Background
St John's College-Hamilton is a decile 7 state integrated secondary school for Catholic boys with a roll of about 670 pupils.
Morrinsville College is a co-educational decile 6 secondary school with a roll of about 680.
Technology teacher Steve Andrew originally qualified as a motor mechanic and, after working in the automotive industry for a number of years, moved into teaching in 1989. He started teaching Workshop Technology, and felt comfortable making the transition into Design Technology courses because of the freedom it gave teachers and the ownership it gave to students. With the advent of the new Technology curriculum, Steve focused on giving all boys at St John's College access to programmes suited to their own particular needs and aspirations.
Michael Johansen also has a background in automotive mechanics. He completed his apprenticeship in Hamilton and worked as a mechanic in the city before shifting to Australia to work on heavy machinery in the mines. After completing his teacher training at the Waikato Teachers Training College in 1999, Michael joined the staff at Morrinsville College. Today he teaches Year 9-11 Technology, Year 11 and 12 Engineering Pathway.
At St John's, there are two Year 11 Technology classes of around 20 students doing similar programmes. Most of the students come to the course via a half-year compulsory course in Year 9 and an optional full-year Year 10 programme.
At Morrinsville there is one class of around 20 Year 11 students. Students start Year 9 with a half-year option with a full-year option by Year 10.
Steve and Michael had collaborated over four or five years and shared a number of junior programmes. One of these involved having Year 10 students design and build a snakeboard (a kind of skateboard). They had both run the unit over the past four years.
At the end of 2006 one of Steve's pupils suggested that building a street luge would make a good school activities project. The idea stuck in Steve's mind, and he mentioned it to Michael and Lawrence, who agreed that it would make a tremendous basis for a teaching unit. "We had a look at some of the material on the internet and we decided 'that's us!' "
The attractions of the project were obvious – the project was hands-on, would interest the boys, grab their imagination and give them a thrill. Michael liked it, and, as he tries to get his students to do projects that he finds interesting himself, the idea was a winner.
Nothing the teachers saw on the internet suggested producing a street luge would be beyond the capabilities of their students. Furthermore, a safe (but exciting) venue to test the students' creations was close to hand. About 20 years ago, Hamilton City Council had built a luge track for a local team keen to compete at the Winter Olympics. The track had been used by a club for a while, but now lay almost forgotten. Steve describes the venue as looking like "a footpath that started nowhere and ended nowhere".
"So we had a track to race on, and an environment that we would have to consider in our technological practice."
