Greetings from an excited newcomer!

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Meadster
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:49 am
Location: Dallas, Texas

Greetings from an excited newcomer!

Post by Meadster »

Howdy everyone!

My name is John Mead & I'm a bio teacher here in Dallas, TX. I work mostly with gifted middle school students and am in the process of developing a digital microscopy center at our school. As such, you can imagine my pleasure at finding such a fine site as this!

A part of this microscopy center is that we are hosting the inaugural year of "MicroMarvels" camp this summer for kids in 3rd-8th grades. The will get to spend 15 hours learning about microscopes & then photographing & video capturing all sorts of creatures to take home on their own personal DVDs. Some of students & I have started playing with the idea of taking the vidveos we create courtesy of our Moticam 2000s cameras and streaming them over the web. Here is the link to the initial collection of videos - these were posted to see how well they stream & we like the resusts so far! As this project progresses - I plan on sharing our results & asking questions. If any of you have "cool" microscope activities you think would be fun for kids to do, I'd love to hear from you. Here's our link to the streaming videos: http://www.smtexas.net/faculty/mead/index02.htm

ENJOY!

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nephiliim
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Post by nephiliim »

First of all I'd like to wish you a warm welcome to the forum John.

Second of all, those video's look great. Maybe some adjustments to lighting.

Love to see some more results soon.

Tom
Sometimes smaller is better!
*nodge nodge :D*

Comments and advice always welcome
My little website

Charles Krebs
Posts: 1200
Joined: Tue Jul 13, 2004 10:50 am
Location: Issaquah, WA USA

Post by Charles Krebs »

Welcome John. Sounds like you've got a group of lucky kids there! This is indeed, a nice place for those interstested in microscopy and photomicrography. Look forward to seeing more of yours and your students work.

Charlie

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twebster
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Post by twebster »

Welcome aboard, John :!: :D

It's great to see efforts to get our youngsters involved with microscopy. It's a struggle, I'm sure, given all of the distractions kids have today. I very much enjoyed your video clips. I kind of have a passion for video clips, too. You might take a look at my website, www.oncloserinspection.com. I have a couple of articles on adapting webcams to shoot video through the microscope. I also have an article about using a flatbed scanner as a simple microscope. Maybe these articles will provide you with some ideas.:D

Best regards, :D
Tom Webster
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Phoenix "The Valley of the Sun", Arizona, USA

Think about this...maybe Murphy is an optimist!!!

Meadster
Posts: 25
Joined: Mon Apr 18, 2005 11:49 am
Location: Dallas, Texas

Post by Meadster »

Guys,

Thanks for such a warm welcome to the community. It is nice to meet up with such an enthusiastic seeming group! It is indeed a pleasure to work with young people in their discovery of the "Microworlds". As time permits I will be processing & uploading more videos to the page referenced in my original post.

Tom - Thanks for the link to your site! I went there this AM & liked what I saw in my short visit. I am looking to ahve a gallery much like yours on my site once I get it up & going.

One thing of interest to me is to find a way (if it exists) to get better lighting from the school microscopes we are currently using. We use Tungsten bulbs and have a simple iris aperture with no true condenser element. As a result, I suspect my lighting options will be limited.

For my own personal use, I am beginning to look into getting a personal scope for home. As far as that is concerned, I'd be very interested in hearing what folks recommend. What's the best that can be expected in different price ranges? Barring a lucky spell in the lotto, I will probably be looking to spend less than $500 to start.

Thanks again for the friendly welcome!

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nephiliim
Posts: 546
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2005 12:38 am
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Post by nephiliim »

You might wanna take a lookesy on ebay, as was referred in this topic http://www.photomacrography1.net/forum/ ... php?t=2051

There's a lot of stuff to be found there.

I work with olympus and leica microscopes at school, and we use them for all kinds of stuff.. like bacteria determination, plant anatomy, blood cells. We have started on a project where we are going to grow lymfocytes, and then extract the chromosomes out of them to make a karyogram. I will try to make some shots with our school's digital camera.
Sometimes smaller is better!
*nodge nodge :D*

Comments and advice always welcome
My little website

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micron
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Joined: Sat May 29, 2004 6:52 am
Location: Delta, BC - Canada
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Post by micron »


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