| Description | Our team of Urbana Middle School teachers, Kevin Erlinger-Science, Laura Hlinka-Science, Marty Stambaugh-Science, and Pam Van Walleghen-Technology, are very excited about the opportunity to include Bugscope’99 in our current Entomology curriculum. Inside our standard lessons we compare the anatomy of many types of insects, looking for form and function relationships and specialized anatomical structures including wings, legs, mouth parts and general body shape. Bugscope ‘99 would give us the chance to enrich our current curriculum with the ability to engage approximately 350 seventh and eighth grade students in a larger scientific community using the Scanning Electron Microscope for research . With Bugscope, we would like to examine the live insects and their behavior in the classroom and use the images acquired remotely with the electron microscope to link individual ability to specific anatomy. Part of the Middle School science experience is learning the basics of microscopy. Students use compound and dissecting scopes as part of the curriculum but have to rely on readings for information on other microscopy methods. The internet has provided a greater exposure to some of these methods, but the students have not been able to use any of these higher levels of microscopy in a hands-on manner. Bugscope will provide this essential experience for our students. Three of the four members of the team were past participants in the Chickscope projects and are interested in comparing both the remote instrumentation process used in the two projects and the kinds of images acquired by the MRI and Scanning Electron Microscope. Participation in the Chickscope project both with and without the remote instrumentation demonstrated to us the importance of direct image acquisition experiences to students. Studying images acquired by others is no different than seeing photographs. Bugscope offers the chance to raise interest in both science and technology by giving all students hands-on learning opportunities with sophisticated scientific tools not available in their classrooms as well as the opportunity to communicate with professional scientists about their experiences. |
