Measuring Growth Conditions of Salad Plants Using Sensors: A High School Project

Abstract

<p><strong>Abstract.</strong> Geoinformatics (GI) education is widely used as a spatial visualization-interdisciplinary tools for its ability to understand the geographical phenomenon around us in the past and model the future scenario. Its global importance and usage have made the need of disseminating the education with public and school students. The MSc. Students of different backgrounds at Institute for Geoinformatics in the University of Munster were involved in one of such works through the seminar cum project on ‘Transdisciplinary education in Geoinformatics’ through GI@School Lab with the aim of engaging high school students on applying GI knowledge on Agriculture. The grade 12 students were presented with the ongoing GI empowered research projects at first such that the school students developed the project ideas of their interests to use GI on agricultural sectors based on which MSc students developed 4 different projects and Growth Condition (Sensors) is one of them. This project aims to determine the best suited condition for Salad plants growth based on the size of the Salad leaves measured after monitoring the growth of the plants by planting them on 4 plastic boxes filled with same soil type but in different lighting conditions and water conditions to be measured by the concerned sensors to after the 8 weeks of indoor growth. The project execution week took place as the 5-day workshop and feedbacks were taken as questionnaire surveys from the participated students and concerned teachers for the project evaluation. The sensors-collected data could even serve as the ground truth data of a citizen observatory projects for Copernicus in-situ component. The whole project aims at reducing generational gaps between the students by bringing them the opportunity for knowledge co-creation through transdisciplinary projects on agricultural sector using GI technologies.</p>