OutReach Microscopy Programs for K-12

These sites are especially helpful for bringing the Microworld into the class room. Many other resources are listed in the Guide to Microscopy and Microanalysis on the Internet.

Light Microscopy

Project MICRO - Microscopy In Curriculum - Research Outreach

Project MICRO will put Microscopy Society of America members, teaching materials, and microscopes in middle school classrooms nationwide. In addition to providing information on Project Micro, there is help on selecting a microscope, locating a microscopist, books.

New England

New England Society of Microscopy has three Project MICRO kits ready to provide all of the materials, including microscopes, necessary for “Microscopic Explorations” festival for middle schools.  Contact Mary McCann at mccanns@tiac.net for more information.

Electron Microscopy

Oklahoma Ugly Bug Contest

From the Oklahoma Microscopy Society. All elementary schools in Oklahoma were invited to participate. See the winners and all the Ugly Bugs. This is an annual event.

Electron Microscope Facility Tours at San Diego State

And pictures of your sample. From Dr. Steve Barlow.

Remote Microscopy to Your Classroom

TelePresence Microscopy

from Materials MicroCharacterization Collaboratory
Middle & High School Science Initiative

Project ExCEL, Iowa State University

Funded by the National Science Foundation, Project ExCEL is an outreach program of the Materials Science and Engineering Department whose goal is to bring the capabilities of the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) into your classroom.

Bugscope

The Bugscope project is an educational outreach program for K-12 classrooms. The project provides a resource to classrooms so that they may remotely operate a scanning electron microscope to image "bugs" at high magnification. The microscope is remotely controlled in real time from a classroom computer over the Internet using a web browser. Beckman Institute, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Chickscope

Chickscope is a project to study chicken embryo development using a remotely controlled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instrument. It is being developed by educators and researchers from several departments at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in collaboration with Central Illinois teachers.

Virtual Microscopy

The Virtual Microscope

The Virtual Microscope is a NASA-funded project that provides simulated scientific instrumentation for students and researchers worldwide as part of NASA's Virtual Laboratory initiative. It was developed by Imaging Technology Group (ITG) at the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and University of Illinois.

Currently there is a Virtual Scanning Electron Microscope and a Virtual Light Microscope (VLM), datasets for both, animated microscopy tutorials, and other related tools. The Virtual microscope can be downloaded at Sourceforge.

Submit a Sample

World of Scanning Electron Microscopy

Requests are welcome from from interested students, teachers, or just curious web viewers.  A form is available online for submitting a request. Iowa State University

Finding a Microscopist to Help

In the Classroom

Suggestions from Project MICRO on getting help in the classroom.

Ask-A-Microscopist

Created and moderated by Dr. Nestor J. Zaluzec and hosted by the Microscopy Society of America. Please see Reference and Education link from left column of homepage to locate this resource.

Teacher Training

MicroWorld Festival Cornell University

MicroWorld provides elementary (K-6) school teachers experience with microscopes. This two-part workshop is designed to enable teachers to run the MicroWorld festival in their own schools.