New resource brings agriculture resources into Canadian schools

Feb 22, 2022

Guelph - A successful partnership between Farm & Food Care (FFC) and Agriculture in the Classroom Canada (AITC-C) has led to the completion of a national classroom online resource designed to give students and teachers across Canada the opportunity to dig deeper into the virtual farm tours available at FarmFood360.ca. It was released today in celebration of Canada’s Agriculture Day.

FarmFood360° virtual reality farm tours allow Canadians to tour real, working farms and food processing facilities on tablets and desktop computers, as well as through mobile phones and VR (Virtual Reality) devices. These tours are a natural fit for thousands of teachers and students for use in online learning and for agricultural organizations seeking to connect with consumers virtually.

Since students across Canada turned to online learning at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there’s been a growing number of requests from educators wanting to find ways to use the tours in their classrooms. In 2021, the site hosted more than a million visitors who viewed the 22 tours available.

The online resource that now accompanies the FarmFood360° VR tours was produced by AITC-C, working in collaboration with FFC. There are activities for all 22 tours – each encouraging students to watch the videos and take a virtual tour and then answer questions about what they saw. With the help of AITC-C’s provincial agriculture in the classroom organizations, it will be distributed digitally to classrooms across Canada.

Bonnie den Haan, Chair of Farm & Food Care Ontario, said, “The partnership between AITC-C and Farm & Food Care builds on the strengths of both organizations. Working with AITC-C to create this curriculum-based program will extend the reach of our innovative resources. We’re excited to see this partnership taking FarmFood360° into classrooms from coast to coast.”

“We are pleased to bring the virtual tours at FarmFood360° into the hands of Canadian educators,” said Johanne Ross, Executive Director of AITC-C. “We want students to be curious and excited about learning about Canada’s agriculture and food story. Through this resource, we are providing teachers with a link to bring this story to life in the classroom.”

Source : Farm & Food Care

Video: Learning to Wrench From Dad the Hard Way

Harvest is a week out and the farm picked this week to fall apart. The truck needs a battery, the barn curtain's got a problem, and the corn and beans are telling us we're out of time to get it all fixed.

So it's a full day of wrenching. Tork supervises while I get the truck back running, then we're out at the hog barn where one rusted up part has the whole curtain system hung up. Ladder work, cable work, and a little dad-and-son disagreement about the right way to do it. We close it out walking the fields, shelling beans and checking corn, because whether everything's fixed or not, harvest starts when harvest starts.

Chapters: 00:00 Everything breaks the week before harvest 01:00 Tork supervises while I fix the truck 12:30 Out to the barn to find the curtain problem 14:30 One rusty part hung up the whole curtain 20:00 Running the curtain cable from the ladder 24:00 Walking the beans and corn before harvest 26:30 Wrapping up

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