CHICKSCOPE - AN INTERACTIVE MRI CLASSROOM CURRICULUM INNOVATION FOR K-12

Researchers from several departments of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign initiated ChickScope, a 21-day chick embryonic develo pment project, to demonstrate the remote control of a magnetic resonan ce imaging (MRI) instrument through the World Wide Web. For 21 days, s tudents and teachers from ten kindergarten to high school classrooms p articipated in this innovative project using an interactive Web lab bo ok. From classroom computers with access to the Internet, students wer e able to login to the computers at the university that controlled the MRI system, manipulate experimental conditions through a simple on-li ne form to generate their own data, and then view resulting images of the chick embryo in real-time. Researchers answered students' question s about their MR images and other related issues. ChickScope made extr aordinary hardware, software, and human resources available to the cla ssrooms. However, it left to teachers the tasks of integrating these r esources into the classroom and adapting them to the needs and abiliti es of the students. Thus, the implementation was reacher-based, and it s meaning was realized in different ways in each setting. This paper d escribes the planning, implementation, and the impact of ChickScope in classrooms for facilitating learning and teaching. We provide example s from various grade levels - primary to high school. We conclude with lessons learned and the implications of advanced technologies for K-1 2 outreach. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.