Design Challenge: Why Do Animals Panic?
In this Design Challenge we learn what motivates common farmyard animals and how we can better treat them.
Design Challenge: The Large And The Small
This Design Challenge we explore how scale affects the way life, light, and reality interact. We sort the scales here.
Design Challenge: Build a Stomach
In this Design Challenge we will explore how living animals digest food and create energy and wastes by creating a stomach.
Lesson: Understanding pH
In this lesson we explore the pH scale to understand the basic chemistry of life in terms of acids and bases. Water is neutral.
Design Challenge: Prepare a Microscope Slide
In this Design Challenge we present students with the opportunity to see material on a slide and how to see it.
Lesson: Vital Signs and Ecologies
This lesson is an exploration of the way that ecosystems all work together and find life. Here we take their vital signs.
Lesson: Types of Baths on a Farm
In this lesson we discuss the alternatives to water to bath and care for animals and insects on a farm. You will be surprised.
Design Challenge: Build an Animal Tractor
In this design challenge we ask students to build a system to keep animals safe and healthy. With many options.
Lesson: Public Speaking 101
In this lesson we discuss why speaking in front of people is so hard, and what the secret is to being able to do it very well.
Lesson: Phases of Matter
I this lesson we take a closer look at pressure, temperature, water and the three most common phases of matter. Solid, liquid, gas.
Lesson: Under Pressure
This is a core lesson on the role of pressure in all its many forms at Mezzacello. A heavy and forceful issue! Under Pressure indeed!
BioTech Lesson Plans
BioTech Camp 2023 five day lesson plans with lesson, activity, design challenge and presentation data. Teacher resource for use at Mezzacello.
Lesson: Pattern, Structure, Process
This is a core lesson: how to understand more complex problems through systems engineering principles and reframe problems.
From Waste to Water
Using off the shelf buckets, washed sand, gravel, charcoal and was large river stone we can purify even the dirtiest water.
Avian Flu and Sanitation
Avian Flu is deadly for chickens and ducks. When kids visit Mezzacello, I insist they sterilize the shoes in bleach. All feet covered!
Reset The Bio Dome
The Bio dome project has failed. Too many variables to control and not enough hands on the job. Will reset and try again. Heat, Water, life.
Lesson: As Above So Below
Life is a dance of balance with soil or water below, the ground barrier between and the atmosphere above. Pattern, Process, structure.
The First Chick of 2022
Eight random eggs fertilized by a rooster and set into an automated incubator. The trick was a bath matte. I had to keep the eggs warm!
Chicken TV, Coop Tech, and Safety
Poultry monitoring using remote cameras and advanced tracking software and sensors. You know a futuristic chicken coop
Lesson: Micro Hydroponics Systems
Students will repurpose takeout container to start growing seedlings in a small hydroponic container with a heat map to promote germination and growth,