[Monte] Today, we're at Corinda State High School, approximately 12 kilometres from Brisbane's CBD.
I'm standing in the middle of this Smart Farm where a variety of crops, goats, sheep, alpacas and bee hives
are thriving. It's all powered by wind and solar, and they've even got two classrooms
entirely off the grid. So, what is a Smart Farm and what does it have to do with education?
[Gentle music]
[Tom] So, a Smart Farm looks at using technology to gather data to better manage what's happening
on the farm, and of course, those things then can get spread across other curriculum areas,
in terms of Maths and Biol and Science.
So, what it really involves is digging deeper in what's happening on your property,
in this case, our agricultural farm.
So, looking at what's happening in our plants, animals and micro-climates,
across our whole school. So, we put a range of sensors out there to gather
that information--that data--and collate it in one place, so that students and staff
can analyse that data and see what's happening, minute by minute, on our farm.
It started three years ago with a visioning exercise,
and we wanted to be the smartest farm out there.
[Monte] Smart Farms are an authentic context for students to critically engage with data
and understand the strong and natural links between learning areas.
[Reflective music]
[Lucas] This is our mulberry tree. It has a dendrometer attached to it,
and that measures the growth and uptake of water in the tree.
So, using that in conjunction with a soil moisture sensor and humidity sensor,
we can figure out how much water the tree takes up during the day, as well as its overall growth.
So, this is our NDVI sensor, and this is measuring solar radiation
and also the colour of our pasture.
So, this allows us to calculate biomass, and it's coupled with the moisture sensor that is
about a metre deep, and it helps us to detect all the moisture at various layers of the pasture.
So, these are our beehives here at Corinda, and some of them have sensors underneath
them that measure the temperature, humidity and weight of the hive,
and this allows us to calculate the growth of the hive, and all of this data is uploaded to
a central location for all of the different hives around the world using this system,
so that we can try and calculate how growth is going around the world with bee populations.
[Tom] The hive buildings are really good too. They use solar power to power batteries that
then run the classrooms. They have full tech equipment inside the classrooms,
including air conditioning--totally off the grid.
The cool thing is the kids can correlate the data from the solar panels
and our smartphone dashboard to look at the efficiency of the panels.
[Natalie] At Corinda, here in the Maths faculty, we're really looking
forward to getting the data from the Smart Farm.
One of the requirements of our syllabus is that the students' tasks are individualised.
So, that means that they can use a particular set of data that's of interest to them that
comes out of the farm and make the appropriate assumptions around that.
[Lauren] So, we utilise the ponds and the Smart Farm for our Cert II in
Sampling and Measurement, and also our Cert III in Laboratory Skills.
We also utilise the ponds because we know that we can look at oxygen levels.
We can also look at algae sampling. We also then compare and correlate that data between our
creek which is just down the bottom of the farm, and then we then take that information and put
that across into our Science in Practice students' work, as well, where they go
and do a creek excursion, and then we also then compare that to our farm water quality, as well.
So, we do a lot of water quality control to ensure that we know
that what we're providing here is of a decent nature.
[Lucas] So, the smartphone sensors allow us to share
data with other schools and other organisations and to see their data.
So, it will give the students a chance to communicate with other schools and see what they
do with their sensors and what we do with our sensors,
and sort of make a bit of a community around smart farming.
If you're going to start a Smart Farm at your school, the easiest thing is just,
there are some really basic sensors that you can buy yourself, commercially available,
Micro:bits and things like that, that are very easy to code, very easy to get started with,
before you have to go to all the bigger, fancier sensors.
The first sensors we started with were actually some, um, ones for our hydroponics
that detected the pH, electro-conductivity and the temperature of the water, and since then
we've grown from there, with the integrated sensors that all go to the same dashboard.
[Tom] So, the next step is to make sure that we're embedding this in our curriculum,
across the whole school, and not to stop.
It's just expanding and expanding and expanding.
[Monte] Today, we've seen how a Smart Farm can provide opportunities to collect meaningful data
that can be used in Science, Technologies and Mathematics. We've also seen how to
embed technology to remotely monitor and gather data through sensors and dashboards.
Providing opportunities for staff and students to collect and analyse meaningful data
increases their connection to real-world outcomes.
This builds capacity for thinking and acting
in ways that are necessary to create a more sustainable future.