Inside Urban Green

Virtual Pets for Young Children

A teacher in New York City uses "virtual pets" in her special education classes. I found that most interesting and have no quarrel with it. We do, after all, live in a digital age and there's no escaping it. It's a creative idea.

Her classroom technique, however, reminded me of my belief that living plants are perfect pets for urban kids who are not able to have an animal pet. The care of living plants can also teach responsibility and naturing concepts at an early age. This would be an excellent use of a plant mini-lab in K-2 classrooms.

Vertical Farm

Okay, so it's not a real "vertical farm". Think of it as an embryonic vertical farm. We need to start some where other than the outdated clay pots and saucers inside many of our homes and offices. They were only modern in the time of the ancients.

This is one of the Inside Plants Science Mini-Labs that is now in my Brooklyn apartment. This is what should be (but isn't) in the science lab of every school in America. If it were, we would be a lot further along in science education. We would be a lot further along a path to more local food production. As it is, due to a lack of up-to-date information most of us are still crawling in a horticultural kindergarten.

What you’re looking at is an investment of under $100 for a 4’x6’ InterMetro style rolling rack (Costco) with 1” increment adjustable shelves. It currently has two shop lights with room for more. This one is chrome but you can find them in black and white powder coat finishes.

Do I hear objections to fluorescent lighting? If so, put the garden in your office, a spare room or a bedroom if it bothers you to have it in your living area. With a timer, it can come on at night when you’re asleep. Use a little creativity. The result will be well worth it.

I’ve gotten very used to this garden and would miss its presence. It provides a cheery view when the weather outside is winter bleak. I lived with ten of these racks in my home back in San Diego. They soon will be rolling into some Brooklyn school rooms helping to teach modern plant science.

Commercial light gardens of this type cost much more. Those from Gardener’s Supply and the National Gardening Association will likely cost you over $700 delivered. Neither of them does any more than what you see above. Incidentally, note that there are no drainage trays, saucers or catch pans. None are needed when using sub-irrigation.

The small Ficus trees growing in expanded clay pebbles were rescued from temporary storage in the middle school science lab. The recycled pop bottle planters and propagators produced the results you see here and here.

Brooklyn Science Teachers Learn About the Lab Donation

A group of Brooklyn public school science teachers had the patience to listen through some significant technological and human mishaps yesterday. In spite of everything, there were still many sets of bright eyes in the room from my vantage point. They appeared to me as beacons of light looking for new knowledge to share with their students.

They were listening to information about digital age container plant science and the lab donation as I was fumbling with digital age communications. This was my first PowerPoint type presentation using my new MacBook. Only this past week I overcame my tutorial resistance and dived into creating a presentation using Keynote (Apple's version of PowerPoint).

The presentation was completed the night before but as happens without adequate rehearsal time everything went wrong. The slides wouldn’t project properly and we discovered that the room was booked following us so that an hour had to be eliminated from our meeting.

After struggling with the projector problem for some time, the a/v specialist at the school switched the file to project through PowerPoint software, which I have never used. Viola, the colors were now true, but the left side of the slides was clipped and time was running short.

Who knows what the problem was. Was PC rejecting Mac again? In any case, I was not able to react and cut my presentation to fit the now limited time available. We really just scratched the surface of the lab donation project. Everyone willing, I’m sure we can remedy this in a future meeting.

I’ve learned a lot about blogging over the past four years, but I’ve a lot to learn about modern methods of real world presentation. I’m dedicated to becoming a better presenter using these methods. I now see the potential of PowerPoint (Keynote) and sound video presentations. There will be a lot more of both on this blog in the future.