Case I18: IoT for Smart City Development

Complexity
  • Medium
Target Level
  • P3 – P6

Objective:
To offer hands-on building experience and programming learning opportunities to the students. In an attempt to build up the major elements of a smart city, the workshop will touch upon the following ideas concerning IoT:

  1. Key principles behind IoT devices.
  2. Computational thinking skills.
  3. Signaling

Description:
The students are guided to work out some major elements of a smart city. For example, the smart traffic lighting system and the smart driving system.

The school will then organise a series of learning workshop for the students, demonstrating how IoT can be applied to invent, design, and adjust the programming parts of traffic lighting and driving system.

The workshops will allow the students to experience and create some parts of the above-mentioned smart systems by using the plastic building blocks. For example, students could try to apply some basic principles behind IoT devices to a lighting system that can react to a moving object and a driving system that can stop a car in response to an obstacle. In this way, students are expected to learn the computational thinking behind an automatic system in a broader sense. In addition, students are also expected to have a hands-on experience of using IoT ideas for problem-solving purpose.

Hardware
  • Microcontroller board with IoT kits such as sensors, actuators, and output peripherals
  • Plastic building blocks
Software
  • Common programming languages like Scratch / Python
Cloud Services
  • Optional
Major Activities
  1. Theoretical session covering:
    1. Basic introduction to Internet of Things
    2. Computational thinking skills
    3. Signaling
  2. Practical session covering:
    1. Practical work for an automatic system with example code
    2. Share the challenges and lesson learnt
    3. Problem-solving skills
Learning Objective(s)
  • How to collaborate in groups and teams
  • How to use the programming software
  • Understand the logic and operation of a smart IoT system
  • Develop problem-solving capacity
Duration
  • Theoretical sessions: 4 – 6 hours
  • Practical sessions: 8 – 10 hours
Target No. of Students
  • About 10 - 20 students per workshop