Anti-theft technology for cars

There is a lot of interesting visual material on the australianscreen website: http://aso.gov.au/

It is operated by Australia's National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA), which is "the national audiovisual archive, collecting, preserving and sharing the nation's moving image and recorded sound heritage."

A video clip I used with my students is "Four Corners: Car Wars" (2:09 min).
 http://aso.gov.au/titles/tv/four-corners-car-wars/clip2/

This viedo shows a technological innovation from DataDot Technology that was developed to prevent car theft. This innovation involves spraying microdots over various parts of a new car. In the video, the innovation is described, and there is a chronological explanation of the development and use of these microdots.

The site includes "Education notes" which give background information and statistics on the car-theft problem in Australia (this can be compared to the students' own country).

One example of the information in these notes is a list of other types of anti-theft devices, including keypad immobilisers, alarms with motioin sensors, and automatic anti-hijacking door locking.

After discussing information from the video, students had the assignment (in groups) to find out more information about each of these other devices, and then in class we had a "panel discussion" comparing and contrasting their merits. Each group tried to persuade the rest of the class to "vote" for the device they had researched.

Another idea is to start a brainstorming session where students think of their own ideas for future technological innovations to prevent car theft.