Online frugal science Foldscope workshop Dec 2025

Applause IconDec 13, 2025 • 5:58 PM UTC
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Anupma

Foldscope A tool to teach Antimicrobial Resistance, a woman in STEM who travels pan India to the remotest corners of the country to help students the torch bearers of tomorrow to know more about AMR.

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Thanks Siddharth Bharath a chance conversation from the Science communicators group led us to plan a frugal science workshop, but wait when do we schedule it.
All the teacher participants are pan India even abroad, how do we do this, online mode it was decided. Planned a few months earlier we set things in place and here we are hosting it today 13 Dec 2025.
Attended by 30 educators an excited cohort awaited to use the tool, we began with some very interesting questions, although I did have a slide deck in place. WE spoke about the difficulties in procuring microscopes for school, their maintenance and the not so ease of handling them.
Who is your superhero we asked and why, which brought us to the discussion on how some naughty bacteria respond to antibacterials. The process of developing resistance and then passing it on to their friends we do that too right, we all agreed or somewhat.
Yes we too share information quickly with our friends and family so they can benefit from it thats what superbugs do, those bacteria with resistance are the superheroes for their population.We then began on the Foldscope, the 2 sides it has yellow and blue, the lens the need to handle it with ease and keep it away from water.
The magnification and the resolving power of the F1.0, 2.0 we then moved on to making slides not just using glass but also the paper slide. They were really excited and in the online mode came so many questions:
Can we use wet samples? Can we stain our samples? How much sample to take? Well we answered each one of these by knowing that microscopy needs 3 things light, lens and sample, so the light has to pass through the sample for the view. The teachers got the point and here we were discussing how to make samples of potato and pollen taking this session further.
I shared how it was important for the teacher to done the facilitator hat and allow the children to take the mis-steps and learn from them. Allow children to answer as to how they would make different samples, thus empowering them to think.
We ended the session by answering a few more doubts and what surprised me was many of the teachers kids sat with them through the session. The participants dissected the pictures I showed them and had already ordered 30 foldscopes for their school. THis is what we call where there is a will there is a way hop many of them use the tool and share their findings here, till then see you soon.

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