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Ag educator adjusts to online classes

The pandemic has forced an Ohio-based educator to learn how to teach hands-on agriculture classes through a screen.

Sasha Sigetic is agroecology program manager at Hocking College.

“It’s been really interesting trying to on-the-fly convert an entire in-person program like teaching people how to farm into an online format,” she says.

Sigetic says students connected and adapted using Blackboard Collaborate, an online platform, but it wasn’t the same as having in-person classes.

“As you can imagine most kids and people who go into farming are not necessarily online tech people,” she says. “They learn by doing.”

She will have nine new students in the fall and says she’s encouraged that young people want to farm and see farming as a viable lifestyle.

Sigetic made these comments during the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association Annual Conference.