Introduction
In 2018 the theme for our school exhibition was Valletta ’18. The Computing Department’s exhibit involved our Year 9 and 10 students. Our main aim was to encourage students to reflect on how technology can help improve our experience of a 500 year old city in our 21st century realities of traffic issues in particular.
Research Method
In this project, therefore, students looked at traffic and parking issues in our capital and explored ways these can be addressed. Thanks to then Valletta mayor, Prof Dingli, our students had the opportunity to visit UOMs Faculty of ICT and meet Mr Dylan Seychell who shared his firsthand experience with AI, IoT and the creation of apps like VaTIS. Mr Seychell helped students delve into the implications of the IoT in general and in the context of our problem in particular. He helped them understand and reflect on how apps related to traffic and parking issues in our capital collect relevant data and in future may further improve our experience of Valletta.
This research led to students creating the Computing exhibit. Different students focused on different aspects of the project. Students used Microsoft Word and later Microsoft Publisher to create posters outlining urban mobility in Valletta, the CVA system and the role of the IoT in apps like VaTIS.
Meanwhile, some Year 9 students worked on a model of a smart parking place. These students designed an algorithm that would keep track of the number of parking places available and inform users accordingly of the number of parking places still available. They then built an EV3 robotic device for this application and implemented their algorithm on EV3 software.
Exhibiting our Work
Students presented their work during the school exhibition, explaining the problem they had tried to tackle and demonstrating their working model.
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