Bugscopes In The Classroom 7
jnagro writes "A group at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have a number of interesting projects which allow K-12 students remote access to advanced scientific instruments over the web. This particular project, dubbed the 'Bugscope', lets students get a closer look at insects through an electron microscope all via a regular web-browser. The site has some interesting information, as well as some neat photos taken with the scope."
No substitute for "hands-on..." (Score:5, Insightful)
I have to think viewing a bug through a good 25-power stereo microscope, or even a decent hand lens, might be more educational. I hope that science teachers can still pry enough money out of school boards for microscopes.
Not only do you get to view the bug, but you get to see how a microscope is put together, assuming the teacher is wise enough to let you remove the eyepieces and fiddle around with the thing. Biology and physics at the same time!
You can buy a very capable stereo microscope for about half the price of a computer.
Bugscope is an extension of the classroom (Score:4, Informative)
The project provides access to an instrument that the children will never get access to otherwise--a $500,000 environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM). Children get to act just like scientists in that they write a proposal for instrument use, they find a specimen in their own environment, they send it to the Bugscope team, and then they get to interactively control the instrument in real time while they explore their bug(s).
No school will ever have an ESEM in the classroom. The ESEM provides a level of magnification that cannot be achieved by any kind of light microscope. However, Bugscope is often used in conjunction with a light microscope in the classroom. Students will find a specimen, view it on their own microscope, send it in to Bugscope, and then view the features they wanted to see, but couldn't because they were too small. Without Bugscope, the only ESEM images these kids will see is of someone else's specimen from someone else's microscope as a still image on the web or in a book.
Beyond microscope use, the Bugscope team chats with the students throughout the 2-hour session, allowing the students to ask questions about what they see from experts in the field, about what its like to work in the sciences, etc.
Bugscope also extends into those areas that have very few resources beyond a computer with little software and a broadband connection. Participants come from rural, suburban, and urban schools--from all over the U.S., and recently, from Europe as well.
So, Bugscope is certainly not part of a "disturbing trend"--its part of a new revolution in science education that allows the university to actively engage with the community in a way that allows the classroom teacher to leverage the expertise of the academy in the training of their own students.
The Bugscope website contains links to several papers written about the project, including one that charts the way Bugscope is used in the classroom backed up by feedback evidence from the teachers. It has been an ongoing project, week-in, week-out, for four years, bringing free ESEM access to schools over 50 times each year.
Re:Bugscope is an extension of the classroom (Score:1)
Microscopes in Classrooms (Score:1)
Schoolboard does not have enough money left over for microscopes after paying for sports equipment.
After all sports is much more important than rectifying the techological and scientific illiteracy which run rampant in schools.
The possibility of another George Washington Carver is lost in the trasitory noise of "Our star foward could be another LeBron James"
Sigh...