Sparking new ideas to better engage students should be a key goal for the use of technology in classrooms.

Califone held an online contest asking educators how a microscope connected to a computer could spark learning. Here are their top answers:

1. Supplements integrated coursework material from the Science department
2. I teach Reading, but have an inner scientist that escapes from time to time
3. As a means to demonstrate the importance and relevance of expository text
4. During this the first week of school, I’ve asked my students about other classes, and the classes with expository text are BORING in their eyes
5. Open avenues that would allow all students at the middle school to be involved
6. Enhances different learning modalities and disabilities
7. Allows me to use our projector and Smartboard to extend experiments with the entire class
8. To save and download slides to incorporate them into presentations and reports
9. To update the technology for deaf and hard of hearing students!
10. Complement our school’s new lcd projectors and interactive whiteboards
11. Enables the teachers to demonstrate to an entire class instead of just one student
12. Increases student interest, focus and participation
13. Transfers data from the collection source to the student’s computing device. As we will be a 1-1 laptop school next year, this USB microscope would be an incredibly useful utility device for us in our science classrooms. So cool.
14. Enables students to experience and explore a variety of real objects using magnifying glasses and tweezers
15. Students would be able to see things in ways they have NEVER seen them before
16. Students record their observations through writing and drawing. Imaging the drawings they would create from viewing things under a microscope
17. Allows the entire class to participate in the lesson instead of one person is able to view at a time
18. Incorporate it in engaging lessons for grades K-5
19. To peak my “kids” curiosity at our at risk school
20. Use the microscope across the curriculum
21. To make sure the students are observing the object instead of their eyelashes!
22. Math measurements
23. Social Studies pollution
24. Kagan Cooperative groups for Science as an inquiry
25. Transparencies just don’t grab the attention from the overhead as much as the projected pictures
26. Allows all of my kids to have the experience of a microscope
27. To study organisms and cells
28. To observe changes over time
29. To participate in numerous other engaging science and math lessons
30. Allows my students to observe and record their work
31. Enables students to use the recorded footage to present their findings to their peers
32. To inspire all of the little scientists in my classroom
33. Allows my students to explore and make observations that they are not able to see with their eyes. Sure, they could look in a book but when a child looks in a book and sees an image it is neat, but give them something in their hands that they can zoom into and see the little details that they have never seen and manipulate the images
34. Provides access to technology in science, along with the potential to be used for reading and math

We want to thank all of the contributors, including these ten who each won a CM1-USB; Kathy Farmer Lathen, Andy Bremar, Demetria Y. Richardson, Peggy Collrin, Matt Lightfoot, Kathy Zelch, David Wees, Keisa Williams, Gail Wiltshire, and Sue Seifert!