Tuesday, September 11

The new week is going well.  Students are setting up their blogs and I am linking them to my Schoolweb page.  So far, it has well.  I still have few groups that have to fix their internet address and one group who can't get their blog set up at all. The blog just doesn't like the.  

This week we are focusing on water quality.  Students are testing ammonia and nitrite to make sure we don't have any spikes that will kill fish.  The are also using the Aquacheck because it measures chlorine, hardness, alkaliniity, and pH.  Once they have the data in their journal then we talk about why the number are they way the are.   We have very hard water here due to a lot of limestone so our hardness and alkalinity are high.  Our pH usually runs from 7.8 to 8.4.  

Later this week I will set up my PASCO probes and will we check temperature, pH, conductivity and temperature.   If you have a smart phone you can download an app for SPARKvue and using an AirLink 2 (wireless sensor) students can read the data on their phone.  Kind of cool!

My R 2 Fish School kits are on their way.  I plan on setting up 4 training tanks for the students.  They will pick one of their fish to work with and then bring him to the training tank.  Hopefully they will be successful in teaching their fish to do a trick.  Never done this before but if it works it will be awesome. 

Tomorrow, I am going to a local creek and pond and collect algae. Then I will set up a macroinvertibrate lab.  Students will capture anything that moves in the water, examine it under the dissecting microscope, and then feed it to their fish.  I am hoping we find daphnia, seed shrimp, scuds and copapods.  It would really cool if we find some leaches - they love leaches because  they are so gross!