Growing Food as an Educational Tool
We are all born scientists. We learn to speak by exploring syllables and we learn our first lessons in science by exploring and testing the natural world. However with long winters and rigid classroom settings, many young students lose their innate eagerness to learn about the natural world and science. Grove Education aims to recapture that curiosity for science and use the Grove Ecosystem as a versatile portal to the natural world.
If you are asking “What’s a Grove Ecosystem?” Essentially, it’s an intelligent indoor garden, you can read more about it here!
Grove Education is a program to support the Grove Ecosystem as an educational tool. A system of growing food and raising fish seamlessly ties into most science disciplines: biology, chemistry, physics, engineering, and environmental science. Additionally, the Ecosystem raises important questions such as, how is food grown, and is it sustainable? It’s a teacher on its own, but to optimize the use of this new technology, we’re working with educators to develop a supplementary curriculum of activities, lesson plans and videos.
Due to the weather constraints of traditional school gardens, DIY aquaponics and other indoor gardening systems have been bubbling up all around the country. But only the most experienced growers are successful. Thanks to Grove OS, the app that supports the Ecosystem, Grove Education is empowering educators and students at all levels to learn with a growing system.
We launched Grove Education last November with a pilot program where teachers submitted videos to win a free Ecosystem for their classroom. We’re observing how the winners are adapting Grove Education to many different teaching environments. These include: Parts & Crafts’ “opt-in learning,” Argenziano School’s 7th & 8th grade science classroom, shared space a Cashman Elementary school and Winter Hill’s STEM-ed after-school program.
The value of growing food in schools is multi-dimensional. It supports the goals of the Next Generation Science Standards including more opportunities for hands-on and experiment-based learning. Here are students at Argenziano who each planted their own seeds and are anxiously waiting to see who chose the fastest growing plant.
Growing your own food spurs the excitement crucial to establishing healthy eating habits at an early age. Grove-grown lettuce has become the desired snack at Parts & Crafts where their Ecosystem sits next to the cafeteria.
The Ecosystem provides an interactive visual complement for abstract concepts in chemistry. With the colorful water test, second graders at Cashman are already understanding how to balancing pH works.
An adjustments counselor at Cashman has unveiled a meditative benefit of the Ecosystem. The kids she works with love the peacefulness of sitting and watching the plants grow, and discussing the possibilities of growing.
We’re very excited about the prospect of integrating Grove Education into the instructional setting. Aquaponics and learning gardens have delivered exceptional results for students with learning disabilities. This is likely due to aquaponics engaging all senses: see the interaction of fish and plant growth, hear the cycling of water, smell the nutrient-rich grow bed, feel the differences in plants, and, of course, taste the delicious food they’ve grown!
Underlying the Grove Ecosystem is the innovative hardware and software that make the system work. Having exciting technology of any sort in the classroom inspires the engineers of tomorrow. The young builders of Parts & Crafts have begun hacking into their Ecosystem to see how it’s built in hopes of building another one of their own design!
We’re eager to see Grove Education in a multitude of schools at the start of the next school year. If you have any questions or suggestions, or would like to bring Grove Education to your school, please contact me at eroberts@grovelabs.io.
Let’s bring science to life!
Originally published at blog.grovelabs.io.
