Microslide viewers

[Marama T]

Has anyone bought microslide viewers? Haines and Westlab have them with a heap of different microslides available. One of the teachers here asked about purchasing some. I'm hoping they're not too fragile.

Alice from Westlab - I thought Westlab didn't have these things because zilch came up when I used your search function, but I found them on your website by doing a random google search. Might want to get your tech people onto that.

[bigmack]

Marama, we used to have them at my last school . They were called Bioviewers. Didn't know the name seems to have changed to Microslides now .

Anyway , we had the type that look like the ones Westlab sell. Considering the cliental that used them , they survived quite well .

My wife ( science teacher) swears by them for educational value . Especially for the juniors , they can see things that you wouldn't have half a chance of seeing through a regular Microscope . But she also says that you really need one per student or at least one between two students for maximum classroom management . We did have about 25 of them .But once you start getting sets of slides for that many , it gets expensive really quickly .

The slides last well too . I thought they would scratch but they are in a protective coating that seems to work .

[Marama T]

Thanks heaps, bigmack. Excellent feedback.

[LabbieSeth]

I second Bigmack there.

They're pretty durable. We haven't broken one yet and our students are very good at breaking things. But yes it does become quite expensive when getting enough microslides and sets of slides for a whole class.

[RosalieL]

The only one we've had break was when I was carrying far too many and dropped one mid-stride and then kicked it - and even then it was one of the focus knobs that broke off, but the one on the other side still works so the viewer is still functional. I wish the teachers would use them more because I think they are good for the reasons mentioned above. There's no guess work about what the kids can actually see.

Edited to add: I looked them up and the ones we have are the black ones westlab has. I don't know where ours came from though. Long before my time here.

[Marama T]

Thanks you lot! We're getting some.