Magazine 2019

7 Another example of a fourth industrial cy- ber-physical system is autonomous self-driving cars and our learners are already designing and coding these solutions for the future. This year, as part of the 2019 World Robot Olympiad Smart Cities challenge, three of our Senior Preparatory faculty Robotics teams de- signed, built and programmed small scale, au- tonomous Lego robot cars to find and move model passengers to different destinations on a robot game board. Team Megamind won gold and team RoboVenom won bronze at the 2019 WRO National competition this year and will be representing South Africa in Hungary at the International final in Novem - ber. Parklands College Robotics teams have also represented South Africa at the World Robot Olympiad International final for five consecutive years and in First Lego League Internationals for three consecutive years, the most recent team being the StellarBots who competed in Hungary earlier this year, where they won the first place Presentation award. Our Advanced Robotics Programme is also taking us to new heights with our Hyperion Bots team pioneering our participation in the competition and winning the Robot Design Award at the FIRST Technology National competition in April this year. The Internet of Things (IOT) is another type of Cyber-physical system. IOT is defined as the interconnection, via the Internet, of com- puting devices embedded in everyday objects, enabling them to send and receive data. For example, you could add technology to your car and home so that when you are 5km away from home, your car can use the in- ternet to signal the geyser to turn on and when you park in the driveway to turn the house lights on. One of our Matric learners, Luke Bowles, was responsible for the development, design, and im- plementation of a unique IOT technological solution for a Min- ing company this year. This solution collects data from sensors to provide analytics in order to improve metal production in the mine. The system is currently proving to be very successful and of course he was paid for it. Luke has used the skills he has learnt in Robotics, Coding and Design at Parklands to become a very successful entrepreneur. As a result of the many learner projects that we have seen integrating electronics and the potential opportunities for our learners in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, we are very excited to announce that we will be offering Electrical Technology specialising in Digital Electronic Systems as part of our Secondary Faculty technical subject choices next year. Our Application Development Incubator has now released six learner developed Apps on the App Store, the most recent addition being STEM Motion Box by Keagan Strydom where you can explore the effects that force and direction have on the motion of two bodies. This application also won the 2019 Excellence in Education High School challenge category. To date our incubator has had a total of just over 65000 downloads of our learner devel- oped Apps from the Apple App Store. At Parklands we are also very passionate about getting more girls involved in Technol- ogy and that is why we participate in Tech- novation. Technovation is a technology com- petition for girls, where they are tasked with identifying a community problem and solving it with technology. Our Technovation Team, the Proteam, has designed a prototype App called STREAM that supports disadvantaged learners who are struggling with Maths and Science. These girls won the 2019 Technovation South African Regional Senior Division and as a re- sult made it as far as the global semi-finals. They also as well as the 2019 Excellence in Education Grade 10-12 curriculum challenge. These are just a few examples of the insight- ful and visionary young thinkers in our school who understand the needs of a community, are able to invent, collaborate, communicate their ideas and solve complex problems to en- sure a better future for us all. The fact that we are seeing such innovation at this level within our school affirms that we truly are fulfilling our Mission of “Reaching Outwards, Growing Minds, Building Futures”. Yours in Technology Richard Knaggs Director of Technology Innovation “Not only do we offer an academic curriculum where learners can ex- plore subjects that they may want to pursue at a tertiary institution one day, we also provide au- thentic learning opportu- nities through challenge and project based learn- ing programmes where our learners create actu- al products for a global audience.” PARKLANDS MIND THE