Insane things I hope to avoid this year: Micromanaging microscopes

In America, many high school biology students go through the ritual of memorizing the parts of a tool they will then use to analyze a newsprint letter "e" under various powers and positions, only to put the tool away for the rest of the year their lives

This ritual can go of for days, as students struggle to make sense of this new tool, of the requisite worksheet asking deep questions like "Which way does the 'e' move?" and a teacher seemingly obsessed with a particular letter of the alphabet.

 (You can even buy a letter e slide, preserved using
"state-of-the-art preservation techniques."  

This is often followed up by having students look at preserved (and very dead) specimens of critters they never knew, except for that kid in the corner who chewed on his chapped lips enough to surreptitiously look at his own blood.

Mark my words--a student struggling with focusing a scope will get excited by an air bubble, then get his own bubble deflated as he hears "that's just a bubble," followed by criticism for improperly mounting his specimen. (Talking about "mounting specimens" with sophomores has its own entertainment value, right up there with talking about the blue nitrogen atoms in your 3D molecule model set.)

Live slug from my backyard more interesting than letter "e"

Heck, if a child gets excited by the beauty of a bubble in his microscope, share the excitement! It's a step in the right direction. Then let your students play. Get some pond water, a dead ant, a piece of hair, floor dust, anything but some assigned slide a child has little interest in, and let them play.

Give your students permission to use the scopes whenever they have a reason to use one, which, in biology class, can be pretty much every day! Encourage your students to look at everyday objects they choose to look at.

They will very quickly learn the limits of the tool.

Otherwise you're wasting everybody's time--no need to know how to use a hammer if you live in a world that has no nails.

If your microscope lamps are not burning out now and again, you're not using them enough.

The microscope "e" lab kills science

Telescopes, when introduced too early, kill interest in astronomy. Everything moves the wrong way, the field of view shrinks to impossibly small increments of sky, and, alas, a star is a point of light no matter how powerful the scope. Nothing looks like the pictures (with the startling exception of Saturn, if you can find it).

The first night out ends in tears--Daddy's upset because he bought the most expensive one he could afford, spent an hour setting it up, and now he's standing outside, alone, trying to line up something, anything, that looks interesting enough to justify the money spent on a tool no one knows how to use.
 
He could have saved everyone a lot of grief had he bought binoculars instead--greater field of view, everything's where it's expected to be, right-side up, and it works right out of the box.

Yep, it's not narly as powerful--only magnifies 10X instead of 500X--but it will provide years of enjoyment, its body worn smooth by hundreds of hours of use, while the telescope languishes in the closet.

It's not about power, it's about seeing.

***

Every year students learn the parts of the microscope, and every year we drag them through the infamous "e" lab. Cut out the letter "e" from a newspaper, mount it correctly on a slide, look at it in the scope at various mags, figure out its orientation.

The most interesting part of the "e" lab may be seeing the "e" move left when you push the slide right, up when you push the slide down. But we don't talk about the why, that's for physics, and they haven't had that yet.


We trade stories in the lounge--Can you believe she thought the air bubble was alive? That he cut out an upper-case "E" from a headline? That she couldn't see anything because he forgot to turn on the lamp?


And then we wonder why a few children don't even pretend to care when we finally bring in some pond water full of wiggly aliens, full of life, full of wonder. There's just no reaching some kids.

For the love of Zeus, why  the letter "e"?

***

I just used a coffee maker, and it worked, even though I have no clue what the parts are called. I only used it because I wanted a cup of coffee. I did not learn how to use it until I wanted to make coffee, and I would have thought you mad if you tried to teach me about it before I liked coffee.

***

Here's a microscope lab that works:

1) Use dissecting scopes instead of the traditional compound scope. You can look at things whole, alive, in 3-D. If those are not available, get your hands on magnifying glasses--they do the same thing.

2) Bring in live wiggly stuff. Earthworms, sow bugs, beetles, snails, slugs, mosquito wrigglers, whatever. Give a brief demo on how to use the dissecting scope, let a couple of students peek in, then stand back.

Really--within minutes, the more adept will be teaching the less adept, kids will have a better grasp (and love) of slugs you could ever generate with a Prezi, and the kids will learn how to use the scope proficiently (which really doesn't matter anyway, when you get down to it).

If you've never used a dissecting scope, get your hands on one--it will change your universe.
Microscope quiz lifted from here--it's been passed around since Leeuwenhoek first drew it. 

If my biggest worry is how to grade something like this, well, I'm on the right path.

The family microscope

Ostracada, NOAA archives

Children gravitate to puddles.

Children see things before they are taught they do not exist. With enough education, they learn to avoid puddles. They no longer waste time staring at the edge of a pond.

If you hold a handful of pond water, you might not see anything at first. Look a little harder. Look for movement. It's there.

In the 17th century, Antony van Leeuwenhoek made microscopes. Invented them, really. He saw things no one saw before.

I then most always saw, with great wonder, that in the said matter there were many very little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving. The biggest sort... had a very strong and swift motion, and shot through the water (or spittle) like a pike does through the water. The second sort...oft-times spun round like a top...and these were far more in number.

Antony van Leeuwenhoek, in report to the Royal Society

Our family microscope is a teaching scope--it has eyepiece tubes--so my kids and I can look at another world together. When one wanders away from one's usual world, it's good to have company.

One June afternoon my daughter and I stared into the same world together.

We saw a critter peek from under a duckweed leaf, which saw an even tinier critter, and munched on it. The sated critter than skitted around energetically, as though gleeful.

I am, of course, anthropomorphizing....but "gleeful" is the right word. We can reduce it to the transfer of energy from one critter to another, but the subsequent burst of energy gave me a burst of energy--glee is contagious.

Turns out the critter was an ostracod. I never saw an ostracod before. I never thought about them when I used pond water to feed the garden. I knew that pond water made my tomatoes grow better. I just never wondered why.

Watering my plants with pond water is harder now.

I cannot imagine the wonder coursing through Leeuwenhoek's veins, but I know what I felt as I sat with my eldest on the stoop, seeing critters we never imagined. We did not know they were ostracods yet. We did not know much about them at all. We knew this much, though--they got excited when they found something good to eat.

We could see them munch on something else, then could see the "something else" in their bellies. Voyeurs, we were.

I wandered to the web to learn a little more about my gleeful creatures.

Ostracods eat. Boy ostracods attract girl ostracods by using flashing lights. Ostracods have baby ostracods.

So this year I want to introduce microscopes to my class with less pedantry and more wonder. Maybe I'll can the classic "Letter 'e' Lab" for a period or two of just staring into pond water.

I want to make my students witnesses of worlds they cannot even imagine.

This is the world we live in.

I seek light, warmth, food, and love. So do animalcules.

Yearning. Lust. Desire. In long light of summer, it makes sense. I hope it still makes sense when reduced to something digestible in a February morning lesson.