DIVE4Ag has stipends for middle and high school teachers and informal educators who have the capacity to commit to helping us recruit and connect students to our project activities, and attend our professional development opportunities! Sign up on link above and share our flyer with your colleagues.
DIVE4Ag offers a series of FREE virtual professional development sessions for middle and high school teachers and informal educators. PD sessions will be listed below. Sign up so we can add you to our list. You will have the option to say you are unable to fully commit. Please, share our flyer with your colleagues.
Watch the recorded session!
Distance Immersive Virtual Education for Agriculture. The DIVE4Ag project brings Pacific Northwest middle and high school youth opportunities to explore topics in agriculture through virtual reality and other online activities. Together, Oregon State University’s Precollege Programs, SMILE Program, and OSU Extension 4-H Youth Development Program lead the effort with community partners to implement an innovative Agriculture Distance Education Toolkit to be fully launched next year.
DIVE4Ag experiences are immersive experiences for middle and high school Pacific Northwest youth and educators to explore agriculture, including virtual reality and online activities that they will help create. Experiences range from half-hour interactive agriculture activities starting now to a full- challenge event in 2022.
We hope to help everyone involved in our project - educators, students, and trained volunteers - build relevant agriculture knowledge and skills through activities exploring different kinds of agricultural practices with a "farm to table" approach. We also want to equip those involved with new communication tools to promote meaningful participation and impactful learning in virtual environments and with innovative technology.
DIVE4Ag's Toolkit provides immediate, yet innovative, authentic and immersive distance agriculture education to middle and high school learners, educators, and trained volunteers in Oregon and Washington. To this aim, the six domains of activities provides different learning experiences and multiple access points to create meaningful learning opportunities and impactful connections for our communities. The kit includes:
We will grow the Oregon 4-H Teens as Teachers program. In this program, high school youth develop leadership skills by creating educational materials and teaching younger students.
Virtual Interactive Labs will be used in the Virtual Agriculture Challenge event. It will use OSU's Situated Virtual Laboratory Project model, which designs virtual lab activities that build knowledge and skills through real tasks.
Materials and resources will be delivered to middle and high school teachers, other educators and volunteers at least twice a year through virtual workshops to implement project activities online.
Youth will have virtual mentorship sessions through OSU Precollege Programs' Beaver Hangouts. These sessions will include live video chats with OSU students about agricultural topics, career paths and college life.
Monthly, one-and-a-half-hour-long virtual opportunities will be offered to youth to learn from and interact with agricultural STEM professionals in lively discussions and hands-on activities. High school youth will design and lead the program with the support of adult mentors.
We will develop Virtual Reality (VR) field experiences featuring farms, agriculture experiment stations and processing facilities. These experiences will be accessible on free smartphone and tablet apps, showing different types of agricultural practices from farm to table or farm to you.
We welcome all middle school and high school teachers to join our team. You can participate in one of two ways: 1) commit to this project for 18 months and participate in monthly 90-minute professional development sessions. Educators receive a $1000 stipend for their participation; or 2) join our listserv and participate in our professional development sessions when you are able.
All educators who receive the $1000 stipend will be asked to commit to the following:
Educators can be expected to commit approximately 25-30 hours to this project.
By educators we mean both classroom teachers and any informal educator (4-H volunteers, club leaders, etc) working with middle and high school level youth.
August 2021- December 2022
Click this link to register today!
In our first professional development session, we will walk you through the process of signing up on our Oregon State University payment system. At the completion of the project, we will send you a check for $1000.
You can still join any of our project activities for educators. They are all virtual and free, and we can sign you up to receive our newsletter and share upcoming opportunities to get you or the youth you work with engaged in DIVE4Ag.
Students you recruit as participants will have the opportunity to engage in all activities: Virtual Reality Ag Fieldtrips (through Xplore DIVE4Ag apps and/or VR kits provided), Beaver Hangouts (Ag education and college readiness led by college students), Ag Science Cafes (activities led by Ag professionals), Ag-related Challenge (event that brings all participants together to demonstrate what they’ve learned), and Teens As Teachers (stipend supported opportunities for high school students to help co-create on this project)!
August Date: 31st 4:30 -6:00
Short Description: Introduction to Timelooper, virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) tools. Educators will examine applications and new tools, explore how virtual field trips are being used nationally by other educators, reflect on how they can use the tools themselves or implement them in the classroom within the context of DIVE4Ag.
While all are immersive technologies (technology that integrates virtual and real-world elements) and have similarities, there are differences.
In virtual reality users are completely immersed in a computer-generated reality when they experience virtual reality. Virtual reality is the most well-known of immersive technologies. While the world of gaming and entertainment were early adopters of virtual reality,VR applications are now used in many organizations and industries including the military, engineering and construction, healthcare, education, business and more.
Pokémon GO is probably the most well-known application of augmented reality—technology that overlays digital information on the real world. Rather than provide a fully immersive virtual experience, augmented reality enhances the real-world with images, text, and other virtual information via devices such as heads-up displays, smartphones, tablets, smart lenses, and AR glasses. Other examples of augmented reality is furniture stores such as Retailer IKEA . They created an AR app that helps shoppers visualize what certain products will look like in their home before they purchase them. The app overlays virtual versions of the products onto the real-live image of customers’ living spaces.
A smart phone and/or a tablet is all most will need. We will also have sets of VR headsets available for loan to educators participating in this project. While VR headsets are not required for participation, VR headsets allow students to have a more immersive experience.
The Ag field trips will all be free apps to download.
Timelooper, our partner on this project, has several field trips free to download. Take a field trip to XPLORE HERITAGE SITES, PARKS, AND MUSEUMS FROM ACROSS THE GLOBE FROM THE COMFORT OF HOME OR SCHOOL. In these experiences you will join leading historians, naturalists, interpreters, and archaeologists who will inspire you with incredible stories, teach you mind-blowing facts, and help you visualize some of the most remote corners of the planet.
Through the use of innovative virtual reality (VR) and augmented (AR) technology, youth will experience immersive agriculture learning. Five field experiences will be deployed through free smartphone and tablet Xplore applications developed in partnership with Timelooper Company. These field experiences take a "farm to table/farm to you" approach to explore topics and concepts related to dairy farms, urban agriculture, aquaculture, organic and sustainable horticulture, and equestrian farms.