Integrating Microscopy Technology in Schools
Schools depend a lot on microscopes. Education, especially the science subjects, are highly dependent on microscopes. What else could replace the basic light microscope on every school laboratory table?
To help teachers in their efforts to integrate technology and science, the field of microscopy and optics provide students and teachers with a number of technology resources: At the elementary level, each school contains a biology lab, capable of serving an entire class.
Using these microscopy technology resources and others, teachers have found a number of creative and interesting ways to enhance early childhood learning and have made their classes in general more interesting.
Microscopy made their science lessons come to life. Students are given the chance to explore the endless potentials of the microscope -- which allowed students to see greater details of the invisible microscopic world than they could with a hand lens alone -- to observe different microscopic specimens. Students were able to critically analyze changes in the microscopic world as live samples progressed through life-cycle stages, and their observation records were flooded with detail at each stage of metamorphosis, students took pictures with the microscope and then printed them to create a timeline. Students also wrote descriptions to narrate the metamorphosis process.
Teachers worked with small groups of students to show them how the technology worked. Students are also able to observe the results of evaporation. The teacher had students start crystal observations with a hand lens. Then she uses the educational microscope to magnify the crystals on the TV monitor. She places samples of the crystals on black construction paper for better visibility. It is amazing how much more detail students are able to see. Students can then illustrate their observations, compare the results obtained with the two tools, and discuss what they saw and how it got there. Finally, they are able to compare their observations to a key to try to identify the crystals.
Students made slides of water on different materials to observe surface tension. They then used microscopes to compare the results. Students also used the student microscope to observe moisture absorbency, surface tension, evaporation, and condensation. For absorbency, the class observed how different paper towels absorbed water. They moved the extensible arm with attached microbead lens system to get a close-up side view of the surface tension of water on a penny. Then, using a light as a heat source, they observed water evaporating from a penny. To study condensation, students chilled a water bottle and used the digital microscope with extensible arm-lens to observe evidence of condensation. The teacher also had students search the web for images of water in different states in the water cycle. They placed those images into an Inspiration graphic organizer and created their own water cycle posters.
The results of microscopy integration among elementary classes and in integrating science and technology show increased student achievement in both science and biology and in more engaging/interesting classes.
