Paramecium or amoeba? Prophase or anaphase? Prokaryote or eukaryote?

These are the questions Beaufort County Early College High School science students can now answer based on first-hand knowledge.

Thanks to two grant awards from Biogen and CenturyLink foundations, teacher Katherine Alligood is in the process of purchasing 24 OMAX microscopes for her students.

She said both grants were around $5,000 each, and she began ordering the first set of equipment using the Biogen grant in April. The money also covers microscope slides, storage and live cultures.

Students can also connect the microscopes to a computer to see a larger version of the specimen and take a video of what’s happening.

Take one look through the lens, and one will likely catch a glimpse of an organism scurrying across the slide. This first-hand glimpse takes education beyond the pages of a textbook.

“I like the idea of them being able to not just label a diagram,” Alligood said. “It’s beneficial because they can actually take a video.”

“The goal of this (Videoing the Microscopic World) project is to increase scientific content knowledge, so that students can operate a microscope, test a variable in a controlled lab and identify relevant microscopic information, such as cell cycle, mitosis, protozoa and water quality samples,” a CenturyLink press release stated.

Alligood said her students have been engaged with the new equipment and seem excited to use it, even though they only had a couple of months to do so this school year.

Alligood also said she thinks she can do a better job of teaching, as the video allows her to see what a student saw, even if she was helping another student at the time.

“There’s only one of me,” she said. “Sometimes it’s really hard to get to everyone.”

With the video technology, Alligood said she hopes students will be able to share what they’ve learned, and she’s already heard of them sharing the videos on social media.

“I thought that was pretty neat,” Alligood said. “If I had it at the beginning of the semester, I think there would’ve been more applications.”

“At this point, I’m just trying to do a little bit,” she added.