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

这个I-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力将是学生参与STEM主题的增加，以及刺激学生参与太空探索，气候变化，以植物为重点的基因工程和改进等关键挑战，以及养活不断增长的全球人口。这些成果将通过一个新的STEM课程和硬件工具包在美国的K-12学校实施。硬件/课程组合方法是有目的地设计的，首先抓住学生的兴趣，然后教授所需的STEM课程，最后建议与讨论的每个STEM主题相关的职业。包括所有这一切将是课程设计和彻底的文件，不把额外的工作量对教师应用到他们的教室。为了在未来进一步发挥作用，所有的硬件都将收集实验数据和图像。I-Corps项目进一步开发了一种低成本、可重复使用的植物生长室，其特点是数据收集和可控环境，这在教育市场上是前所未有的。其中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、温度水平和光周期的传感器驱动、具有有限计算机视觉能力的相机以及验证营养液一致性的设备。这种硬件的组合允许公民科学家的热情和分布式数字力量以植物科学和教育界以前从未见过的方式被赋予技术能力。这将鼓励和加速学习，允许更可靠的数据收集各种定义的生长环境，以创造更准确的植物生长食谱。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并已被认为是值得支持的，通过评估使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

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.