Finland: School uses LED grow lights to teach biology

Besides saunas and Santa Claus, the national brand of Finland also stands for high quality education. Numerous articles have been published in the recent decade praising the Finnish educational system and they typically reference the PISA scores where Finnish children rank very high year after year. The latest novelty from this Northern European country is the introduction of the phenomenon based approach to primary education in place of the traditional, subject based approach. A school in the municipality of Espoo is leading the way in this kind of progressive education and re-inventing the way biology is taught.

An example of this is an aquaponics system (vertical farm + aquarium) they had set up in the school where children can observe a closed loop system in practice. Namely, the aquarium water which contains fish feces automatically goes to the plants in the vertical farm. The plants extract the nutrients from this water, thus purifying it after which the water is propagated back to the aquarium. The farm is equipped with research grade LED grow lights from Valoya, typically used by some of the world’s largest research institutes and agricultural companies.

Children spend their days around this high tech farm and take care of it themselves. This immersive environment enables them to learn by doing.

For more information:
Valoya Oy, Finland
Tel: +358 10 2350300
[email protected]
www.valoya.com