Microscopes and iPads

Microscope Focus Challenge

Microscopes are cool! They are tons of fun but they are only fun if you know how to get them focused. I can actually remember looking in the microscope in middle school and pretending that I could see things. Everyone else seemed to be able to see cool stuff so I just went with it. I drew what my lab partner drew. 

Focusing a microscope is a surprisingly difficult task for middle school kids. Maybe it is the fact that it takes patience, practice, and perseverance- traits that are in short supply with 12-year-olds. Whatever it is, a few years back I realized that after our 2 week microscope unit only about 1/2 of my students could reliably and repeatedly focus a microscope. I realized that, like my middle school self, they had been relying on their partner to focus for them. Which was a solid plan until we switched partners. 

I knew that I had to do something. The microscope (unfortunately) is one of few authentic tools that we use in our classroom. I was determined to have all of my students able to focus the thing. Enter: the Microscope Performance Assessment. During which I stood next to each student and watched them focus and then looked in the microscope to check to see if they were successful. Meanwhile the rest of my students were working on some type of independent microscope lab. 

It was awful! I was bored out of my mind, it made them nervous to have me stand next to them, some of them took forever to focus, kids would be absent, kids doing the lab would need my help, some kids would finish early.  It would always end up taking weeks to get to all of my 120+ students. I would spend every spare minute of my day making kids focus the microscope. But they knew how to focus the microscope!

Then we got iPads. Students immediately realized that they could hold the camera of their iPad up to the eyepiece of the microscope. Sometimes the photos came out great. I did a quick search to see if there was a way to make the photos always come out great without spending a bajillion dollars on fancy cameras that connect the microscope to the iPads. We have iPads, but it is a public school. I found this blog which recommended a $2 app called fast camera. Still too expensive for me but I knew that the key was taking pictures quickly. I asked my students (yes, I was researching this in the middle of class while they practiced with the microscopes) if they knew of a free app that takes photos quickly. Their response was "Well, if you just hold the camera button down it takes a bunch of photos quickly". They always know how to use their iPads more effectively than I do. Problem solved!

Now, instead of the Microscope Performance Assessment we have the Microscope Focus Challenge.

These are the directions that I gave them:

The Challenge: Prove with photo evidence that you are the best microscope 
focuser on team! You will focus your microscope on 2 different prepared slides. Use your iPad camera to take photos of your specimens focused on Low, Medium and High 
Power. 

Your teacher will select finalists and your classmates will vote on who wins 
the title of Best Microscope Focuser! Prizes TBA

The Rules: This is an individual challenge. You must focus your own 
microscope by yourself! You can use any directions pages and you can ask for 
advice from your lab partner. 

I picked finalists and had the students look at them in schoology and vote using google forms. 

This is the winner:

Since it does involve some talent with using the camera I also let them have their partner take the photo for them if they were not good at taking photos. I admittedly am terrible at taking photos with the iPad.

They were able to complete this in one class period. They passed it in to me via Schoology and it took me less than an hour to look at all of my students work to see if they can focus the microscope. 

I had a few kids insist that they couldn't use the camera and I was able to look in their microscopes to check their work. It was much easier than looking in every single microscope! Now when we are using microscopes in class my students can focus and take photos of what they see.