Reference no: EM133589285

"When the student is ready the teacher will appear.
When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear." Lao Tzu

Many public and technical schools in over thirty states have adopted classroom aquaculture projects as a way to introduce students to aquatic biology, environmental issues, and restoration ecology, in addition to connecting them to their community outside of the classroom.

This research will familiarize you with an aquaculture system that is much more complicated than the goldfish bowl, but in application, both require planning and maintenance; as well as the procedure for gaining support and the background knowledge for establishing one.

Classroom aquaculture projects encourage collaboration with other students, instructors and professionals; provide examples of aquaculture production and methods; contrast large scale commercial operations with small scale, artisanal and research projects; identify appropriate water quality variables and management requirements; and provide examples of compatible species that might support an expanded aquaculture project in that area.

This will also introduce you to the process of searching for sites, materials and species for evaluating and nominating a site for your Course Project in the Atlas.

Your challenge is to develop a proposal for a classroom aquaculture project in your community. Begin with a (1) Search online for three different such classroom aquaculture programs to familiarize yourself with these efforts and to analyze them as an aquaculture system; (2) picture yourself as a teacher or community member who wishes to introduce such a program to your town or the school you attended; and then (3) layout the procedure and justification for doing so to the school administrators and community. Please include the following in your project proposal:

Descriptive title and project location (city, state, school)
Project Introduction (brief paragraph introducing and describing the project)
Methods (several paragraphs describing the species to be cultured, aquaculture system set-up, monitoring and maintenance plans)
Project Goals and Justification (describe the goals and learning outcomes of the project; describe the benefits to the community aside from education, such as restoration, wild fisheries enhancement, food production, etc.)
Project Partners (list the organizations, people, and community members that you plan to involve and collaborate with on the project)
Timeline (provide a brief outline of the steps and proposed timeline for each major component of project activities)