Making the Invisible Visible: Empowering Pre-college Teachers Through Microscopic Investigations of Micro- and Nano-worlds

Abstract

The microscopic world provides teachers with excellent opportunities to develop hands-on, inquirybased curriculum, yet many K-12 educators lack the knowledge, equipment and skills necessary to engage their students in these types of explorations. Through a Science Education Partnership Award (SEPA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), researchers at the University of Southern Maine (USM) are offering professional development activities designed to build skills in microbiology, immunology, nanotechnology and microscopy, subjects that are notably underrepresented in the K-12 curriculum and in the undergraduate education of many teachers [1,2]. As a result of lacking formal microbiology training, the subject matter is often viewed as too dense, abstract, or inaccessible to be presented to pre-college students, despite the immensely important and fundamental roles microbes and viruses play in evolution, human health, and the ecology of all biomes on earth [3,4,5,6]. Microscopy is the essential gateway for making generally invisible micro-and nano-scale worlds visible, accessible, and less abstract for students at all levels.Teacher professional development with the pervasive goal of making microbiology, virology, and micro-and nano-scale imaging accessible for K-12 classrooms is being pursued through two-week summer institutes and weekend academic year programs. In July 2008 the first Micro-and Nanospace Explorations of Health and Disease Summer Institute was held at USM and enrolled fourteen grade 3-8 teachers. Elementary and middle school teachers were targeted because these grade levels are critical for the development of scientific interests among the students but teachers at these levels have few classroom microscopy resources and have insufficient training in their use. Emphasis during the summer institute is on collaborative grade level appropriate curriculum development, establishing outreach partnerships throughout the academic year, and providing a light microscope with digital image capture capability for each participant's classroom. To reveal the nano-scale during the professional development, the project incorporates extensive use of electron microscopy, particularly USM's transmission electron microscope (TEM), a TECNAI G2 Spirit BioTWIN operating at 100kV. Sessions with the teachers involved preparing specimens for TEM and then acquiring images with the scope. Teachers viewed specimens with light and electron microscopy as shown in Figure 1A where the stomata on lettuce leaf specimens are imaged by light microscopy and in Figure 1B where TEM is used to see chloroplast ultrastructure in a tomato leaf specimen. Viruses, particularly bacteriophages as shown in Figure 1C, were also important specimens for the TEM work. By arrangement with FEI Company, a benchtop scanning electron microscope (SEM, the FEI Phenom) was also used during one summer workshop day allowing the teachers to acquire images such as that of diatomaceous earth shown in Figure 1D....

Integration of Transmission Electron Microscopy and Extremophile Virology Research into University and K-12 Education in Maine and Kenya

“…Building upon successful efforts in cultivation of the viruses shown in Figure 1 from the extreme environments of Kenya's soda lakes (which at pH 11 and above are among the most alkaline on Earth), the USM virology, microbiology and electron microscopy research team has begun to investigate the molecular genetics and the physical and biochemical parameters internal and external to host cells that determine the structural integrity and functionality of viruses in these extreme environments. Parallel research and education efforts in Maine and in Kenya discussed here are expanding the integrated research and education efforts (some reported previously [1,7,8,9]) of the USM Virology and TEM laboratory.…”