Irian Jaya students wowed by joint project
Published on 11 March, 2005
Students from the Mt Zaagham International Schools at Tembagapura and Kuala Kencana (Irian Jaya) ‘connected’ to a scanning electron microscope at the University of Queensland on Friday, March 11.
Students saw images using high bandwidth Internet connections provided by Freebody Mining, their school sponsor.
John Hunt facilitates this project from Central Queensland University’s campus at Bundaberg, with support from the Centre for Microscopy and Microanalysis at UQ (Duncan Waddell and Kim Sewell).
Students at the schools have been busy collecting ‘bugs’ from their environment in Irian Jaya. These samples have been prepared for the microscope and include spiders and the larva of malaria mosquito.
This is the first time students beyond Australia have been able to access this project. The researchers at CQU and UQ are as excited as the students.
Duncan Waddell, instrumentation officer at UQ says: ‘this is our chance to capture the minds and hearts of potential scientists. We need them to be the Smart State".
At the CQU Bundaberg campus, Craig Wilson, an undergraduate from the Bachelor of Learning Management program, is monitoring this event, providing feedback to John Hunt about image quality and refresh rates.
Mr Hunt is keen to make this technology more widely available to schools and needs to monitor the bandwidth required for high quality imaging.
This project has been developed in response to Queensland’s Spotlight on Science initiative, allowing students to connect with science educators and scientists in real time and over distance.
Greg Smith from the Spotlight on Science project team says: "this is a unique opportunity that shows the strengths of activities forged between schools and universities and I hope to see more schools in Queensland participating in the future".
A similar live microscope session was presented to Queensland teachers on Saturday, March 12, at the Primary Science Innovations Conference organised by Ironside State School, a Centre of Excellence for Maths, Science and Technology Education.
Photos: John Hunt helps to mediate the scanning electron microscope connection for students in Irian Jaya.