The technology industry is booming. By 2022, the value of the global enterprise software market will exceed $500 billion. As we advance these technologies, the people using them are becoming younger and younger, a rising generation of digital natives the likes of which we’ve never seen.
Check out the sixth-grade Environmental Science class St. Cyprian’s Episcopal School in Texas. The teacher, Michelle Haney, saw a bobcat slinking around the chicken coop the class keeps on the grounds. Fearing for their fowl, she set her sixth-grade student Alex Tiu to lead a brainstorming effort for solutions that would protect their chickens from hungry predators.
After some research, the most viable solution he looked into was an automated chicken coop door. While the pest and varmin control industry has 27,000 business operating in the United States, this class took chicken protection and pest prevention into their own hands with well-conceived technical creativity. As a class, their observations concluded that around 7:30 PM, the chickens generally congregated at the coop, ready to roost for the night. He installed the automatic door to close at 8:30 PM, with a one-minute window of time at 9:00 PM for any stray chickens to be able to enter.
They also began installing cameras as part of their observation efforts, this way they could monitor the chickens remotely via their iPads. Hardware and software integration on the Internet of Things by sixth-graders; these young students are learning and implementing complex technical solutions in their own schoolyard microcosm.
“All the kids are going to get the app so they can log in and have a live chicken feed,” Haney said.
Chicken feed. What a wonderful name. Using the chicken feed, they’re able to see inside and outside the coop, monitoring the surrounding areas for be-fanged chicken thieves looking for an unsuspecting snack.
Beyond the tech, they’re working to make safe areas for the chickens to roam. Like, free-range, without being totally free to be eaten. The chicken coop at St. Cyprian’s has brought a class together to brainstorm the effective use of hardware, software, and design all to look after their feathered friends. The chickens may not be the most intelligent creatures, but we think they’re ba-gok-ing gratefully with their new space and security system.
Technology is blazing a path forward, lead by curious youth. Innovative ideas are always born somewhere, so think of this sixth-grade environmental science project and remember that no idea, no matter how trivial, is chicken scratch.
