A senior Ngamatapouri School student tests their new drone by taking a picture of students and staff. Photo / Supplied
A senior Ngamatapouri School student tests their new drone by taking a picture of students and staff. Photo / Supplied
Ngamatapouri School students are making the most of a $20,000 grant by working through a one-year project focused on water monitoring.
The grant was provided by Venture Taranaki Trust and helped the school to buy a drone which students are using to photograph the Waitotara River.
The funding also allowedprincipal Heather Dallas to pay for experts who have travelled to the school in Ngamatapouri, 77km north of Whanganui.
One of those experts is Ben Plummer, CEO of Drone Technologies NZ Ltd based in the small Taranaki township of Okato.
Plummer has taught the school's three senior students how to operate a drone using the proper aviation protocols and how to take photos while doing so.
He said they took to flying a drone like a duck takes to water.
"On the very first morning these students picked up the basics and they were all flying the UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] like a PlayStation within the first hour," Plummer said.
This shot from the drone captures the river and the school from a great height. Photo / Supplied
"I'm there to steer the project. It's done repetitively, with a degree of science and precision, so that the data can go alongside other data collected from the site."
Plummer and students mapped out flight paths for three selected parts of the river which they take photos of every fortnight.
The point of the project is to monitor the river over a year, checking details such as water levels, clarity, temperatures and more.
The other expert visiting is Andrew Hornblow, a freelancer who is working on creating a remote flood water system with the students.
The school was closed for a period of time after extensive flooding in 2015 and it is an area that regularly faces flood warnings.
Hornblow travelled from Opunake and said he enjoys connecting kids with low level technology that can monitor features as basic as the outside temperature.
"The river rising rapidly and cutting things off is probably the main purpose of the project," Hornblow said.
"But I'm into letting kids tinker with technology to make something that blinks out rainfall data, the temperature, or the height of the stream behind the school."
Hornblow has been staying with a local family while he gets the students used to technology such as water level sensors, rainfall sensors and radio transmitters.
He said it has been a neat experience working with a small number of students who have a diverse range of ideas.
"I don't come in with an instant water level transmitter. I like to challenge their brains and some of the questions they come up with stimulate my mind too," Hornblow said.
"There are spinoff projects coming out of what we've been doing, including monitoring beehives and water supply systems on farms and how to make animals comfortable."
Dallas said the school was very grateful to the Venture Taranaki Trust for the grant and the students are sharing their collected data with the Taranaki Regional Council.
They have been working with Dr Emily Roberts who has been teaching them about subjects such as how to use water monitoring data since August last year.
"What we want is for our students to be able to move on and be confident that their learning is just as important as what they would get from a big city school," Dallas said.
"In fact, in a lot of ways it's even more valuable for them because it's very much something that they're interested in."
