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Engaging The Community
Tier 1: SmartFarmNexus
One of our frameworks, the SmartFarmNexus, is a partnership of businesses, communities, and individuals. Beginning with a single smart farm box (or SmartBox), each SmartBox can start as a hydroponics system that grows food, i.e. vegetables, leafy greens, fresh fruits, spices, mushrooms, this project addresses the food desert challenge where deployed. Participants (namely students) are exposed to new skills through projects, teaching, and mentoring, i.e. gaining technology experience deploying sensors and capturing data (IoT); developing and maintaining data analytic workflows (data science) for real-world land and crop management; and managing and maintaining a safe and secure network system (ICT) with cybersecurity techniques and best practices. Each area of focus is an essential project and, cumulatively, these projects address the homework gap and the digital divide challenges where deployed.
Partnering with local property owners, we are setting up and developing venues providing teaching and mentoring environments centered around building and maintaining safe spaces. One of our many objectives is to implement maximum yield food growing microenvironments that are completely sustainable and capable of growing food and generating telemetry data for monitoring system-wide sustainability and security.
Tech+Equation, Inc. has an excessive interest in the participants experience. With project-based learning and mentoring, the overarching goals will allow participants to learn how to be independent problem-solvers.
One of our broader goals is to implement similar frameworks through collaboration with school districts, colleges, and universities, and for the greater community to have safe spaces available to learners of all ages. The skills we are teaching will give populations (including underrepresented individuals) the tools needed to acquire jobs in the relevant workforce where livable incomes are attainable.
Throughout the implementation of a project, small milestones and objectives will be accomplished that are related to discovery sessions leading into a project's "go" day. The objectives entail educational and professional development and understanding of different key topics that the students will be exposed to throughout a project. From introducing students to carpentry and other skills such as electrical wiring, low voltage wiring, solar installation, telecommunications networking, hydroponic design/build, and climate control technology among other key instructional materials, participants will also have the opportunity to develop their personal projects by participating in TIC+TOC.
To assess the success of the implementation of the project, we utilize entry and exit evaluations along with real-time observations utilized during key milestones we will identify throughout the project that are relevant to the cohort. The expectation is that the participants will learn to maintain their framework indefinitely and that peer-to-peer learning will be sustainable.
A SmartFarmNexus project is designed to be implemented during two 10-week programming periods. Additionally, custom timeline development will cause outcomes to vary from site to site. Find out more.
