors looked at a day in 1769 (4th November), when the Endeavour sailed into Te Whanganui-o-Hei (Hei's great bay), near Whitianga. Unfortunately a maori man was killed on that day. Students read stories and accounts of many people who were in the area that day - the local maori people who went to trade with the ship, and those who were on board the ship or ashore exploring. We tried to figure out why the man was shot and what each person at the time would have thought about it. We discussed misunderstanding and differing points of view. 

The year 1-4 students looked at similarities and differences in people and accepting ourselves and others. We read the story of the sneetches by Dr Seuss. We discussed ideas for how the sneetches without stars could deal with the situation. Then we looked at this story compared to how some people with differences might act these days - how we treat those who are a different age, size, gender, race, colour etc to us. There were some great discussions about inclusiveness. We looked at how far NZ has come (looking at the 'korero pakeha' movement when speaking maori was suppressed in schools - some as recently as 1980!) We still have a way to go, but maori language is growing again and more people understand and speak a bit. 

Progress and learning

How do we make progress? Over the last few weeks we have looked at qualities and traits that help us make progress. 

WORLD RECORDS

We tried our own 'class records' and noticed that with practice we improved, and those who persevered often did well. We noticed that we all had different strengths / skills too. If we had a goal - something to beat - we often persevered more and rose to the challenge. Some people had more perseverance than others. 

LEARNING FROM MISTAKES

We looked at the Titanic and how noticing the mistakes on that voyage helped improve safety for boats since then. Even though some mistakes are very tragic we can still learn from them to ensure progress is made so that tragedies like that do not happen again. The year 1-4 groups acted out the story to try to get an understanding of it. 

COMMUNICATION

Curiosity, invention and competition all combine to help make progress with communication over the years. The kids were amazed to hear that most of their parents are older than Google and older than the internet! They had fun looking at old phones I brought in, and explored different communication methods.