In Colombia, 59% of the countryside population works in agriculture but recently, there have been more products imported than exported. This negative trade balance can be tied to the traditional ways they perform their practices, instead of utilizing technology and modern tools. Unfortunately, there is a lack of educational services in response to the community’s needs.
Students from El Cauca University have recognized this problem, and want to introduce new educational practices that better fit the community’s rural sector needs. By adapting their educational services to be more flexible and accessible, students will have the ability to learn without having to travel great distances.
The team is developing a modular educational robotics kit, specialized in agriculture, to teach students about STEAM. They plan to create ten of these kits that will be oriented to eighth-grade rural secondary education. Each module will not only educate the student on technological topics, but it will also ultimately perform a function to help out in the agriculture sector. For example, the measurement module will enable the robot to take different environmental measurements.
The robotics kits will be used in Nasa, which is an indigenous community that has been affected by armed conflict for several years. The project team will develop the tests and training of the kit. The team’s goal is to provide more kits to surrounding communities to better educate students and to better their agriculture sector.
The team was granted $5,000 from the IEEE Standards Association, a partner of EPICS in IEEE, for the creation of the 10 robotics kits. The team hopes to improve the agriculture system in Colombia and improve the educational system, to ultimately improve the entire community as a whole.
Check out the project video on YouTube!