This site section is the location for ongoing conversations between various groups associated with OPEN's Sustainable Agriculture Programs.

This course contains the indoor class experiments which attempt to determine the concentrations of natural organic nitrates that will inevitably leach through topsoil into groundwater aquifers or stream runoff.  Students will use pots, topsoil mixtures, and recommended monitoring equipment and materials, and through scheduled waterings of the their plants measure the nitrate concentrations.  The controlled environment indoor experiments attempt to simulate the situation and conditions on farmlands.  Researchers will try to determine at what nitrate levels can we still obtain safe supplies of drinking water from field runoff or from water extracted later from aquifers.  Students and researchers would consider ways to address this issue in obtaining safe drinking water from groundwater at or downstream from farmlands.

This course provides the guidance for building the sensors provided in the OPEN/RAK STEM Kit. 

The units are specific to different sensors, and 3D printing.

Each Sensor unit includes the programming and networking steps for installing and setting up the sensors for installation and use.

In this course we will introduce students, (teachers, local community members, and government officials) to this critical aspect of the modern Internet.  We will cover general cybersecurity concepts, current and evolving threats and vulnerabilities of our devices, software, data centers, and networking systems.  We will focus on IoT Internet-connected sensors, now numbering in the billions of devices deployed worldwide, and the special tributary networks on which they operate, specifically environmental and smart farm sensors.   

We will show how these edge devices and networks have become another major vulnerability for businesses and governments who operate them.  We will describe how the IoT sector and other industries and governments are beginning to address this new class of device vulnerabilities and more sophisticated evolving threats.  Lastly our cybersecurity expert instructor will put forth a basic roadmap of how all institutions can better protect their systems, product supply chain vulnerabilities, and in turn our societies who now more than ever depend on a secure/safe Internet end-to-end.

Introduction to Esri Geospatial Mapping Technologies.  Esri the global leader in location-based mapping software and services which cover a wide variety of sustainable community development applications – Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry, Water, Land Management, Community Emergency Services, Environmental Remediation, Ecosystem Restoration Initiatives, Community Planning, and more. 

Course creators Laurel Hickey of South Shore Support Services for Special Education for young adult learners; Dr. Badewa Williams of the Royal School for Educational Therapy Foundation (RSETF) and Marie David of Vantage Point Academy have developed this course to assist teachers throughout Africa and other regions in educate special needs students for entrepreneurship and leadership skills to allow them to self-advocate and live fulfilling lives.

This series of instruction videos will show your students how to construct a working CO2 sensor to not only monitor dangerous volcano gases such as is a concern in Goma City, DR Congo, but also to track levels of this gas in the atmosphere to measure climate change impacts.