I’m still thinking about freedom of choice and our younger students. Over the last few weeks as the students have been finding out about living and nonliving things, we have been exploring the world around us with digital microscopes and the iPads. Our microscopes are DigiBlues that we hook up to our student MacBooks. We had some very close up looks at flowers, grass, leaves, sand, our fingers, caterpillars, worms, seed pods, aphids and our fingers again.

On our iPads we used 4 apps that simulate magnifying glasses. The DigiBlues, in my opinion, are fabulous but the apps just don’t measure up – they don’t offer the extreme magnification that we can get on the microscopes. I don’t think it is the iPads fault in any way, it relies on the camera and camera zoom function so of course it is limited. The apps we tried were Mag.Light, Magnify HD, Magnifier and Magnificent:

This is what the children had to say when they were asked which they preferred to use when wanting to look at something close up:

In favour of the Microscopes:
– I can see it better, more clear and bigger
– It is easier for my eye
– It magnifies up to 10 million
– You can turn the handle till it is really nice
– It is easier to hold and you can see if the photos are working
– with microscopes we can see inside things 

In favour of the iPads:
– I can look at my own things
– I can hold it myself
– I can go outside
– The iPads are just more fun
– When I am done I can play games