Christy+Robtoy

//"The River Project has a growing oyster outreach component in partnership with NY/NJ Baykeeper, the New York Harbor School, and the Harbor Estuary Stewardship Program. This work allows oyster gardeners to learn about local ecology while they participate in hands on restoration and promote a broader community support for improving the environmental health of the harbor. This program currently involves hundreds of oyster gardeners from schools and community organizations around New York City."//

The local habitat restoration project that I explored is a program that has been set up for with cooperation from a lot of organizations, including many schools, to restore the oyster population in the Hudson River and thus help rebuild the ecosystem and clean up the pollution. The site for this project provides useful information on what has been done and materials that can be used to bring the learning into the classroom and get students involved.
 * Introduction to restoration project:**

The River Project or [|Oyster Restoration] has been closely studied since 1998 around Pier 26 along the Hudson River in New York City. Currently there are plans underway to begin to replenish the eastern oyster, or //Crassostrea virginica,// in the Tribeca. Rebuilding the oyster population in New York Harbor is an important first step to restoring the local marine ecosystem. Oysters had a high population density in the Harbor until overfishing and pollution began to destroy them and their habitat. Now due to decrease in water pollution of the Hudson and programs to clean up the New York area oysters have begun to reappear in small numbers on their own after over a 100 years. This project seeks to increase this growth of the oyster population. Oysters are an essential part of their ecosystem because they support many animals and plants species, over 200. Furthermore, oysters are important to reducing pollution and the existence of particles in the water as they filter large amounts of water daily. One oyster can filter over three liters of water every hour!
 * Background Information:**

This wiki and the project its self are great tools to bring to the classroom. This is a great way to have students learn hands-on about how habitat restoration works and it gives information on how schools and students can become personally involved, which many schools already have. By being a local project students can personally connect to this restoration project and understand the importance of contributing to it because it will directly effect their lives in the near future. This site provides a lot of useful information and videos that can be viewed to originally introduce the topic and as a lead in to discussing restoration ecology and why it is important in our world today. It is important for people to understand the rational and feel connected to things in order to become actively involved, if you do not care about a place you will not care what happens to it or how it is cared for. This is true for students as well, that is why it is important to bring outside information into the classroom that allow students to fully connect and understand the topic. Creating a wiki that students can explore and learn about a specific project in their area helps them make this connection to understanding restoration ecology and taking responsibility for the ecosystem in which they live. Additionally this project is important because it allows for concrete examples that students can relate to instead of merely lecturing them on what restoration ecology is through abstract explanation and examples. I also feel that the use of a wiki is a great tool to bring into the classroom because it allows students exposure to technology in their learning, yet allows the teacher to limit what they can look at, another great tool similar to this would be to create a web quest about local restoration projects that students can explore themselves and then present to the class. This would give greater exposure and allow students to decide which project(s) they want to contribute to.
 * Connection to Classroom and Students:**

Below are some helpful links found on the site to materials that I would incorporate into a lesson on this specific restoration project and restoration ecology as a whole.

[|Video of River Habitat] This link provide a lot of great videos of the actual marine habitat of New York Harbor [|Student Internships] This link discusses how students can register for an internship working closely with staff of the biology research team. (This is only for secondary education students, but would be great to let elementary students know that it is available.) [|Exploration Lab] This page gives information about the "wet lab" and how students can visit and become part of the hands-on learning experience. (Contact information is included.) [|Field Trip Opportunities] This link talks about the possible field trips associated with this specific restoration project [|Hudson River Today] This is a page that contains a wide variety of information discussing the Hudson River and the plants and animals that live in it. (Great page to have students explore to find additional information about this specific habitat and the role that the oysters play in it.)

//Comment on Hoi Wong's page: I really like the wiki that you created describing the restoration project in Jamaica Bay. It is really important to help protect and restore local wildlife and this project is definitely doing this. I think that it is great that local community members are getting involved and helping in the effort to clean up the local area so that this great bird sanctuary can be restored and maintained. Your idea of getting parents involved project through having it as an assignment for students is interesting. It is important as teachers to find inventive ways to get parents involved in the academic lives of students and help lead to their success.//