A Living Laboratory: How SmartFlower and Fluxspace are bringing hands-on innovation into STEM classrooms
Recently, SmartFlower Solar and Fluxspace, an educational organization that develops programs and environments that help educators and students engage with learning, collaborated for a living laboratory event showcasing Fluxspace’s newest hands-on learning systems, including a SmartFlower demonstration.
SmartFlower & Fluxspace Showcase
The event, which took place at Fluxspace’s Experience Center in Norristown, PA, “was designed to introduce attendees to the SmartFlower and spark a broader conversation around sustainability, renewable energy, and the role schools can play in preparing students for the future,” according to Ryne Anthony, Fluxspace Co-Founder and Director of Innovation.
The event included a speech from Ryne Anthony along with Melissa Quast, SmartFlower’s Commercial Operations Manager, and Dr. Christian Penny, a professor at West Chester University who teaches a week-long summer camp to rising high school seniors interested in teaching.
Dr. Penny brought his students to the event, which began with a brief presentation about the mechanisms of a SmartFlower and the educational opportunities it creates. After the presentation, a SmartFlower demonstration allowed visitors to see the solar system operate in real time and sparked curiosity—one student even asked to reopen the SmartFlower after the demo had concluded. Ryne Anthony says that this “excitement and curiosity are exactly what great learning experiences should create.”
When the demo wrapped up, everyone was welcomed inside Fluxspace for a tour of the Experience Center to showcase innovative learning environments, emerging technology, and models for integrating sustainability into hands-on learning.
Event Takeaways
Melissa Quast noted that the tour’s themes were “making connections between education and technology, preparing [students] to work in the future world they will grow into, [and expanding] their ideas about how they can apply skills and interests when they get to the workforce.”
In the end, the event did more than just spark conversations about renewable energy and sustainability. The conversation expanded into emerging technologies, career pathways, future-ready schools, and the importance of learning environments that prioritize curiosity and problem-solving.
Looking Forward
Leaving the event, Melissa Quast hopes that the students left “thinking about how renewable energy can be integrated in schools when or if they come into teaching.” Ryne Anthony echoes this, saying he hopes that attendees leave with a new perspective on the SmartFlower and its role in education. “While its innovative design and solar technology are impressive on their own,” he says, “its ability to support hands-on learning, spark curiosity, and bring sustainability concepts to life is what makes it especially powerful.”
Ryne Anthony closed off by explaining that “the SmartFlower became the catalyst for a much larger conversation about preparing today’s students for tomorrow’s world, and that’s exactly the kind of dialogue we love to facilitate at Fluxspace.”
To learn more about adopting SmartFlower’s STEM education framework into your classroom, check out our curriculum framework: smartflower-stem-curriculum-framework.pdf
