We report here on the first year of development of a novel teaching facility which incorporates new techniques designed to reach new audiences without diluting subject content. Interactive computer software coupled with rich scientific content of microscopic images provides a unique opportunity to help students learn science and technology, the laboratory is comprised of twenty student workstations networked to various microscopes, thus expanding the number of students capable of "hands-on" data acquisition and analysis by twenty times. Two scanning electron microscopes (SEM), a transmission electron microscope (TEM), and several light microscopes (LM) are interfaced through a server to the workstations.