Tauranga primary students land win for recycling message

Mascot

Four students from Maungatapu School in Tauranga have been named the winners of NZ’s first e-Waste Eddie Awards.

The national competition was run as part of School eDay, a free event which provided an opportunity for NZ schools to safely recycle unused computer equipment while teaching students about the benefits of recycling electronic waste (e-waste).

To enter, students created advertisements about the benefits of recycling e-waste using the interactive software programme Marvin and featuring School eDay mascot e-Waste Eddie.

The first-equal winners were Year Five student Kimberley King and Year Six students Aimee Tomlinson, Casey Bartlam and Selena Wright. For their prize, the school today received a Canon digital video camera and will have a custom avatar created for their school based on a sketch drawn by the students.

Local eDay supporter Annabelle Ellis of Environment Bay of Plenty presented the prize recently in a ceremony at the school along with representatives from eDay sponsors Canon.

Vicki Coe, ICT Manager at the school says the new video camera will greatly help the students’ learning and creativity. “Along with film making and advertising, we see the video camera as a useful tool for pupils preparing speeches to view and evaluate their own performances. The students all participated enthusiastically in the competition and were really excited to be announced the winners,” she said.

“The competition was a way of encouraging Kiwi kids to learn about the issue of e-waste in a fun and interactive way,” says National eDay Organiser Laurence Zwimpfer. “The judges were particularly impressed with the entries from Maungatapu School and the enthusiasm and skill the students displayed,” Mr Zwimpfer said. “The judges couldn’t separate out the two winning entries, so they decided to award first equal.”

The Tauranga school has strongly supported the eDay event, using it to safely dispose of their old computer equipment and Assistant Principal, Lester Stephens, volunteered at the Tauranga drop-off site working alongside other community members.

The winning videos are available to view at www.eday.org.nz/schools.

School eDay is an initiative of CANZ and is supported at the national level by ICT financing provider Equico, the Ministry of Education, Microsoft NZ Partners in Learning and NTICED.  Canon was one of a number of industry partners that supported the national eDay programme, as a funding partner and with a total of over 80 staff volunteers at eDay sites around the country, including Tauranga.