| Magnified Seeing is Better Learning: Digital Microscopes in Education |
| Editorial - Classroom Best Practices | ||||
| Written by Harry Tuttle | ||||
| Thursday, 23 July 2009 00:00 | ||||
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A science teacher shows a series of a fruit fly pictures as he lectures about the life of a fruit fly. The students show a slight interest in the pictures. Next door, another science teacher shows a digital microscope magnified view of live fruit flies as her students observe and excitedly ask many questions. The use of digital microscopes opens the window to students' highly engaged and higher level thinking in science.
Through the use of a digital microscope, all students in the class can see very a small image in large vivid detail. A typical digital microscope can magnify from 40 to 140x with live digital zoom up to 4x when they are in the microscope's software. These microscopes attach to the computer through a USB port and the computer image can then be enlarged with a projection device. The learners can select the perspective and degree of detail of the object that they want to see. They can use multiple measurement tools to measure on the live image. Likewise, the pupils can add labels or markers and they can even write freehand on the live images. They can put a time stamp in their desired location on the image. These students can adjust camera conditions such as color, contrast, and brightness.
Therefore, science students move from a static image of a concept to an image that they examine in detail. Not only can the students looking at the real object in extreme detail but also they can label aspects or conditions to compare from one observation to another. For example, students can take pictures and movies of meal worms at various stages in their life cycle. They annotate the changes they observe on the image. Then they compare the changes over all the images or movies. Since many of these digital microscopes are portable, they can be taken outside of the classroom. For example, Zarbeco's MiScope fits in the palm of a hand and is powered from USB cable to the laptop. Science students who do a stream analysis can take detailed pictures and movies of the stream's physical, biological and chemical aspects while they are at the stream. These young scientists no longer have to try to draw small creatures that they can barely see; they put the aquatic life under the digital microscope and take a picture or a movie of it. In addition, the students can digitally look at and capture many different minute aspects of the stream; they now longer have to confess “I really can't see it well enough to ...” Teachers and students use digital microscopes to create their own time lapse photography. The user sets the time intervals. For example, elementary students may set the microscope to take images every thirty minutes for overnight so they can record the grow of mung been seeds. They can then look at every image to see what happens when during the process. If a teacher has less time, then he can have his students capture the growth of cress seeds at fifteen minute intervals over a four to five hour period as these seeds develop. These learners go from the general “seeds germinate” concept to viewing what specifically happens during the actual germination of a seed. Time lapse photography through digital microscope use represents only one area in which math, science and technology become integrated. As students digitally record changes in growth over time, they can put this information in a spreadsheet and graph it. When they compare the graph and the actual photos, they have two ways of understanding the same concept. When students use the digital microscopes, they see “science”, they do not hear about “science”. They can see close up what happens during various science processes. They can better compare and contrast changes. Magnified seeing is better learning! Comments (2)
IT Exams. written by Martin, July 23, 2009
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Gloria