The Chickscope project, initiated at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is part of current efforts to reform science, mathematics, and technology education. It offers a best practice model for inquiry-based learning and teaching with emerging technologies.

Chickscope allows students to study chicken embryo development using a variety of educational resources, such as inquiry-based curriculum materials, interactive modules on egg mathematics, image processing, and remotely controlled magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instrument. It represents a collaboration among educators and researchers from eight university units, 15 schools, and the Image Processing for Teaching project at the University of Arizona.

The Chickscope project is no longer funded, although the website remains live; many people still use Chickscope materials and ideas. You might find useful information through these links:

Readings

Benson, Alexis; Bruce, Bertram C. (2001). Using the Web to Promote Inquiry and Collaboration: A Snapshot of the Inquiry Page’s Development

Bruce, B. C. (2017). ILCS 1998 Summary: Illinois Chickscope: Inquiry-based Learning and Teaching With Emerging Technologies for K-12 Mathematics and Science Teachers (pp. 1–3). University of Illinois.

Bruce, Bertram C.; Carragher, Bridget O.; Damon, Bruce M.; Dawson, M. Joan; Eurell, Jo Ann; Gregory, Carl D.; Lauterbur, Paul C.; Marjanovic, Marina M.; Mason-Fossum, Barbara; Morris, H.D.; Potter, Clint S.; & Thakkar, Umesh (1997, November). Chickscope: An interactive MRI classroom curriculum innovation for K-12. Computers and Education Journal, 29(2-3), 73- 87.

Bruce, Bertram C. (1997-10-29). Reform of teacher education in American schools

Bruce, Bertram C.; DIllon, Deborah R. (2000). Effectiveness of Web-Based Technology in Preservice and Inservice Teacher Education Programs

Bruce, Bertram C. (2009-04). “Building an airplane in the air”: The life of the inquiry group

Bruce, Bertram C.; Leander, Kevin M. (Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997). Searching for Digital Libraries in Education: Why Computers Cannot Tell the Story

Bruce, Bertram C., Thakkar, Umesh, & Hogan, Maureen (1999, Fall). Inquiry-based learning and teaching with new technologies. Spectrum: The Journal of the Illinois Science Teachers Association, 25(2), 16-20.

Grosshandler, Dean J. (1997). Incubators as technology: A situated evaluation. Unpublished manuscript, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Hogan, Maureen P. (2000, July). Chickscope realized: A situated evaluation of an inquiry-based sixth-grade classroom. International Journal of Educational Technology.

Mason-Fossum, B., Bruce, Bertram C., Thakkar, Umesh, Potter, C. S., Weber, D. E., & Sinn-Hanlon, J. (1998). Chickscope: An innovative world wide laboratory for K-12 classrooms. In SIGGRAPH 98 Conference: Abstracts and applications(pp. 30-33). New York: Association for Computing Machinery.

Mason-Fossum, B., & Thakkar, Umesh (1997, June 12). Primary school classroom and Chickscope: Studying the egg in the classroom and using the Internet. Proceedings of the 3rd Conference on the Human Factors and the Web, Designing for the Web: Practices and Reflections, Denver, Colorado.

Websites

Chickscope — the main Chickscope web site at the Beckman Institute. This was created originally to support the real-time acquisition of magnetic resonance images (MRI) of chicken eggs by students in P-12 schools.

Illinois Chickscope (ILCS) — a professional development program for K-12 teachers in central Illinois and University of Illinois preservice teachers.

Inquiry Page — a collaboratory connecting teachers to projects, conferences, organizations, and each other. It is a community of innovation where teachers. Many Chickscope teachers have used the Inquiry Page to share units and to collaborate in curriculum design. See Inquiry units related to Chickscope.