Riverland Schools IoT Project

The Riverland Schools IoT Project connects secondary school students in the Riverland region of South Australia with real-world environmental data through a curriculum-integrated Internet of Things (IoT) program.

Initiated in June 2020 at the invitation of the District Council of Loxton Waikerie, the project supports staff and students across four Riverland high schools in designing and deploying sensor experiments that draw on LoRaWAN infrastructure recently installed across the region.

The project

Students use low-cost sensors and the open Things Network to collect real-time data on topics they choose — water quality, microclimate, agricultural conditions — and then analyse and visualise that data as part of their school curriculum. The emphasis is on open data, open tools and developing local technical capacity in regional South Australia.

The tech

The project uses The Things Network (TTN) LoRaWAN infrastructure, low-cost sensor nodes, and open-source data dashboards. Data collected by students is published openly for community use.

About

The Growing Data Foundation facilitated the project, providing technical mentorship, hardware sourcing and curriculum design support. The project is part of GDF’s broader commitment to bringing IoT and open data skills to regional and rural communities.