Community Microscope: Classroom Kits

With the Public Lab Community Microscope, your students will be able to explore the invisible microscopic world around them with a microscope they construct themselves! This microscope is the result of many teams' work coming together. You can learn more about the journey on our Kickstarter

When you get a kit, please use the hashtags #communitymicroscope and #communityscience to post your unboxing and build photos -- and tag us with @PublicLab on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram

From this page, you can: - Learn more about the educator community at Public Lab - Purchase Community Microscope Kits for your classroom - Get instructions for assembling your microscope - Find lessons designed around the Community Microscope - Get help from the FAQ, or ask your own question

Education & Public Lab: Get Involved!

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We're creating a strong community of practice where educators of all experiences can sharing resources, knowledge, and lend a hand. Here are some ways that you can take part in Public Lab's Educational Community

Join the Conversation

Get notified about new #education posts by subscribing to related tags. Click the button below, and subscribe to tags like "education", "classroom", "lesson", as well as other topics that you're interested in.

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Try These Lessons in Your Classroom and Share Your Experience

After using one of these activities in person, let us know how it goes in the comments. We appreciate your feedback and encourage you to share how you modify the lesson to better fit your classroom.

For more information about integrating Public Lab tools & methodologies, check out the resources available at Public Lab for Educators.

Getting Classroom Kits to your School

We offer a variety of tools and kits that can be used in educational settings. We offer a 10% discount on bulk educational purchases, and we are always happy to work with educators to make suggestions and prepare custom orders to meet your needs.

(Embed links to buy Classroom Kits Here)

****This may change as we update store listings

Assembling Your Community Microscopes

Assembling the Microscope Base:

(Make assembly video)

Converting a Webcam to a Microscope

For step-by-step instructions on how to assemble your microscope, click here. (Link to new assembly note that needs to be updated with Make images)

For step-by-step instructions on how to convert your webcam, click here.

Using the Community Microscope

Here we would curate a list of lessons for the microscope. Pin the Hello World Activity (would it be an interesting video?) Use a tag like 'edu-microscope-lesson' to get things to show up here.

Get Help

Here is where we'd put our curated FAQ. Undecided whether this would look like a research note that we add to or a list of questions with a special tag that others are unlikely to use. I think if we use questions there needs to be a way to mark an "answer" even if it's a staff member compiling the best bits and pieces from the comments to make one cohesive answer"