The education of children, particularly in scientific inquiry, is a powerful force that has shaped humanity's history and holds the key to our future. Given their power to provoke wonder and awe in child and adult alike, microscopes have proven to be transformative as tools for education. Exploratory learning using microscopes has helped to overcome critical barriers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and to broaden participation in these vital fields. Since its inception, the Microscopy Society of America (MSA) has recognized this and made education and outreach to children a priority. Here, we provide a brief review of MSA's efforts in this direction, focusing on current efforts aimed at improving STEM education through the greater adoption and utilization of microscopes.

The smartphone microscope, or mobile microscope, is an interesting tool that is attracting attention in various fields. We report a model of mobile microscope that extends from the Leeuwenhoek-type of single microscope with a simple lens. The new mobile microscope is called the “L-eye mobile microscope” and is compact and easy to handle. The L-eye mobile microscope may become a hobby tool in everyday life for people of all ages but may also be a tool suitable in the education of medical or paramedical students. To test its potential as an educational tool, its performance was examined using samples such as permanent specimens of tissue sections from several organs used in histology and a standard target for a microscopy resolution test. As a control, we used a conventional education-use microscope that is mounted with a smartphone for image capture. From the performance comparison of the two kinds of microscope systems, the L-eye mobile microscope could take images with almost the same quality as those obtained with the conventional microscope at moderate magnifications. This result suggests the usefulness of the L-eye mobile microscope for education.