Sunday, July 21, 2019

Insert "Pi" Pun Here

I'm trying to figure out how to use one of these Raspberry Pi things.

A little back story. Last December my students pulled off an amazing "Green Solutions" showcase event at our school. Short on time and with not-fully-formed vision they invited guest speakers, called it the Edu-Green Show (we're all in this together, right?), and as teams and individuals got to work on tracking their environmentally themed project progress on Trello. Two girls converted their bedrooms to mock "tiny homes" and analyzed their trash/waste rates. One kid made a rain barrel. Locally grown vs not taste test anyone? Biodegradable McDonalds toys made from milk plastic (ooo that smell). This list goes on. Some serious, some comical. Some brilliant, some questionable. Wide range of feasibility. I loved it.

A team of students took it upon themselves to organize the actual gallery walk and did a fabulous job wrangling guests from West Michigan Environmental Action Council and the sustainability coordinator for the City of Grand Rapids. Meanwhile, I was asking questions like "did you CC me on that email? You forgot again? Ok, well, you got this under control right?".

Good times. But next year, better times.

I had numerous students getting stuck on evaluating the effectiveness of their green solutions. Would adopting a bunch of "rescue" house plants really affect the air quality in our school? How does this anti-light pollution concept actually affect the number of lumens above the street light?

Enter, Raspberry Pi. And also more of me not quite knowing what I'm talking about. Yet.

I'm creating an Innovative Technology Plan to be more prepared to assist my students in testing out and quantifying the success of their green solution ideas. Check it out and leave a comment. 

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