Bugscope: A Practical Approach to Providing Remote Microscopy for Science Education Outreach

2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Clinton S. Potter ◽  
Bridget Carragher ◽  
Liana Carroll ◽  
Charles Conway ◽  
Benjamin Grosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
High Magnification ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
Web Browser ◽  
Classroom Activities ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Education Outreach

AbstractThe Bugscope project is an educational outreach program for kindergarten to grade 12 (K–12) classrooms. The project provides a resource to classrooms so that they may remotely operate a scanning electron microscope to image insects at high magnification. The microscope is remotely controlled in real time from a classroom computer over the Internet using a Web browser. Bugscope provides a state-of-the-art microscope resource for teachers that can be readily integrated into classroom activities. The Bugscope project provides a low-cost, sustainable model for research groups to support K–12 education outreach projects.

scholarly journals Bugscope: The Second Year Of A Sustainable Remote Microscope Project For K-12 Educational Outreach

2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 22-23
Author(s):  
C.S. Potter ◽  
B. Carragher ◽  
L. Carroll ◽  
C. Conway ◽  
B. Grosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Remote Access ◽  
Imaging Systems ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Environmental Scanning ◽  
Web Browser ◽  
Web Based ◽  
The World ◽  
Second Year ◽  
K 12

Bugscope is a second generation educational project in the World Wide Laboratory that provides web browser based control of scientific imaging instrumentation using the Internet. We had previously demonstrated web based remote access to sophisticated scientific imaging systems several years ago in the Chickscope project. The primary goal of the Bugscope project is to demonstrate that relatively low cost, sustainable access to an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) can be made available to K-12 classrooms.

Bugscope: The Second Year of a Sustainable Remote Microscope Project for K-12 Education Outreach.

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1160-1161 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.S. Potter ◽  
B. Carragher ◽  
L. Carroll ◽  
C. Conway ◽  
B. Grosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Remote Access ◽  
Access Time ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Environmental Scanning ◽  
Web Browser ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Second Year ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Education Outreach

Bugscope is a second generation educational project in the World Wide Laboratory that provides web browser based control of scientific imaging instrumentation using the Internet. We had previously demonstrated web based remote access to sophisticated scientific imaging systems several years ago in the Chickscope project. The primary goal of the Bugscope project is to demonstrate that relatively low cost, sustainable access to an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) can be made available to K-12 classrooms.Methods: To participate in the project, a classroom submits a web based application that describes how they plan to use the microscope. If the application is accepted, a one hour session on the ESEM is scheduled and the classroom mails in their chosen specimen. During their access time, classrooms use a standard web browser over the Internet to control and acquire images from the ESEM (Philips/FEI XL-30FEG).

A Miniature and Low-Cost Robotic Fish for Ethorobotics Research and Engineering Education: Part II—STEM Outreach

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Abaid ◽  
Vladislav Kopman ◽  
Maurizio Porfiri
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Robotic Fish ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Underwater Robotics ◽  
Student Survey ◽  
Development Organization ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
K 12

Interactive robotics in formal and informal settings alike has been shown to effectively excite and educate learners at every level. In this second of two papers, we present the educational application of recently-developed biomimetic robotic fish for K-12 learning at the New York Aquarium focused on underwater robotics and marine science. We narrate the development, organization, and execution of an outreach program designed around these robotic fish to pique K-12 students’ interest in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and to attract them toward engineering careers. The activity offers an authentic engineering experience through bioinspired modification of the swimming robots informed by observation of the aquarium’s inhabitants. Student survey responses indicate the success of the activity in influencing the students’ perception of engineering. More specifically, the students showed an increased interest in STEM fields and found engineering to be a more accessible and exciting discipline after the activity.

An XML Language Template Design for Managing a Remote Instrument Educational Outreach Project

2001 ◽  
Vol 7 (S2) ◽  
pp. 816-817
Author(s):  
A. Lazarevich ◽  
B. Carragher ◽  
C.S. Potter ◽  
D. Weber
Keyword(s):  
Academic Research ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Environmental Scanning ◽  
Minimal Amount ◽  
Research Groups ◽  
Test Bed ◽  
The Past ◽  
Template Design ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Operational Aspects

For the past two years we have been operating a remote instrument educational project called Bugscope. Bugscope is an educational outreach project that provides access to an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) for K-12 classrooms. While the operational aspects of the project require a minimal amount of staff time, the information management for the project is difficult for a small microscopy research group to support without a significant allocation of resources away from the group’s principal research goals. in an effort to alleviate this problem we have begun, in the past five months, to develop a software toolkit called ‘Information Technology for Outreach Projects’ (ITOP) - using the Bugscope project as a test bed. The goal of ITOP is to make it practical for academic research groups to provide scientific resources for educational outreach projects by automating many of the administrative and data handling tasks.

Bugscope: Online K–12 Microscopy Outreach

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 46-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Robinson ◽  
Chas Conway ◽  
Cate Wallace ◽  
Ann M. Ray ◽  
Umesh Thakkar
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscope ◽  
Scanning Electron Microscope ◽  
Renewable Resource ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Concept Design ◽  
Broadband Internet ◽  
K 12 ◽  
Scanning Electron

Bugscope is a free online microscopy outreach program that offers K–12 classrooms anywhere in the world the ability to remotely operate a high-resolution scanning electron microscope, collect images of insects and other similar arthropods, and chat simultaneously with a team of scientists. It was conceived and implemented in the late 1990s when K–12 schools were beginning to gain broadband Internet access, many as a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. One of several projects that took advantage of this opportunity to use the Internet to bring the laboratory into the classroom, Bugscope began as an NSF grant to purchase a field-emission scanning electron microscope and develop sophisticated client and server software to control it via a standard web browser. Inspired by the success of and lessons learned from the Chickscope remote magnetic resonance imaging project and from having successfully established remote web-based control of a transmission electron microscope, Clint Potter and Bridget Carragher created the Bugscope project with the goal of developing a remote microscopy educational outreach project that would be sustainable over the long term. This goal led to two significant design decisions. First, the software involved in setting up and running the live outreach sessions was purpose-built to ensure that only one staff member, if necessary, would be required at the instrument (as opposed to Chickscope, which required staff at the remote location as well as at the instrument). Second, students from a local high school would be employed as a renewable resource to help with pre-session sample preparation and to participate in live chat, answering questions from the remote classrooms. Although we now operate with permanent staff at the instrument, these efficiencies in the original concept/design have allowed Bugscope to operate continuously since March 1999, long after the original funding was exhausted.

scholarly journals NITESat: A High Resolution, Full-Color, Light Pollution Imaging Satellite Mission

2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ken Walczak ◽  
Geza Gyuk ◽  
Andrew Kruger ◽  
Enoch Byers ◽  
Sigi Huerta
Keyword(s):  
High Resolution ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Light Pollution ◽  
Light At Night ◽  
Satellite Mission ◽  
Full Color ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Global Coverage

The NITESat (Night Imaging and Tracking Experiment Satellite) mission is a 2U CubeSat satellite designed for nighttime Earth imaging to quantify and characterize light pollution across the Midwestern United States. It is accompanied and supported by an array of ground-based light pollution observing stations called GONet (Ground Observing Network). NITESat is a pilot mission testing the potential for a simple and inexpensive (<$500,000) satellite to deliver high-resolution, three-color regional data of artificial light at night. In addition, GONet will form the core of an educational outreach program by establishing an array of all-sky monitors covering the imaging region of the satellite with 20+ full sky light pollution citizen-operated stations. This will provide synchronized data coinciding with the NITESat overpasses as well as providing near continuous night sky quality monitoring. If the initial mission is a success, the potential exists to expand the program into a low cost constellation of satellites capable of delivering global coverage. NITESat is being designed, built and will be operated by the Far Horizons program at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. Far Horizons is a student and volunteer centered program offering hands-on engineering and scientific research opportunities for education.

scholarly journals Earth Science Education #6. Lessons Learned: Organizing a Geoscience Outreach Program at the University of Saskatchewan

2021 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney Onstad
Keyword(s):  
Earth Sciences ◽  
Informal Education ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Educational Outreach ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
The Earth ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The University ◽  
Academic Year

Geology Outreach at the University of Saskatchewan was initiated during the 2018/19 academic year as a free and informal education opportunity for K–12 educators and their students in Saskatchewan. The program was 100% volunteer-run by undergraduate and graduate students in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Saskatchewan. We estimate reaching more than 1000 students in Saskatoon and surrounding areas following two years of outreach offerings. Hands-on activities offered included ‘Rocks and Minerals’, ‘Fossils’, ‘Meteorite Impacts’ and ‘Volcanoes’ and also involved a tour of the Museum of Natural Sciences when completed on campus. The overall intent of these activities was to foster excitement about the Earth Sciences. Typically, Educators who booked our program taught grades 4–7, where the Earth Sciences are strongly represented in Saskatchewan’s science curriculum. Most outreach offerings occurred on the University of Saskatchewan campus, but some were offered remotely at elementary schools and various Girl Guides of Canada events. During the 2019/20 academic year, we booked every outreach event planned for that year within two days and had a waiting list of more than 30 teachers across the province. The demand for geoscience outreach in Saskatchewan is high, and we hope to continue providing engaging, relevant, and fun educational outreach opportunities. University departments across Canada should allocate funds for community and school outreach initiatives and hire science communicators to oversee programs such as this.

scholarly journals DISCOVERE: AN OUTREACH PROGRAM AT THE SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yang Cao ◽  
Seach Chyr Goh ◽  
Ahmad Rteil ◽  
Deborah Roberts ◽  
Kevin Golovin
Keyword(s):  
Mechanical Engineering ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Outreach Program ◽  
Summer Program ◽  
Outreach Programs ◽  
Hands On ◽  
K 12 ◽  
The University ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Education Outreach

Canadian universities are devoting more and more resources to develop K-12 engineering education outreach programs. The School of Engineering at the University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus offers a variety of outreach and community programs for students of all ages. This paper provides details on the DiscoverE Engineering Summer Program which has been delivered since 2016. The objective of the program is to introduce students general design processes through hands-on civil, electrical, and mechanical engineering projects. The overall goal is to foster a passion in engineering and at the same time attract students who have already had an interest in engineering and are eager to learn more about the discipline. The program is taught by faculty members and exposes students to a variety of hands-on projects in civil, electrical and mechanical engineering. This paper will provide curriculum details for each topic and reflect on the student learning experience based on observations. Future qualitative plans on the measure of the impact of this program qualitatively will be explored.  

Bugscope: a Sustainable Web-Based Telemicroscopy Project for K-12 Classrooms

1999 ◽  
Vol 5 (S2) ◽  
pp. 514-515 ◽  
Author(s):  
C.S. Potter ◽  
B. Carragher ◽  
M. Ceperley ◽  
C. Conway ◽  
B. Grosser ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
World Wide ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Remote Access ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Web Browser ◽  
Web Based ◽  
Remote Imaging ◽  
The World ◽  
K 12

Bugscope is a new educational project in the World Wide Laboratory. The World Wide Laboratory provides Web browser based control of scientific imaging instrumentation using the Internet [1]. Providing K-12 classrooms with web based remote access to sophisticated scientific imaging systems was initially demonstrated by us in 1996 in the Chickscope project [2,3]. Chickscope allowed students to study chicken embryo development using a remotely controlled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system from their classrooms. While the Chickscope project was highly successful, the resources required to provide operational support for the remote imaging aspects of the project for a small number of classrooms were enormous and the project was not sustainable. The Bugscope project builds on the methods developed and the lessons learned from the Chickscope project. The primary goal is to demonstrate that relatively low cost, sustainable access to an environmental scanning electron microscope (ESEM) can be made available to K-12 classrooms to examine arthropods.Methods: Classrooms use a standard web browser over the Internet to control and acquire images from a Philips XL-30FEG ESEM. The architecture to support remote acquisition is shown in fig. 1. The client/server control architecture for the ESEM remote control server is based on the emScope control library [4].

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