FaceTime Class Visit to the Almond Orchards
One of the hopes I have for this project was to use technology to connect students to the bees and pollination and bring the field into the classroom. I had been in touch with Julianna Parham from Good Food Sandhills in Moore County North Carolina.
Julianna was enthusiastic about trying this out and thought her after school group would like it. After a couple of test calls home and working out a couple of bugs in this, I was able to make a FaceTime call from an almond orchard directly to Julianna’s class and program.
I had asked Julianna if she could get some almonds as part of the discussion on her end. We had a really nice discussion on FaceTime and I was able to show the class the almond orchard where I was filming, the flowers on the trees and the bee hives placed nearby that were pollinating the almond flowers.
I found a couple of last year’s un-shelled nuts and was able to show the class what unprocessed nuts looked like so they could connect all those things to the processed almonds they had on their end.There were some great questions from the students about bees and almonds and it was enjoyed by all.
I hope to have future conversations during the season from other orchards and fields along the way. It was fun and cool and a great opportunity to show something unique to a school group 3000 miles away.