MicroWorld Festival
Next MicroWorld Festival:
April 21, 2007, at Cornell Weill Medical College, NYC, NY
MicroWorld provides elementary (K-6) school teachers experience with microscopes. The workshop started in 1996 by Prof. John Silcox, former director of CCMR and Prof. Michael Isaacson, former CCMR member. The festival was developed at Cornell in collaboration with the Sciencenter of Ithaca. It is part of the Greater Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS) program -UC Berkeley, Lawrence Hall of Science.
This two-part workshop is designed to enable teachers to explore and run the MicroWorld festival in their own schools. The MicroWorld festival consists of ten activity station where students explore the following topics using microscopes:
Up Close- Fingerprint Ridges
- Dots and Dollars
- Fabrics
- Salts
- Sands
- Kitchen Powders
- Small Creatures
- Brine Shrimp
- Pond Life
A registration form for Microworld 2006 can be downloaded here.
In part one of the workshop, which takes place in the fall, teachers will rotate through these ten activity stations with graduate students and facility managers on hand to provide scientific explanations. The teachers will also learn about microscopy from scientists who use it daily, like CCMR's microscopy facility managers John Hunt and Mick Thomas. At the end of the day each teacher will be provided with materials to enable him or her to set up a festival in the classroom.
At part two of the workshop, which takes place in the spring, teachers will return to CCMR to share experiences, methods and extensions related to the MicroWorld festival. Teachers will design additional lessons and experiments to share and teach each other.
Classroom kits, an in-service letter and a stipend are provided to participating teachers.
"Oh My! Everything was fantastic! The lectures were informative, the Electron Microscope visit was top-notch and the hands-on stations increased my confidence with microscopes" Anonymous Teacher, MicroWorld 2004
