The Future of Food

Preparation

• Review the suggested videos in the resource section (below) to make sure that they are working on your devices and that they are suitable for your class.
• If viewing VR videos, make sure all VR devices are fully charged and a YouTube video viewer app is downloaded and activated on your devices.
• Make sure students have at least basic CoSpaces accounts set-up. Please note that CoSpaces Basic accounts have limitations.
• Students should have a basic understanding of how to use CoSpaces, including coding. If not, please add 1 x 60 minutes for learning CoSpaces.
• If you haven’t had a chance to discuss VR and AR safety with your class, please make sure to do so.

Activity Sequence

1. Discuss what the students know about how food is currently produced. Get students to think about food consumption: 14 Surprising stats about Global Food Consumption. Discuss the issue of how much food people would need in 2030 and 2050. Why does this matter? How will this affect them?
2. As a class, watch ‘The Future of Farming‘. You may also opt to show other videos/VR videos from the Additional Notes and Resources section.
3. Discuss what you’ve watched as a class. Get students to share what they’ve learnt and what ideas came to mind while watching the videos. Talk about how sustainability and climate change can affect the future of farming.
4. Brainstorm one or two food production issues that they would be interested in focusing on (e.g., sustainability, waste management, climate change, etc). Discuss how they can come up with potential solutions to the issues.
5. Using CoSpaces, design a ‘Farm of the Future’ based on their potential solution to a food production issue. What would their farm look like? What types of technologies would they be using (e.g., robots, AI, drones, etc)? What would their farm produce – how and why? Get students to consider adaptations and other scientific factors in their designs.
6. To give students some ideas or guidance, the teacher may wish to show this example Farm of the Future on CoSpaces (view on VR headsets or the laptop).
7. Depending on your learning goals, you can also get students to consider measurement, scale, perimeter, area, volume, etc. in their designed solutions.
8. Share and provide feedback for student designs and creations.

Download the PDF for more information.