2025 - The Year in Review: Inter school Challenge

 

In November this year as we started the process of wrapping up the year in design and creation we gave the students various challenges based around several themes.  One of these was an inter school challenge.  In this we choose a school and looked at finding out information about the school - but in particular we wanted to focus on looking at producing a likeness or a model of their logo.

Auroa School has a Pukeko as its current mascot.   We have attempted to replicate this ourselves to varying degree of success and we have also looked at other local schools with complicated logos and designs, although in some cases we opted to use the Roland Versa Sign Maker to ensure that we could accurately represent the logo.

In this instance we choose another ADS the Gardens School from Manurewa.  We published two significant post about the process at the time.   

The first phase of the project was looking at the school online - we are a rural school in South Taranaki and the students were interested in the differences with a urban school in Auckland, New Zealand's largest city.

The logo of the Gardens School is quite distinctive and we spent time with the students using Tinkercad to design the logo.  When the early prototypes had been completed we then spent time to reflect on the design and specifically compare them to the original.   Small details which didn't appear obvious to the students could then be discussed in detail, such as the size of the koru in the design, or the number of 'strikes' or 'flashes' that came off the design.

Once we had started the process the students were tasked with AR/VR projecting their recreated image at different locations around our school.   An example is like shown left where students used their iPads and Tinkercad to project the logo from another school onto our adventure playground.  We also talked with the students about other locations that it might be appropriate to display it at.  This is a process that worked extremely well with our Dolls House Project and also something we are going to complete extensively in 2026.

We have a set of school values at different locations around our school (as shown above the drinking fountain shown left).    In this example students took their 'Gardens School' logo and projected it next to one of the Auroa School values.   When this was then compared back to the original we had a discussion about how the two looked side by side, what adjustments needed to be made etc.

We also spent time looking at the font design and the design of the colour on the design.   While we were looking at a 3D Print, and ultimately did produce a number of them they all came off the same print which was featured on this blog here as this was the best finished product.  This is one thing that we would like to have considered when designing and creation and something that we have come to believe quite strongly that you don't need to produce a 3D Print with every project that you are involved with.   The CAD design opportunities provided with iPads and other technology combined with iPads can mean that there is design opportunities but it doesn't mean everything needs to be printed.  We have created a slideshow of activities that fit this criteria which you can view by clicking on the link here.

One of the awesome aspects of this challenge was that we were constantly able to direct students to what the logo should look like, how it should be represented and how the could define and adapt their designs to fit the desired outcome.

We had a class of seven and eight year olds work on this project as well, a combination of students who had used Tinkercad for two years and novice designers.

Thank you for your visit to this site - we are no longer posting here actively as it is the 2025/6 School Holiday Break.   We are posting reviews, achieves and material that could not be posted during the 2025 School year.   

We are also redesigning and redeveloping this site as well as expanding this digital template as we add significantly to a number of platforms, more of which will be announced in the new year.