This is a random collection of stuff (thought crimes) that may (or not) be relevant to a Living World (Plants & Pets) project for a school Education Week clebration)

• Planning: Link to Education Week Google Doc/Slides

• This project is all about the chickens at our school.
• The comb is the fleshy growth on top of a chicken's head. Its primary function is to help keep a chicken cool in hot weather. All chickens have a comb.
• To avoid unintended negative connotations, do not use variation of the words chicken, bird, yardbird, chook or similar synonym in any website/titles/banners related to the school/students/this project.

Chickens are social, inquisitive, intelligent birds, and many people find their behaviour entertaining. Certain breeds, such as Silkies and many bantam varieties, are particulalrly docile and are often recommended as good pets around children with disabilities. ¹⁾

Random fact: Chickens can be hypnotised

Enhance learning and welfare outcomes for whole school community through deeper, hands-on engagement and understanding, by blending science, art and the living world.

• To enhance student engagement and learning linked to the mandatory

K-10 Science Syllabus, including plants and animals (gardening and chickens) at

our school

• IF UNABLE TO ACCESS YOUTUBE VIDEO TRY: Viewpure

• Install interactive Raspberry Pi(s), webcam(s) and various IoT data collection devices in chicken-run and in garden.
• Create a Pet Survey, as per the highly successful Toy Survey ²⁾. There are heaps of ways for kids across all stages to engage community interest and to collect and analyse data for learning activities.
• Set up an on-line visitors book.
• Create individual Gmail / Twitter account(s) for chickens and enable customisable 'Canned Responses'
• Invite visitors to send a virtual treats (treat suggestions) via email.
• Send auto-generated email reply, thanking submitter and include an image/video/random comment signed by the chicken(s), with link(s) to the live stream and/or various other promotional/educational material. You can use a simple email auto or 'Gmail autoresponder' add-on to quickly answer visitor emails and more. The draft canned responses can include attachments, rich text, and inline images.

• Sending a message to one or more email addresses for automated replies replied in real-time by the BeachCombers:
  • beachcombers@nswales.org
  • autumn@schools-nsw.org
  • pickles@schools-nsw.org
  • midnight@schools-nsw.org
  • sugar@schools-nsw.org
• Students investigate and evaluate various chicken 'treats'
• Students investigate the relationship between chickens and plants/foods grown in the garden
• Students develop their own ideas to extend and promote the relation between garden, chickens, IoT techology and collection/analysis of data.

Projects can be integrated across classes,grades and/or subjects where appropriate.

1. Allows for easy extension into a series of interactive toys for your chickens and / or games you can play remotely with your feathery and/or plant-likes friend
2. Design and build a Chicken Treats dispenser for connection to Raspberry Pi in chicken coup.
3. Allow web visitors to send emails to chickens and set up auto-response system to auto-respond with multi-media whilst auto gathering data in Google sheet for student analysis.
4. Students design the interactive multimedia content that is sent out in automated email replies - can include chicken poetry, quizzes, videos,games etc.
5. Huge range of real time interaction possibilities - including possible dispensing of treats from anywhere in the world - for example:
6. Create Google forms/response sheets to engage users, create quizzes, automate email, twitter and to collect and evaluate/graph data.
7. Students use technology to create images, videos, stop-motion animated .gifs and similar.
8. Engage in engineering projects to build simple, automated chicken feeders
9. Adapt 'normal' learning programs/activities to merge with chickens - for example:
10. Craft projects example: Draw and paint chickens. Cut out art work and fix artwork to the IoT Bumper Car.
11. Code a simple URL to enter into your browser to remote control your chicken bumper car.
12. Create an area on the school website to post links and content
13. Design, build control simple chicken-related IoT devices and hold a chicken robot race
14. Design and create web paged and/or posters to promote and provide information about your chicken robots
15. Create a Beachcombers News project to broadcast a weekly video to Twitter (or simlilar)
16. Create a live Youtube video stream to broadcast selected/continuous Beachcomber events.

The Chicken Church - Visitors passing by often wonder what a massive, chicken-shaped, stone building is doing standing perched in the middle of a forest in Indonesia. ABC News 12 May 2018:

ICARUS, short for 'International Cooperation for animal Research Using Space', is a global collaboration of animal scientists to establish a satellite based infrastructure for earth observation of small objects such as migratory birds, bats, or sea turtles. http://www.orn.mpg.de/ICARUS

Johnson Space Center - This project also provides students an opportunity to see for themselves the important role that environmental management plays here on Earth and as humans venture further into space. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=16712

Australian animation producer Studio Moshi and Disney EMEA have commenced production on the first 52 x 11 min. season and 11 two-minute shorts of Space Chickens in Spacefor world-wide international distribution. Studio Moshi has sold the show to Channel 9 and Disney Australia. http://www.animationmagazine.net/tv/cake-anima-moshi-hatching-space-chickens-in-space/

This is a long video that contains heaps of interesting facts about chickens.

Stop the video wherever you like - You (students) don't need to watch all of it!

• IF UNABLE TO ACCESS YOUTUBE VIDEO (requires Flash) TRY: Viewpure

Chickens not only make for interesting and fun pets, but they also make for interesting and fun subjects of science projects. Students can observe and record how changes in the environment affect chicken development or behaviour.

• Chickens can do cool things too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dPlkFPowCc
• Chicken Xylophone Band: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKKN0lAlATQ
• Chicken Power: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5h3tZthUQQ
• The Orange Bantam - In Havana: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74gx0v5ZJzw

Chicken Coop Livestream using MotionEyOS

• A preference test is an experiment in which animals are allowed free access to multiple environments which differ in one or more ways. Various aspects of the animal's behaviour can be measured with respect to the alternative environments, such as latency and frequency of entry, duration of time spent, range of activities observed, or relative consumption of a goal object in the environment. These measures can be recorded either by the experimenter or by motion detecting software.[1]

• http://www.raspberry-pi-geek.com/Archive/2014/05/Creating-a-child-friendly-audio-player-with-the-Raspberry-Pi
• Everything you wanted to know about egg production of back-yard chickens
• Playing soothing classical music for chickens and hanging red mittens in the chicken house can enhance the growth of broiler chickens and save millions of dollars in feed costs. This is no joke. It`s the conclusion of a serious study by scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. Cornell has applied for a patent on the technique. he played 12 hours a day, one hour on, one hour off.
• At a farm in Hong Kong’s New Territories, a group of 20,000 chickens listen to a mix of classical, jazz, rap and Cantopop (Cantonese pop music) daily. They lay “music eggs,”
• Music helps raise quality chickens -Taiwan's government has introduced methods developed in Australia and New Zealand to allow chickens to listen to music throughout the day, which is said to help locals raise top-quality chickens
• Does music affect chickens laying patterns California State Science Fair
• I decided to play two kinds of music, country and classical,. Eggs produced while chickens listened to classical music were significantly bigger and heavier than those that did not listen to music.
• Effects of specific noise and music stimuli on stress and fear levels of laying hens of several breeds. The results of the present study indicate that specific noise stimulus (90 dB versus 65 dB) causes stress and fear in laying hens and specific classical music stimulus (75 dB versus 65 dB) has a negative influence on their fearfulness.

• Run your own science event - scienceweek.net.au

We would like to discover if music really does effect chickens production levels.

Place raspberry pi in or near a chicken coop to monitor location of chickens and play music Music.

Changes in the environment can produce changes in a chicken’s behaviour. Testing whether music affects egg production may reveal just how sensitive a chicken is to its environment. Carefully measure and record feed rations to ensure that changes in feeding do not affect the results of the experiments and keep water free choice to keep the experiment humane. Also, record a control week before and after the experiment weeks in order to have sufficient data for comparison. To test music’s effect on egg production, choose a style of music or a single song and play it all week in the coop. Try different music the following week and record and compare the results.

We picked three songs, one of each genre.

• Rock- Heartbreaker by Led Zeppelin
• Reggae- One Love by Bob Marley
• Classical- a section of the Fifth Symphony by Mozart.

1. We hooked up speakers in the chicken coop.
2. We had 2 control weeks, one before and one after
3. We played each song for one week repetitively from 8:00 am- 4:00 pm.
4. We controlled their food intake, feeding them two pints of Layena egg layer crumble and a half-pint scratch grains.
5. We did not control their water because we do not believe in animal cruelty.
6. Everyday we recorded the weather and how many eggs they layed.

Music surprisingly had an effect on egg production.

• Rock increased their egg production most, with 33 eggs that week.
• Classical came in second with 30 eggs.
• Reggae was least with 20 eggs.

We conclude that rock is more effective, but classical is what the chickens would prefer.

Rock stressed the birds out by annoying them. (Led Zeppelin from 8-4 day in and day out would be annoying) the more common sound vibrations may have activated there egg system and made them lay more eggs.

On the other hand classical soothed them and made it easier for the eggs to come out.

• Treatmaster (drill + auger)
• Treatmaster V2 (drill+auger)

• Judd the dog
• Judd plans

• Video, Email, and more
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9vg8MXXzjY&start=60
• https://medium.com/hackers-and-makers/remote-dog-treat-dispenser-29959fccf68d
• http://drstrangelove.net/2013/12/raspberry-pi-power-cat-feeder-updates/

• http://blog.tkjelectronics.dk/2013/06/how-to-stream-video-and-audio-from-a-raspberry-pi-with-no-latency/