April 22, 2021 - The move to a digital format by Glacier FarmMedia (GFM) Ag in Motion at Discovery Farm Langham in 2020 has created the opportunity to add valuable content to the education of Saskatchewan Polytechnic Agricultural Equipment Technician students.
Due to the global pandemic, Ag in Motion was reinvented last year and moved to online delivery of its array of field and livestock demonstrations as well as field research programs. The result was hours of video footage that continues the practice of celebrating agricultural innovation, footage too good to collect dust in an archive.
“One of the goals of Ag in Motion is to highlight advances in machinery technology and we spent a great deal of time capturing the latest models and features on video for our 2020 show,” said Blake Weiseth, Applied Research lead for Discovery Farm Langham and Agriculture research chair with Sask Polytech. “We’re building on our long-standing partnership with Sask Polytech by making these videos available to students pursuing careers as agricultural equipment technicians.”
Chris Thomson, program head of Sask Polytech’s Agricultural Equipment Technician program, said it is often difficult to find online content that illustrates for students what various pieces of machinery look like in the field. “We teach operating principles, like hydraulics, but we need to be able to show students the scope, size and variety of configurations of particular pieces of equipment.”
This digital content also offers a great resource for apprentices who will one day be the agricultural sector’s equipment experts.
The GFM videos not only provide detailed views of equipment produced by a range of manufacturers but also, thanks to high-quality drone footage, capture the machinery in action in the field, a benefit for students whose exposure to the range of equipment configurations may be limited, said Thomson.
“The videos add a lot of good, practical information into the theory content of our programs,” he said. “We’re always looking to keep the program fresh,” and embedding the GFM videos into the Sask Polytech online learning platform allows students to access the material any time during their studies.
“We really appreciate Glacier FarmMedia’s openness to share this valuable resource.”
Weiseth said producing the videos featuring all aspects of Ag in Motion at Discovery Farm Langham “was a necessity last year, but they’ve proven to have tremendous added value in training agricultural equipment technicians of the future.”