So, I can write posts about various things if you would like, otherwise I'm just going to write about what is most recent with our system. It is already setup, plants were planted, and the fish were added last Wednesday. We had an issue with some temperature, but the heaters have been added and the fish finally ate and were active on Saturday!
This past week or two the topic came up of "we have this thing, now what?" Well, it was built for teachers to use it. If you build it they will come... right? Only, nobody's coming except to ask what it is and what is happening with it. Why are they not coming? Why are teachers not begging to find ways to use this AMAZING thing as part of their curriculum?
Turns out... they don't know what it is! If they do, they think it is a STEM program thing! Our school is piloting a STEM program alongside our CORE program. Some teachers are not as accepting of this idea, but the community is very accepting. So, they see that I built the system so it MUST be part of our STEM classes. Now, I work on the STEM team, but I teach only the CORE classes and the students working on it were hand selected from all of our team. I picked 20 students both STEM (4) and CORE (16) but it is in no way isolated to the STEM students.
So, where do we start? We have to educate the staff! Friday we are having some staff time where I will get to make a presentation to the entire staff about what the system is, how it works, and why we have it. Perhaps then they will begin thinking about how to incorporate it into classrooms?
Science is a given. There's tons of science that I see in the system but I have some issues with the other subject areas. Perhaps math can talk about the growth of plants? data from water tests? areas/volumes of the tanks/growbeds? Art can use it for drawing, inspiration, etc. But what about other classes? Any suggestions?
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