TY Talk: Here at St Wolstan's Community School for girls we have had a unique opportunity to swap stories of creepy-crawlies with fourth-year students in Illinois.

We are the first group outside the United States to take advantage of the Bugscope programme, involving a $500,000 microscope from the Beckman Institute which we have been allowed to use, over the Internet, to study the insects and other small creatures that inhabit our environment.

Bugscope started in 1999, to help scientists around the world share expensive resources, such as microscopes, over the Internet. Now schools in the US have discovered that, through Bugscope, they can make use of the sophisticated equipment of the science community for classroom experiments. Over the net, school students are able to access the power of the University of Urbana's microscope, and some schools have made Bugscope part of their science curriculum.

Last year an education outreach officer from Urbana visited Ireland to discuss the Bugscope programme and our science teacher, Sheila Murphy, thought that we, the Transition Year science students at St Wolstan's, would enjoy taking part in an experiment. We sent a spider and a woodlouse back to Illinois, and on February 12th we logged on to study Irish bugs through the high-powered microscope. Scientists at the University of Illinois kept up a live text discussion with us as we moved the microscope around, answering questions about the various parts of the bugs and their functions. We also discussed non-scientific issues such as who would win American Idol.

Bugscope team member Daniel Weber rated the Irish project as one of the programme's best sessions. The Bugscope project was aexciting development for us and for the University of Urbana, as ours is the first school outside the US to use it. We enjoyed availing of this opportunity.

To visit the Bugscope programme, log on to http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu