Teaching Environmental Awareness with Smart IoT Planters in Learning Spaces

The TEASPILS project focuses on creating environmental awareness towards plants and greenery, educating young people and their teachers towards ecological learning spaces. Actions will promote and foster awareness of environmental issues in an educational context, e.g. the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the UN Agenda 2030. Unlike the wider agenda of protecting natural habitats like rainforests, our approach aims to stimulate knowledge and appreciation of plants close to the people concerned, i.e. in urban indoor and outdoor environments. Especially, the effects of plants in classrooms, offices, homes and public spaces have hitherto been undervalued. The project will target young people from an early age onwards, with students from primary, secondary and tertiary level to learn about potted plants in their immediate vicinity. With this promotion of plant appreciation at a young age, the project intends to lay the foundation of much wider protective attitudes of natural and artifical flora (and fauna). Therefore, it is considered to enhance thinking about the positive effects plants have on the climate and environmental well-being of our planet.
 

With a technology-enhanced approach using sensors and visualisations, children will not only learn basic facts about plants, but also about care and responsibility towards them. We use the cascading approach via primary and secondary school teachers, educational leaders, lecturers and support staff to establish a wide-ranging plant supported school climate, as well as measuring and evaluating their impact on learning and social behaviours.