Transport and Travel - TAXI DRIVER

Your Local Streets

Primary Middle  Secondary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Personal and social capability

1. Work out the quickest route from your home to school. What makes it quickest? Does this change in heavier traffic times?

2. Work out alternatives.

3. TEST YOURSELF: See how many of your local streets you can remember - a whole suburb, town and points of interest [shops, bus stops including route numbers, parks, playgrounds].

4. ROAD SAFETY: Find the quickest and safest routes to go from one destination to another within your city or township using your bike or skateboard.

London Taxi Drivers' Brains

 Secondary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking
Australian Curriculum General Capability: Personal and social capability

1. Watch the following video about the size and growth of London Taxi Drivers' Brains:

How this taxi driver memorised 25k roads
https://youtu.be/SN4uYoeDaNk?si=tAWhr8saRYRmFy3m

2. Read a more detailed account in Scientific American of the study by Neuroscientist Eleanor Maguire of University College London (U.C.L.) about how Taxi Drivers' Brains grow - particularly the hippocampus because of the intensive study of London streets over a period of 3 - 4 years to obtain a Taxi Drivers' License.

3. Neurobiologist Howard Eichenbaum of Boston University sees it [the study by Maguire] as confirmation of the idea that cognitive exercise produces physical changes in the brain. "The initial findings could have been explained by a correlation, that people with big hippocampi become taxi drivers," he says. "But it turns out it really was the training process that caused the growth in the brain. It shows you can produce profound changes in the brain with training. That's a big deal." (Source: Scientific American)

4. London Taxi Drivers have developed educational strategies to get them to pass the most difficult test in the world - The Knowledge. Here are some:

• Knowledge cards - with particular A to B routes

• Maps showing a particular A to B route

• Calling the run with other colleagues tracing the route [not just the route but the points of interest passing by]

• Going out on motorbikes or walking the routes so each detail of each road is memorised.

5. Develop a visual and physical strategy to help you study for the next 4 - 5 years.

6. Discuss whether it is more important  for the Taxi Driver to know the streets of the city you live in or visit or whether using the SAT-NAV devices is ok. What are the differences? Are there any consequences?

Uber: What's the Cost?

Secondary

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Numeracy

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking

Australian Curriculum General Capability: Ethical Understanding

Australian Curriculum General Capability: ICT Capability

Australian Curriculum Cross Curriculum Priorities: Sustainability Priority

1.  Investigate Uber using the following resources

• What is it?

• How does it work?

• Who thought of it?

• What is it doing to Taxi Drivers?

• Note down the pros and cons of using Uber.

Uber	FactCheck: are ridesharing services like Uber no safer than hitchhiking?
Uber: The great disruptor of pizza delivery?	How Uber opens cities only to close them [Advanced level]

2. Look at this article on What is Disruptive Innovation? from Harvard Review (old but good explanation) and explore the ideas presented around Airbnb, YouTube, Wikipedia, the iPhone App Store, Amazon, Uber, Upwork, and even Twitter.

3.

"What Disruptive Innovation can you come up with?"
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