Problem Solving Science Teaching

Kids especially like fish and kids like water They like classroom aquaria things like that So, ok let's put something in the aquarium that we're going to monitor instead of just look at as an ornamental display Aquaculture fits that perfectly three, four, five, six They can help grow a certain number of fish learn about that species, a native species within the Chesapeake Bay And they can monitor that growth through the whole year Aquaculture is a way of getting kids to be involved in all aspects of science while taking care of a living organism that is ultimately released back to the wild Let's get ready to put this thing back together so we can get ready for our new fish It's not a science class where you do a lab and then it's over with Its every day, we have pumps go down coolers break We have disease problems we have parasite problems It's constant problem solving involving living organisms and that's the key Where's Meghan? Did you bring up the A-CAD drawing? We began in aquaculture approximately 10 years ago What we try to do here, is develop a system that you can build for about three hundred dollars Now with support materials and everything it was considerably more We've grown in 10 years from one tank system to thirteen systems, with over 5,000 gallons of water And we actually tried heat and they just flower and fruit I was friends with Bob Foor-Hogue when I was teaching and I went to him, and we sat down and said, hey, you know what could we do together Maryland Sea Grant Extension Service has been working with us for about the last 4 years We've been in this huge room that I'm in now for about the last 6 We came up with this idea about aquaculture and how do you put this to use in your classroom Well we can get them striped bass from Horn Point This year we're going to have 10 schools to take striped bass to The striped bass that are at Horn Point they are raised there, and they are used for a variety of different research studies They always have enough to give us a few hundred Aquaculture itself blends into a lot of different curricula, at the high school, middle school level, even elementary level You could study the microbiology of what lives in this water the whole nitrogen cycle in terms of doing microbiology Kids are required to collect large amounts of data, they graph it, they analyze it By doing that they're able to tell how well the fish are doing In science, in order to prove something you have to have to have data Bingo, let's grab that one There it is, you can actually see the spores Here's how to get striped bass We box up about 20 to 25 fish in these bags, with oxygen So they'll last the whole day, you put them in coolers and they're fine They've got plenty of oxygen for the day And then we take off and drive And we're getting fish from him today? Yeah We've got this whole route that we figure out beforehand This year we'll go up to Harford County and then we'll start swinging back through Baltimore County, Baltimore City, Anne Arundel County, Montgomery County Carroll County, Frederick County And then we drop the fish off and a lot of these people they know what to do So we bring them in, we say, look, here's the fish We check their salinity, and their temperature and we compare the two with their system, and with the fish that are in the bag And the teacher knows how to acclimate them appropriately I really was surprised because I really thought it was going to be harder to do I really enjoyed putting the unit together because that way I know exactly what everything did It was easier for me to explain how the whole system worked and everything, to the kids by actually setting it up myself And we want to add their salinity, because they're not as salty as we are We don't introduce too many fish at one time It's really not a really big load if their water is prepared correctly I teach everything with the fish We're into the fish in my room, big time And the kids got really protective of the fish Last year, they were all hiding over in a corner They took ownership of the fish