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I agree that these are great for teaching kids science, but there are a few hurdles. First, kids don't really know what makes a good slide - they'll take opaque

I agree that these are great for teaching kids science, but there are a few hurdles. First, kids don't really know what makes a good slide - they'll take opaque things like a orange peel and hope to see something (you can only see transparent or semi-transparent stuff). Second, it takes a fair bit of attention to learn how to hold it up to your eye and move the focusing stage around. Third, it's hard for a young kid to build one of these without supervision, and if you're a teacher in a 30-kid classroom, you can't supervise kids individually. None of these problems are insurmountable, but they do prevent Foldscope from being an instant educational hit.

richardw 13y ago
I think most of the educational value is gained from having access to a microscope, not having each child able to build one. A teacher who builds one in class with the kids watching and then selects a useful slide and projects it on a wall will likely get you 95% of the benefit. "Look at this unboiled water vs this boiled water". I didn't have to build my microscope at school but it was still educational to have access to one. This is primarily for kids that don't have what we had. (At least from an educational perspective - the medical perspective is arguably more important.)
boothead 13y ago
If you can drop a bunch of tablets in a village and kids can get themselves up to speed with no supervision, I sure that these problems are insurmountable :-) The more I read about learning, the more I think structure, testing and to a lesser extent supervision are detrimental to younger kids. My little girl brings home weekly spelling tests at the age of 5, I'd much rather give her things like this, a minimal amount of instruction and let her loose! http://www.dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian_kids.php http://www.dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian_kids.php
- thefreeman 13y ago
  just an FYI, but judging from the context of your comment I think you may mean "surmountable". Insurmountable means they cannot be overcome. I have to totally agree with you about learning though. I went to a Montessori school for much of my youth and really attribute my love for learning to it. The day is divided into blocks, and the classroom is divided into sections of activities related to subjects. The child has to do a certain number of activities for each subject each week, but they get to choose when and what they did.
ronaldx 13y ago
These are not real hurdles. The whole point of education is that kids learn the things you describe. If a kid builds a microscope, takes orange peel, and recognises that they don't see anything because it's opaque, that's great - it's frustrating but they learned something. As a child, we weren't allowed to mess around with the microscopes because they were too expensive. But messing around with microscopes is exactly what kids should be doing.
- tedsanders 13y ago
  Well, they were hurdles for us when we taught a classroom of fourth graders how to make Foldscopes. Kids give up on things quite easily and don't necessarily think a free personal microscope is cool.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - ronaldx 13y ago
    OK, I understand now. In case you read this later, I wanted to respectfully suggest that fourth grade was the wrong classroom for you to be in: * fourth graders are still developing their fine motor skills and not all will be physically capable of construction-type work. * fourth graders don't really have enough science background to understand why they should be interested in microscopes (let's say, they would learn more playing with a 2-10x magnifying glass) * as you identify, fourth graders have short attention spans which are still developing. If you're teaching, you have a responsibility to manage this. If you were going to demo to a seventh grade class, I would warn you of the same issues, honestly. On the other hand, I would be very excited to have you in any classroom eighth grade and above.
Groxx 13y ago
Valid points :) One place you may want to look at is the home-school crowd. They pretty often can't afford a microscope, and the 30-kid-classroom problem doesn't exist.

richardw 13y ago

I think most of the educational value is gained from having access to a microscope, not having each child able to build one. A teacher who builds one in class with the kids watching and then selects a useful slide and projects it on a wall will likely get you 95% of the benefit. "Look at this unboiled water vs this boiled water". I didn't have to build my microscope at school but it was still educational to have access to one. This is primarily for kids that don't have what we had. (At least from an educational perspective - the medical perspective is arguably more important.)

boothead 13y ago

If you can drop a bunch of tablets in a village and kids can get themselves up to speed with no supervision, I sure that these problems are insurmountable :-) The more I read about learning, the more I think structure, testing and to a lesser extent supervision are detrimental to younger kids. My little girl brings home weekly spelling tests at the age of 5, I'd much rather give her things like this, a minimal amount of instruction and let her loose! http://www.dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian_kids.php http://www.dvice.com/archives/2012/10/ethiopian_kids.php

thefreeman 13y ago
just an FYI, but judging from the context of your comment I think you may mean "surmountable". Insurmountable means they cannot be overcome. I have to totally agree with you about learning though. I went to a Montessori school for much of my youth and really attribute my love for learning to it. The day is divided into blocks, and the classroom is divided into sections of activities related to subjects. The child has to do a certain number of activities for each subject each week, but they get to choose when and what they did.

ronaldx 13y ago

These are not real hurdles. The whole point of education is that kids learn the things you describe. If a kid builds a microscope, takes orange peel, and recognises that they don't see anything because it's opaque, that's great - it's frustrating but they learned something. As a child, we weren't allowed to mess around with the microscopes because they were too expensive. But messing around with microscopes is exactly what kids should be doing.

tedsanders 13y ago
Well, they were hurdles for us when we taught a classroom of fourth graders how to make Foldscopes. Kids give up on things quite easily and don't necessarily think a free personal microscope is cool.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- ronaldx 13y ago
  OK, I understand now. In case you read this later, I wanted to respectfully suggest that fourth grade was the wrong classroom for you to be in: * fourth graders are still developing their fine motor skills and not all will be physically capable of construction-type work. * fourth graders don't really have enough science background to understand why they should be interested in microscopes (let's say, they would learn more playing with a 2-10x magnifying glass) * as you identify, fourth graders have short attention spans which are still developing. If you're teaching, you have a responsibility to manage this. If you were going to demo to a seventh grade class, I would warn you of the same issues, honestly. On the other hand, I would be very excited to have you in any classroom eighth grade and above.

Groxx 13y ago

Valid points :) One place you may want to look at is the home-school crowd. They pretty often can't afford a microscope, and the 30-kid-classroom problem doesn't exist.