Our software engineering students have proven again that computing can make a bigger contribution than energy in the data centre. We’ve been working with the Dunedin 350 campaign. All semester, groups have been working with their client – Ella Lawton – to develop systems to raise awareness and engage people in climate change. Although the big release day was the Spring Food Festival (see Flickr set), we’ve just had the final presentations where the students reflected on the process. There is some really really nice work (see below).
Engaging students in a sustainability project has met all our goals – they’ve learnt software engineering through engaging in a real project- a project that takes the impact of computing beyond its own footprint, to exploring our potential handprint.
As part of the 350.org movement, our main mission is to raise the awareness of the 350 campaign and its purpose of ensuring the safe upper limit of CO2 in our atmosphere is lowered to 350 parts per million.
At 350 Live, it is our primary objective to design an interactive application that will be released to the public of Dunedin free of charge to promote education about 350, and bring to attention the significance of the important date of October 24, 2009, the International Day of Climate Change.
Here’s some screen captures from the projects:
Computing for Sustainability 
Posted on November 19, 2009
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