It was an exciting moment in class today when one of my Grade 10 students took an incredible photo of the celery cells that were stained with a blue dye. He said: “Sir, look! It looks like an image from Avatar movie!” Then Randy (not his real name) zoomed further into the photo of a bunch of rectangular looking, methylene blue-stained celery cells and surely one could see even more detail in the cells. “Amazing”, I thought to myself!
As soon as the other kids saw that Randy took a great photo of the cells all of them who had a smart phone positioned their phones over the ocular lens of the microscope and snapped photos of their own.
Why was this such a great and exciting moment for me and the kids?
Two reasons: i)it was another great technology moment where kids discovered how to use their mobile learning devices to document their learning in real time; and ii) since kids had to produce biological drawings of the celery cells they no longer had to keep looking back and forth through the microscope while producing a drawing. It was right there on the screen of their smart phone.
The image is the original photographed by my student Randy.
Please share some of your experiences if you have any with the use of smart phones in your classroom!
