‘STEM Correspondent’, Malachy Holborow, attends the Te Wā Heke Festival, as part of NZ Tech Week 2019.

Wellesley has a new Media Team: The ‘WMT’, as it is known, has selected a number of keen Senior boys to help cover news items relating to STEM, the Arts and Sport. Boys have chosen roles ranging from interviews, writing, video, photography or editing.

We are pleased to be sharing WMT’s first article, as covered by our ‘STEM Correspondent’, Malachy Holborow, who recently attended the Te Wā Heke Festival, as part of NZ Tech Week 2019, at the end of May:

On the 21st of May, a group of Senior Wellesley boys attended the Te Wā Heke Festival, as part of NZ Tech Week 2019, held at the Lower Hutt Convention centre.

This was an amazing event and I found it very interesting to see how different types of technology work and what technological advancements are happening today.

One exhibit that I really enjoyed was “Play Zone”, where we were got to play with some of the latest high-tech toys. In the Virtual Reality experience, they put a VR set on our head (Oscar Horne featured above), and we were able to see and experience what a “City of the Future” might feel like. I was able to see robots, self-driving cars, drones, and many other things.

Another exhibit that I was able to see was the “Commute Zone”, where they showed a a Nissan LEAF (pictured above) with half its outside layer of metal removed. This meant that I could see what was on the inside of the car and look at how electric cars work. This really made me think because we all use vehicles every day, but we never really think what is on the inside of them. With new kinds of cars being made to help the environment, this could really help our youth to understand how cars work so that we can make a difference when we grow up.

One last thing that I saw at this event was how traffic lights work. I never knew that traffic lights use a heat signature camera to see how many people are waiting to cross the road, and once it sees enough it would make the light go red, so pedestrians can cross.

Overall, I really enjoyed this event. In my opinion, it really advanced my thinking on technology and helped me understand how everyday technology works.

Thanks, Malachy for your great first report on behalf of the Wellesley Media Team!