Researchers from several departments of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign initiated ChickScope, a 21-day chick embryonic development project, to demonstrate the remote control of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) instrument through the World Wide Web.For 21 days, students and teachers from ten kindergarten to high school classrooms participated in this innovative project using an interactive Web lab book. From classroom computers with access to the Internet, students were able to login to the computers at the university that controlled the MRI system, manipulate experimental conditions through a simple on-line form to generate their own data, and then view resulting images of the chick embryo in real-time. Researchers answered students' questions about their MR images and other related issues.ChickScope made extraordinary hardware, software, and human resources available to the classrooms. However, it left to teachers the tasks of integrating these resources into the classroom and adapting them to the needs and abilities of the students. Thus, the implementation was teacher-based, and its meaning was realized in different ways in each setting. This paper describes the planning, implementation, and the impact of ChickScope in classrooms for facilitating learning and teaching. We provide examples from various grade levels?primary to high school. We conclude with lessons learned and the implications of advanced technologies for K-12 outreach.

The Bugscope project is an educational outreach program for kindergarten to grade 12 (K–12) classrooms. The project provides a resource to classrooms so that they may remotely operate a scanning electron microscope to image insects at high magnification. The microscope is remotely controlled in real time from a classroom computer over the Internet using a Web browser. Bugscope provides a state-of-the-art microscope resource for teachers that can be readily integrated into classroom activities. The Bugscope project provides a low-cost, sustainable model for research groups to support K–12 education outreach projects.

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We describe the use of an autonomous astronomical camera, called "Stardial," for undergraduate instruction. Stardial 2 delivers images of the night sky nearly in real-time to the world wide web (www.astro.uiuc.edu/stardial/). The world wide web (WWW) interface is robust, inexpensive, and accommodates many students asynchronously with respect to the instructor(s). The guiding philosophy is to provide students with authentic astronomical data so that they may learn about science by doing it themselves. Students respond favorably to the opportunity to learn from their own experiences with authentic data, complete with its irregularities and its surprises. Stardial has been operational for one academic year (1996-97) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In this paper we describe Stardial's instrumentation, some of the curriculum based upon Stardial's unique data, and the experiences of students who have used Stardial. We conclude with possible research topics using Stardial data and with a brief look to the future of remote laboratories.