With help from one of our members Dorothy Silverman, ENVISION members hosted a DIY Microscopy event at Champaign Public Library. This event is a new bioengineering-focused workshop where kids control mobile microscopes to engage with the Champaign Public Library’s microscopic world. We kicked off the first workshop iteration with 2 hands-on activities. In the first, “What’s in my snack?”, kids dissected and analyzed their afternoon snacks with the uHandy microscope and a smart phone. This activity engaged students with their personal world and interests, in this case their afternoon snack. It gave them the freedom to choose what they want to image, how they imaged it, and how they presented their findings. It was goal-oriented because they are ultimately adding their work to a collective portfolio.
The second activity “Mobile Micro Hunt” is a scavenger hunt challenging kids to solve riddles with a microscope. Using a Foldscope (fabricated with help from the CU FabLab) the students rotated through 8 interactive stations answering questions and analyzing items from down feathers to mold from a cupcake! Each student was given a Foldscope, a 50-cent microscope made with origami, a sample-collection booklet, and a map. Students used the map to go from station to station throughout the room. Each station had commonly found items in a library (dust, ants, magazine paper) that students analyzed to answer a few questions. This activity forced kids to get up and move, interact with one another, and problem solve. It also makes them see their standard environment, in this example the library, in a new way.
This workshop compliments the driving goals of ENVISION. First, it is a hands-on workshop that helps students learn about the science of their everyday lives, yet introduces them topics perhaps not studied in school. It incorporates art and writing into science. And finally, it uses inexpensive tools that even low-income students can procure. It also engages our ENVISION members, requiring helpers to fold the foldscopes, design infographic templates, maps, and riddles. Volunteers at the event will also learn how to encourage student self-learning.