Virginia Western Community College has developed a five-week hydroponics project for local high school classrooms, aiming to inspire students to pursue careers in this field. Officials say the project utilizes a hydroponics tower to grow Buttercrunch lettuce, where a sensor generates graphical visualizations of the data, and students interpret the data collected over the project's duration.
At the end of the project, students get to taste-test the lettuce. According to officials, students in the Engineering Program at Roanoke County's Burton Center for Arts & Technology wished each other "Cheers!" before sampling in the fourth week of the program. Students expressed that it tasted fresh, was crunchy, and not bitter at all.
"We created this program to allow high-school students to see a real-life project combining agriculture and technology," said Cynthia Fairbanks, Ag-Tech Program Assistant and Adjunct Professor in Virginia Western's School of STEM, who leads the high school initiative. "The program teaches some amazing hands-on skills with technology and agriculture and opens the conversation of data literacy."
During the five-week project, Fairbanks says she would visit the classroom weekly for 15-minute lessons using the hydroponic tower, a vertical setup featuring 28 grow cups, a pump, and an LED light source.
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