University of Maine - Aquaculture for Teachers Website
Aquaculture is the farming of aquatic organisms, including plants and animals, and is an important and growing sector of Maine’s economy. Due to the over-exploitation of natural populations of many seafood species, societies are looking more and more to aquaculture as a source of seafood. Aquaculture, however, promises to provide more than just food on the table. It is a potential source of medicines and other biological materials and will likely play an increasing role in conservation efforts for threatened and endangered species. Since 2006, we have hosted a workshop for teachers on integrating topics in aquaculture into elementary, middle and high school science curricula. The goals of our aquaculture workshop are to introduce teachers to the variety of aquaculture activities at the University of Maine, provide background material to increase teachers’ knowledge base in aquaculture and associated fields, demonstrate active-learning and inquiry-based activities rooted in aquaculture that can be readily used in the classroom to demonstrate concepts in chemistry, physics, and genetics, and work with teachers during and after the workshop to further develop these activities so they become highly useful educational tools that other teachers will want to adopt. More information on the three aquaculture workshops held, thus far, and information on the activities developed for and as a result of the workshop can be found by following the links, below.

HOME	CLASSROOM ACTIVITIES	PREVIOUS WORKSHOPS	UM TROPICAL FISH LAB	RELATED SITES	OTHER LINKS

	Funded in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation to Dr. Paul Rawson in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine

This site is under construction (August 2008)