Late last spring there came a point when the weather was so snowy and cold that my research on the history of art and architecture was a standstill. I just couldn’t get inspired to write. Luckily serendipity (and Foldscope) intervened. I rediscovered my own intellectual curiosity about the built environment by teaching people about the natural world instead.

Because my partner Matt is a long-time Foldscope user, our apartment is generally inhabited by a number of tiny creatures and plants in jars, waiting to be photographed and then released. (You may have even read some of his Microcosmos posts about them before). I enjoy seeing his experiments but had been content to be their audience rather than a fellow researcher for a long time. My own hobbies include working with paints and fabric and doing studio visits with artists.

However, each spring my university sponsors the MSU Science Festival to draw people of all ages to demonstrations and interactive workshops, and Matt applied to teach a nice, long seminar on microscopy to a small group. The university enthusiastically accepted the proposal—and slated him, instead, for two half-hour workshops of up to a hundred people on one Saturday, and a second implementation at a museum the next weekend. Matt needed a sidekick to accomplish this so I, er, “got volunteered” to volunteer. That meant I had to very quickly become not just a Foldscope fan but a qualified instructor. ( Yikes! ).

My primary job is teaching digital technology to history and anthropology students. In my lab we encounter a range of interests and skill levels when teaching web design or interactive maps, so I knew teaching a microscopy workshop would be similar in that sense. It was pretty similar, with two significant exceptions—the underlying force for all attendees was curiosity (no grades or assessments, hooray! ) and we had only thirty minutes to teach people something new that they could take out into the world.

To be honest, I had a hard time learning to assemble the microscope and was afraid that I would not be much help in the workshop. After some initial discomfort, though, I enjoyed encountering the “beginner’s mind,” by being open to new possibilities. It’s a phrase that originated with Zen Buddhism and is now used in teaching martial arts, an area where people are expected to take risks by incrementally learning new moves through repetition. We use that strategy a lot in teaching digital technology in my lab as well. The concept is nicely articulated by Software Carpentry (a pedagogical initiative used to teach computer programming) that when someone has recently been at the beginner level they might have particular insight that a seasoned pro will have forgotten over time. They call the forgotten part the “ expert blind spot .”  In this sense, people who are new to microscopy might have particularly useful skills for teaching it—those of us who are just learning might be someone’s ideal instructor that day.

Matt focused the workshop’s lesson on the concept that both art and science rely on people seeing the world in new ways. I’m an art historian and had just finished a big, years-long project for my PhD. In it I studied large-scale images—paintings on walls and ceilings—that surround and sometimes even overwhelm viewers. Taking photos through a Foldscope was the exact opposite—discovering images so small that they could be easily overlooked. In fact, I was the one overwhelming and surrounding them .

Since the workshops, I’ve enjoyed getting to see the world and my own art projects from a new, microscopic vantage point. Inspired by Ronak Hati’s post examining the RBG lights on a computer screen, I turned a fresh eye to the materials I use in my work. Under a microscope, the natural fibers in textiles show neat patterns with endless variations. Below, four microscopic images of a precisely woven white linen fabric scrap look like charcoal drawings; the organic threads are irregular and unpredictable, like sketched lines.

I even persuaded the cat to donate a stray whisker and some loose fur.  She, along with all the natural materials on my desk and in my sewing kit, have a new kind of potential for making images and musing on ways the natural world underscores the built environment.

We usually focus on the ways community events like MSU Science Fest engage kids. And it’s true—this was a great opportunity for children to have fun and learn at the same time. I made a point to congratulate them on their good work at folding and looking. But I was most impressed by the adults and teenagers who folded these microscopes with a gleam in their eye. While some of them accompanied kid scientists, quite a few of them were there on their own or with friends, happy to return to being a beginner in order to learn something new.

Workshop Tips

There are many ways Foldscope can be useful for artists, archaeologists, and historians. I encourage anyone who wants to think about materials and nature in new ways to take the plunge. Below are some pointers for people who aren’t necessarily trained as science teachers but who would like to teach with Foldscope. (If I can do it, you can too!)

• Don’t be frustrated with yourself if the learning curve is more than you expected. I got really exasperated because I didn’t understand the printed directions or the video the first few times. We like to emphasize that even pretty young kids can use this technology, but everyone encounters the learning curve in their own way . For me, it meant having Matt walk me through the directions, and then disassembling/reassembling the Foldscope a few times until I could do it on my own.
• At the beginning of the workshops, Matt showed a quick PowerPoint presentation so people could see before and after images . This let participants know just how exciting their results could be, too. They were especially interested in his butterfly photo juxtaposed with a microscopic view of its wing.
• The presentation resources varied by room in these workshops: in the first, a fancy overhead projector in an auditorium let people see his hands folding the microscope while I walked around to each row to make sure people understood directions. In the second room, which was a much smaller space, Matt stood in front and folded the microscope step by step while I walked around in the back. Both set-ups worked fine. What helped in both cases was to have a presenter and an assistant . One person stayed in front to keep the lesson going while another walked around to assist people and answer questions so he didn’t have to stop the lesson whenever someone got confused. If you don’t have an assistant, consider going through the directions twice so that more advanced students can help their peers the second time. You can also ask students to work in pairs.
• We made sure everyone had printed directions so that people could work at their own pace or follow along with verbal instructions.
• Our workshop was very short, so we prepared slides ahead of time and passed out two to every participant once the Foldscopes were assembled. One was a bit of onion peel from the kitchen, and the other was a leaf from our basil plant in the window.
• Looking through the lens for the first time can be awkward for some people. It often takes a few tries. In our dim classroom on a cloudy day, we had people stand directly under a light fixture and raise the microscope up so that they could see the samples on the slides. We made sure everyone succeeded in seeing something through the lens before leaving the workshop.
• People feel empowered when they learn something new, but they often need a little encouragement to stick it out to the end of the tutorial. The main thing we tried to avoid was when people started to look uncomfortable or frustrated, they often stopped trying and started to give up. Surprisingly, this applied to children and adults alike. It helped as I was walking around the room to remind them when their problem was a common one, or that a particular problem was normal and could be fixed. We also kept some tape on hand for people who were too vigorous in punching out the pieces and tore off important parts of the Foldscope.

If you’re in back-to-school mode this time of year, consider ways that teaching a little microscopy can spark curiosity in a variety of subjects, even if you’re a beginner yourself.

For Matt’s synopsis of the workshops, you can read his previous post about them.
Many thanks to the Prakash Lab for your support.