The prominent journal "Science" has selected the Bugscope project as the winner of the monthly Science Prize for Online Resources in Education or SPORE.
The Bugscope project run out of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign allows students to examine their own bugs using a high power environmental scanning electron microscope that can magnify samples up 20,000 times. Students are able to operate the microscope remotely via the internet. It is suited to students from kindergarten, to high scholl and all the way up to college and allows kids to look at real life bug samples.
In doing these examinations, the students are also able to gain a better understanding of insect anatomy, gaining valuable insights into how bugs eat, breath and move.
Umesh Thakkar, one of the lead developers said "we're hopeful that this award will help provide a model for other, similar efforts to incorporate scientists' technologies into teaching and learning via the Web.” He co-authored the winning essay about the project with Michele Krob.
The project is simple and free to access, with applications taking less then 10 minutes. Each classroom proposes its own experiments using their own samples. Once approved, the students have remote access to over $500,00 worth of high tech equipment as well as scientists and microscopists who can assist during examinations proving valuable insights about the instrument and samples.
Another benefit of the project is it help to promote science and helps prepare students to become scientists through real interaction .
To date the Bugscope project has been used by over 580 classrooms in 415 schools all over America, with students acquiring over 120,000 images of bugs.