{"id":117,"date":"2014-10-10T10:04:08","date_gmt":"2014-10-10T14:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/?p=117"},"modified":"2014-10-10T10:04:08","modified_gmt":"2014-10-10T14:04:08","slug":"tech-wizards-generate-potential-solutions-to-help-farmers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/2014\/10\/10\/tech-wizards-generate-potential-solutions-to-help-farmers\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech Wizards Generate Potential Solutions to Help Farmers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Part of Tech Wizards programming includes doing a community service project, which we integrated into OMK\u2019s July 2014 camp. 4-H Educator Rose Garritano connected us to another UVM Extension employee, Ben Waterman, who has been working on a solar powered water pump. This paired well with our work building solar powered cars! Ben,\u00a0 in his role with UVM’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, is\u00a0 working out kinks in a solar powered water pump project that irrigates\u00a0 water dependent rice paddies\u00a0 of new American farmers from Nepal.<\/p>\n

\"pump\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The task of the Tech Wizard campers was to create a new and or modified version of Ben Waterman\u2019s current water pump design. Youth were told that their design needed to follow these guidelines: be able to rise and fall with the river\u2019s water level, withstand various weather occurrences, house a stable place for the water pump, as well as be\u00a0 designed\u00a0 to not get stuck in the mud of the river bank.<\/p>\n

Students broke up into groups of 3 or 4 to come up with a design and construct their vision. Materials available to groups were: large and small popsicle sticks, aluminum soda cans, 12 oz soda bottles, hot glue, and duct tape.<\/p>\n

OMK Tech Wizard campers spent one day designing and constructing their water pump flotation devices. Once youth had a design plan, they dove right into their first stage of construction was complete. After a good stopping point in their construction we circled up as a group for design presentations- an opportunity for others to give feedback. This provided groups with the opportunity to brainstorm further construction and learn others suggestions for their designs. It was a great opportunity for youth to be reminded of challenge guidelines and to think a bit more about their design.<\/p>\n

After youth finished their second phase of construction, we came back together as a group to practice presenting designs in preparation for presentations to Ben Waterman. Ben came to\u00a0 our camp and listened to design explanations.\u00a0 He told the\u00a0 kids about his water pump’s current design, its successes and failures, as well as a bit about the farmers and their crops. The group of Nepali farmers he works with are trying to figure out how to successfully grow rice in Vermont. Part of this challenge is keeping the rice paddies fully stocked with water- which is where the solar powered water pump comes in. Things in the design that they are still working on are keeping the water pump low\u00a0maintenance and a design that won\u2019t get stuck in the riverbanks.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \"pump2\"<\/a>\"pump3\"<\/a>\"pump1\"<\/p>\n

After youth presented their designs to Ben Waterman he gave each group feedback about their design and\u00a0 told them how their design could be applied to the\u00a0 water pump project down at the farm. It was really exciting to see kid\u2019s hard work contributing their innovative ideas to a relevant local agriculture project in their own community!<\/p>\n

\"pump4\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Part of Tech Wizards programming includes doing a community service project, which we integrated into OMK\u2019s July 2014 camp. 4-H Educator Rose Garritano connected us to another UVM Extension employee, Ben Waterman, who has been working on a solar powered water pump. This paired well with our work building solar powered cars! Ben,\u00a0 in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2670,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2670"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":123,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/wizards\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}