Extracting power from a couple of bananas to light up an LED; playing Scrabble with the letters from discarded computer keyboards; turning an empty plastic icebox into a loudspeaker – the Schrotty project encourages children and youngsters to use everyday objects, electronic components and old devices in creative and occasionally intriguing ways.
Project
Schrotty
The Schrotty (“scrap”) project makes children and youngsters aware of the problem of electronic waste while exploring creative ways of dealing more carefully with the valuable raw materials. In workshops and experiments, alternatives such as repairing, upcycling and recycling are examined together with the children and youngsters, outlining an alternative to the throw-away mentality.
Photo: (c) Schrotty
In the first phase of the project FH JOANNEUM gathered ideas for workshops and courses together with business partners and partner schools. One primary school, one new secondary school and two academic secondary schools in Graz were involved in this phase.
During the summer semester 2015 the suggestions were implemented in a series of events held at the partner schools, with cooperation from kindergartens and other schools in Styria and Burgenland. The children and youngsters discovered the key features of electronics, learned more about resources, and were given the chance to take apart old devices and build new gadgets including robots, musical instruments, and luminous clothing.
A brochure published in 2016 presents the outcomes and offers best practice examples from the workshops and courses. Several videos with instructions on how to create jewellery, generate power from fruit and vegetables, or build loudspeakers, for example – all from everyday objects and electronic waste, are available on the project homepage.
Why “Schrotty”?
“Beam me up, Scotty”, is probably the best known quote from the television series Star Trek which, in the 1970s, shaped our view of the distant future in “space: the final frontier” like no other. Scotty was the spaceship’s gifted chief engineer. He got Captain Kirk and his team out of trouble more than once with his ingenuity and technical expertise.
The project team chose to call the “sustainable electronics course for kids” Schrotty as a note of respect to the chief engineer of the USS Enterprise. It also expresses the hope that we can encourage a more intelligent and less wasteful approach to electronic components in future by confronting children and youngsters with the problem of electronic waste in a playful and creative manner.