Stimulating Understanding of Computational science through Collaboration, Exploration, Experiment, and Discovery for students with Hearing Impairments
a collaboration of the Shodor Education Foundation, Inc., Eastern North Carolina School for the Deaf, Barton College, the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, and Interpreters, Inc.

For Teachers!

Extension

If you have a pond near your school you may be able to collect your own daphnia. Get a brine shrimp net from a pet store. Run the net through the shallow water and under the leaves of plants. Put the net in a jar of water and look for small moving creatures. You will probably get Cyclopes,  etc. If the water quality is good  you may find daphnia. You can also order them from laboratory supply houses like Carolina Biological.  

This site has information on several small crustaceans that can be found living with daphnia. 
http://naturalaquariums.com/inverts/smcrust.html 

Daphnia are important to environmental scientists because they are sensitive to toxins. A polluted pond won't have any daphnia. Since daphnia are clear, your students can see their internal organs, including their hearts. Your students can observe the effects of different chemicals on the heart rate of daphnia. This site gives a lesson plan for using daphnia to investigate drugs like nicotine, caffeine, aspirin, alcohol, and sleeping pills on the heart rates of Daphnia. 
http://www.wested.org/werc/earthsystems/biology/daphnia.html 

A related lesson is Algae and Daphnia. This lesson uses a model of the predator- prey relationship of daphnia and algae in a classroom aquarium. It shows the cyclical boom- bust relationship that develops.   

For students who enjoy working with computers, a valuable extension is to combine the Algae and Daphnia model with the Daphnia medication model. This would allow the student to predict the effect of the medications on daphnia and algae in a more natural setting. If your students (or you) develop this combined mode, please send me a copy along with a report so that I can post it along with these lessons.  You can email me at: krobertson@shodor.org

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This project is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation Opinions expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Science Foundation.