Virtual Frog Dissection

Original Image: "Poor Thing"
Flickr Photo by shouldbecleaning
Released Under An Attribution 2.0 Generic Liscense
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

In my TE 401 course, some of my classmates decided to integrate technology into their final lesson by doing a virtual frog dissection. As they presented in class, I realized that this website appeared to be a tool that students could really learn from. Therefore, I decided to spend this week looking more deeply into the contents of this virtual frog dissection.

This website could make a lot of great connections for the kids. For example, it gives them an outline of how the frog's body systems are similar to and different from a human's body system. This allows the children to take the information that they are learning and extend it beyond the frog that they are cutting open in class. The more connections the students can make between the frog's body system and the human's body system, the more they will understand why it is important that they are doing this frog dissection at school.

I also think that it is very valuable that this website portrays pictures, in addition to providing a vocal track that tells you additional information about the pictures. This website then appeals to more than one type of learner. It satisfies both the auditory and visual learner.

If I were using this technology with my class, I would allow them to first watch the introduction. This tells them why frog dissection is important and what commonalities they can expect to see between humans and frogs when they are dissecting. I would then have the students watch the "external anatomy" video. I would tell the students to follow along with the video and see if they can find everything that the video is talking about on their own individual frogs. The students can then watch each part of the virtual frog dissection and complete their own live frog frog dissection along with the video. The video is broken down into a series of shorter videos that describe how to locate each of the frog's body systems. If the students feel that the video is moving too quickly, they can pause it, cut open the frog, look for a particular part of the body system, and then start the video again.

I think that using this video as a tool during the frog dissection would be extremely useful. Every time that I have ever had to do a dissection, the directions were in a paper and pencil format. This is difficult because it is often hard to tell what you are supposed to be looking at, from written directions. Even when there were drawings of the inside of the frog attached, it was difficult to tell if what I was seeing inside the frog was the same as what the arrow was pointing to in the picture. By watching a video of an actual frog dissection while you are in the process of dissecting, you can look at the real frog on the screen and compare it to the frog that you are using in class.