I-Corps: Plant Growth Chambers and Curriculum for Educational Applications

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是增加学生对STEM主题的参与，以及鼓励学生参与关键挑战，如空间探索、气候变化、以植物为重点的基因工程和改进，以及养活不断增长的全球人口。这些交付成果将通过新的STEM课程和硬件套件在全美的K-12学校实施。硬件/课程相结合的方法被有目的地设计为首先抓住学生的兴趣，然后教授所需的STEM课程，最后建议与所讨论的每个STEM主题相关的职业。所有这些都将包括课程设计和全面的文档，不会给教师带来额外的工作量，将其应用到他们的课堂上。为了规划未来的进一步影响，所有硬件都将收集其中进行的实验的数据和图像。这个i-Corps项目进一步开发了一个低成本、可重复使用的植物生长室，其特点是数据收集和以前教育市场上无法获得的受控环境。涉及的技术包括单板计算机、温度/湿度传感器、光周期传感器、传感器驱动的温度水平和光周期驱动、计算机视觉能力有限的相机，以及验证营养液一致性的设备。这种硬件的组合使公民科学家的热情和分散的数字能力被赋予技术能力，这是植物科学和教育界以前从未见过的。这将通过允许对各种定义的生长环境进行更可靠的数据收集来鼓励和加速学习，从而创建更准确的植物生长配方。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project will be the increase of student engagement in STEM topics, as well as stimulating student engagement in critical challenges such as space exploration, climate change, plant-focused genetic engineering and improvement, and feeding an ever-increasing global population. These deliverables will be implemented via a novel STEM curriculum and hardware kits to K-12 schools across the United States. The hardware/curriculum method of combination is purposefully designed to first grab student interest, then teach the required STEM coursework, and finally suggesting careers relevant to each STEM topic discussed. Encompassing all of this will be curriculum design and thorough documentation that does not put an additional workload on the teachers applying it to their classrooms. Planning for an impact further in the future, all of the hardware will collect data from and images of the experiments conducted within them.This I-Corps project further develops a low cost, reusable plant growth chamber that features data collection and a controlled environment previously unavailable on the education market. The technology involved in this includes a single board computer, temperature/humidity sensors, photoperiod sensors, sensor-driven actuation of the temperature level and photoperiod, a camera with limited computer vision capabilities, and equipment to verify nutrient solution consistency. This combination of hardware allows the enthusiasm and distributed numerical power of the citizen scientist to be empowered with technical capability in a way that neither the plant science nor education communities have seen before. This will encourage and accelerate learning by allowing more reliable data collection of various defined growing environments in order to create more accurate plant growth recipes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.