New School, New Technicraft and New Teacher!

Frankie admiring my work!

Have you ever wondered what it will feel like when you go to another school? Would you find it  scary? Would  you be shy? Has anyone told you when you go to another school people from that school will bully you?  Well from my own personal experience, those rumours are not necessary true.

Today the Seniors of Saint Patrick’s School went to Pakuranga Intermediate for Technicraft. Once we arrived,  we were split into two groups, the year eights went to the Electronic class where their teacher, Mr Clark introduced himself.  At the same time, the year sevens went to the Materials class and met their teacher Mr Nair.

The first project for the year 8 students was to design and construct a frog.  Initially I had the feeling that this task was like a colouring competition but later when the  electronic things were added, it began to  look like a real science project.   The electronic components we used included LED’s  (Light Emitting Diodes), Copper tape and Memory wire.

When you put the LED into the little hole on the eye of the frog, you had to make sure that the positive wire (long wire) went on the right side of the copper tape and that the negative wire (short wire) went to the left side of the copper tape.   Following this the wire needed to be soldered.  The soldering machine was a bit dangerous, as it was hot!

It looks like a strange metal iron tube and it is used to melt the end of the wire, it kind of acts like glue.  

It was a new and challenging experience for me and I was extremely proud of my effort and the final product.