Celebrating our NZAIMS Success: Virtuall Pinball

 

Recently our Girls Basketball team returned from the 2026 NZAIMS Games Tournament - where our school managed to place fourth in the entire country! 

To celebrate this success Mr Bloor had a special release for our students, a virtual pinball table that is modelled on the players from the team!

This was a lovely touch, where one of our schools amazing Digital pinball tables was adapted to feature the students from our school (the game itself is a modified version of an NBA Pinball game).

Already this year we had another of our famous live streamed virtual Pinball Competitions - where our students competed in teams against each other to determine a tag team champion!'

We are very lucky to have this sort of amazing technology available to our students - you can view this years livestream finals here.

Or if you want to see a spectacular why not watch our 'Fast and Furious Grand Final! This was a competition from five long years ago and is going to be a sequel to the movie for our next drive in!

Auroa Primary School - Virtual Pinball 2026 Qualifying!

 

This year for the first time in three years we are having another Auroa Primary School Virtual Pinball competition! The tournament is fast approaching and today we held final qualifying! Two teams had to get through the qualifying and make the main draw - this was filmed at our school today!

You can follow a link to our Pinball highlights by clicking on this link here! Or you can follow Mr Bloors amazing work by heading to his incredible Youtube page which features so many of our great Auroa Primary School events by clicking on the link here.

Virtual Pinball at Auroa Primary School

 

Its tournament time at Auroa Primary School! Its the 2026 Auroa Primary School in association with Sonic Vision Studios - Virtual Pinball Competition.

We previously revealed our entrants for 2026 in Mr Bloors amazing video that we posted on this blog and you can view via his amazing Youtube page here.

The students are starting to practise, practise, practise as only some of the teams are going to make it through to our grand final!

You will be able to follow that here and will be posting additional updates and also a video shortly of some of the practise.

The table itself is a copy of a 1908s Classic Pinball Table called 'Tag Team' from 1985.   While we have maintained the playfield as it is a virtual table we have replaced the images with those of the students from Auroa Primary School as shown left, so students are now the bonuses and the images on our own virtual pinball table!

This machine is now sitting proudly in the hall of our school as is a second slightly smaller machine that allows the students to 

play the table in preparation!

Excitement is building as we move towards the first competition of Auroa School Virtual Pinball for 2026!

Auroa School Virtual Pinball Tournament Announcement

 Later today we are making a huge announcement for our students - one of the biggest events of the year is coming as we are bringing back our virtual pinball competition.    With that in mind until the official announcement is made later today here's some of the highlights from our work over the past few years, starting with the very first Virtual Pinball Grand Final from seven years ago!

 

Credit for this amazing production needs to go to Mr Bloor our amazing AV Teacher. You can view his amazing channel here.

The following year we retuned with our first movie tie in - Mr Bloor created an entire movie, featuring our students and staff (and our school!) and we had a special showing of this big event.  

This is our Grand Final from the Second year of competition, commentary provided by Mr Bloor and Mr Webb.  

We then had our third competition held the year after - this was based around another school movie - The Fast and the Furious: Undercover Student!   This became our Drive in Move Night Movie - which was an amazing community event: as shown below.

This led directly to the movie, the drive in movie and then the Pinball Machine, game and competition shown below:

Roland Versa Sign Maker - Senior Tech

We have mentioned in several posts that the senior students at Auroa Primary School are very lucky to be able to take part in DPE which is our senior technology program.    This is sometimes called tech and our students have a range of programs and tasks they can complete from cooking, art, sewing to laser cutting and digital technology.

In digital technology the students have completed a project using the Roland Versa Sign Maker.   This has been referred to on this blog as our 'sticker machine' which has been used for a range of projects which you can view a small sample of by clicking on the link here.

Mr Bloor our amazing AV teacher who is responsible for so many great projects at our school has been working with a group of students on these 'scaled down' versions of arcade machines.   The decals for the machines have been created by our Y7/8 students and the machines themselves printed on the Bambu H2D.

There are a variety of machines shown here - including a minature version of our Step Master Machine and also various versions of some of our other arcade machines.

In the past we've held yearly competitions with these machines and broadcast them online.   You can click on this link here to see last years Dance Machine competition and last years special 'K Pop Demon Hunters Dance Machine Special'.

You can view the grand final of our very first Pinball competition here and our tie in movie Pinball Machine, where we based a machine on our drive in movie here.   Finally we have a big announcment to make - we are again, after a three year break hosting a virtual pinball tournament here at Auroa Primary School for our students! 

The details of this will be announced very shortly but they will be put online and shared here and we will be broadcasting the competiton later in the term!

Special Projects: Page Update

On this blog, this year, you may have notices a slight change with some of the content.   Previously the blog was dedicated solely to the work of the student, and some staff, related to the use of 3D Printers at our school.  As time has evolved (as the first posts on this blog date back ten years) the school has continued to update some of its technology which the students are using in addition to the 3D Printers.  

We have thus included tabs that involve some of the other technology that our students are using including our industrial laser cutter, the sticker machine and exemplars from special event days, like our market day.

Recently we have included links to some of our major project work.   This is chiefly been created by students working with our amazing AV man at school Jason Bloor.  This is a link to his youtube page.

Our special event project for this term is to have our Step Master Dance Machine Competition.   This machine was built as a special project with our students, and the videos created were also worked on by out students.   The videos work in conjunction with the machine, so the students are dancing, and the videos of the step master are featuring our school and students in a range of original material.

Last year, we held a livestream dance competition where students battled against each other and we streamed the event live at our school.  This was similar to the Virtual Pinball Competitions which we have run for the past six years.    We have a competition day when we commentate as the students compete against each other.   The video below is the link to last years competition.

We will be holding this years competition with increased divisions (such as a junior group as we have students as young as six on the machine!) a Boys specific competition and also a staff version.

Virtual Pinball - School ESports 2023 Final

 

This is the link for the broadcast of our Pinball Competition for 2023 being held at school tomorrow morning! Live!

Virtual Pinball - Auroa Primary School eSports 2023

 

Ongoing Technology Projects Combining Technology at our School

 

The photograph left shows the Virtual Pinball Machines related to our school.   The smaller unit is the initial machine from four years ago which has a mod with various staff members being the bonus and details about the school (the school bell rings, the Principal calls for students to leave class when a ball is released etc).   The machine on the right is the full sized Pinball Machine with a game specifically designed by the students called 'Motor Cross Madness' this table and work (completed using the 3D Printer, the Laser Cutter etc) was a year long project for the students.    There are various videos about the creation of this machine located here.   The middle table is the the two player pinball machine being used for the school wide virtual Pinball Competition.   With all these machines when they have been completed the students have been involved in a competition with the students competing against each other.  These initially had videos created for the event, although owing to the volume of students involved we have moved in the past few years to live streaming the event via Youtube.  You can watch some of this years competition here.

This years project is involving a marble maze.  The component pieces for this machine such as the ramps have been designed and printed on our Snapmaker 3D Printers following creating on Tinkercad.  In the instance shown on the left the ramp is an important part of the final product to allow the marble to travel over part of the playing field.  

This component piece is considered 'elite' that is it was not a student design it was completed by an adult as it needed to be completed and work perfectly with the main table and component pieces.   This is a year long project for the students involved and there will be further developments and further posts about this project as it nears completion.

Left: This is a process where a student found an accessory online which they wanted to have made and then downloaded the STL file and had the item printed.  The item in question is a toilet which is sized to work in conjunction with a Barbie Toy.

So its a Barbie Toilet.

We've mentioned in the past that at times we have printed one off objects for students with the intention to inspire or to get the students thinking about what they might be able to produce as a result of this.  Some of the best projects ideas have come from this route.

ESports - Virtual Pinball Competition 2023 Livestream

This is the link to Auroa Primary Schools 2023 Virtual Pinball Competition which will be livestreamed as detailed.

ESports: School Virtual Pinball Competition

We have mentioned this competition in the past, and the link between this event and the making of a virtual pinball table which includes using the 3D Printer, Laser Cutter, Printing (Poster) Machine and Printing (Sticker) Machine to help make the resources we use to create it.   This year we have 64 students competing in our virtual Pinball Competition and this is the link to the video that shows the picking for the competition this year.

3D Printed: Custom Made Pieces for Pinball Table

At Auroa Primary School each year the students of the school compete in a virtual pinball competition.  The competition is created by staff at school and the students competed for the first three years, had their heats recorded and then AV staff at our school produced the final product.  You can view the footage of these finals at the Sonic Vision Studios Youtube page here.   For the past three years the competitions have been lives streamed on Youtube with the finals taking place during the course of a day, with live commentary at school.

The tables have all been custom made for the school - videos of the process can be located here.

The table for 2023 has just been released and includes elements of the table that have been 3D Printed.  The various hard material items for the school are involved in the entire process.  The cabinet has laser cut elements to it, while the decals for the outside of the machine have been printed on the school sticker printing machine (please note the laser cutter is an industrial sized one and the sticker machine is commercial).   

In the picture on the left showing the new table you can see that the white corners of the table have had custom built 3D Printed corners for the machine.  A full tutorial for the table will be released shortly.

This linked video is the first grand final from 2018, the 2022 grand final (which was streamed live) can be accessed here.   We have a connection to the staff member who has produced the material for this project and are able to connect you with them if you email us (myles.webb@gmail.com).