Students Dip Toes Into New Project
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Waipahu High School biology students - 560 of them - got to get out of the classroom and into a wet, muddy field as part of the school’s new Watershed Project.
“We’re looking for long-term data collection so that students can see we are going to make a difference or not, especially with the amount of trash that we find,” said biology curriculum chairwoman Janel Horiuchi.
Horiuchi was one of 10 biology teachers who worked together to develop the curriculum for the new project. Last month the teachers split students into 10 groups to implement their plans.
More than 40 teachers watched as they picked up trash, collected water samples and counted wildlife specimens such as frogs, tadpoles and various trees in the Waipahu water-shed, concentrating mostly on areas south of Farrington Highway near Waipahu Depot Street and the Pearl Harbor Bike Path.
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The group consisting of mostly sophomores will return in the spring to collect and compare data.
“We plan to go every year, two times a year,“said Horiuchi.
“We’re working on Google Docs to share the information, and eventually we’ll get GPS readers so that when we’re looking at the specimens we can plot their exact location.”
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That way, according to Horiuchi, the following year’s students will be able to revisit precise locations for continued and consistent data collection.
In addition to global positioning readers, the students will have plenty of hands-on access to technology such as probes, sensors and other tools that they wouldn’t normally get to use in school.
“The students really enjoyed it,” Horiuchi stated. “When you study biology, you can only get so much information from a textbook. And the Internet is nice, but with this you actually go there and get dirty. It’s really memorable.
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