Anatomy Apps

For the Droid, there are a multitude of free downloadable apps. The joy of these is that students can have them available to use at any time.

Speed Anatomy is a game where the player touches the organ that is named. It has good diagrams and is fun, but contains information from all systems, so it wouldn’t be useful until the end of the year.

The free version of Visual Anatomy is a good one for reviewing the major organs of each system. It shows a diagram of the organs with places to click on them. Once selected, the organ is named and a brief description of it is given. It is a much more interesting way to study organs and their structures than a flat diagram. The labels contain additional information on each structure. It contains some brief quizzes and also has diagrams from Gray’s Anatomy. There is an additional package that can be purchased for $2.49.

There are two apps that are both called HumanAnatomy. They both contain labeled images, and once the names for the structure are selected, they give a detailed description of the structure. The images on both are not very detailed and are the images available for copyright free use. The one by “Black Droid Inc.” is a little better, as it has an index that is much easier to follow. The biggest drawback is that they have many pop-up ads for other apps.

Imaios takes a very long time to download, but the images on it are very good. They are MRI’s of a multitude of body parts. However, to get the feature that labels the pins, you have to purchase it.

Anatomy and Physiology Flashcards is a fun way to review, but is really best for a final exam. It is a set of over 600 questions on various aspects of the subject. They are grouped together by topic, but it is not easy to navigate.

Pocket Atlas offers a week free trial. It has an alphabetized list of terminology that, when clicked on, gives much detailed information and diagrams related to that term. This would be particularly useful for students, but it is very pricey at $29.39.

Anatronica takes a little while to open, but this is my favorite of the apps. It allows you to freely rotate and zoom in and out. It has good graphics and you can click on the structure to get more information. There is also a quiz option that can be used to identify the structures. The only systems it offers for free though are the skeletal and muscular systems.

Many of the apps for purchase are much better than these free apps. My favorite app is one for the iPad. I am hoping that we will be able to purchase this app to load on a portable set of iPads for use throughout the school next year. The video below briefly shows the some functions available.

Anatomy Online

There are many free Web 2.0 tools to help teach Anatomy and Physiology. There are a myriad of sites with diagrams and information that can be used as “texts” or as supplemental information. The fact that they are online and that they are student centric makes them much more interesting to the students. They are also good tools for students to use for review.

Bodymaps is a little slow to react, but has very good images once they focus. The systems start off in very cartoonish diagrams, but then become more realistic once you zoom in a bit. You can manipulate and rotate images to look at from the top, bottom, front, back, left and right. I think that students might get frustrated waiting for the images to load, as they take a long time.

Healthline offers rotatable images that are fairly realistic. They can be clicked on to identify structures and students can find out further information on each part. Healthline also offers multiple computer animated videos of many processes and medical conditions that are very informative and easy to understand.

AnatQuest has images that are labeled, but are very cartoonish. These images have much detail, but are very colorful and not very realistic. There are sectioned views of the Visible Human that can be zoomed in on, but are not labeled. They would be helpful for a teacher to use with students, but it would be difficult for students to pick out some structures. The Visible Human project produced cross sections of a human male and human female. The male was a young executed murderer and the female an older woman. Before they were cryogenically frozen and sliced, MRI images of their full bodies were taken.

Anatronica offers free rotating diagrams with good images, however, it does not have any information about the parts. It also takes a little while to load, and a viewer needs to be downloaded.

SEER Training is like a virtual textbook. It discusses each system and then discusses cancers of that system since it was created by the National Cancer Institute.

Zygote Body has very easy to manipulate images that are reasonably realistic. Once a structure is clicked on, the name is provided. However, there is not a further description of the structure or its function.

The University of Leicester has an outline of different systems, brief information, but has some very simple and easy to understand animations. The information is intended to be used to prepare for a virtual autopsy.

Kids Health for kids and for teens is great for students with difficulty reading, with visual difficulties, or those who are auditory learners, this simplistic program orally reads the content, though it is in an animated voice. It is lacking in a multitude of pictures that are an important part of anatomy. It does have very good information on disorders.

Essentials of Human Anatomy and Physiology, Elaine Marieb 8th edition, 9^th edition, and 10^th edition and Essentials of Anatomy & Physiology, Martini/Bartholomew, 5^th edition offer materials for each chapter of the text. There are oral descriptions, review quizzes, picture labeling games, case studies, and other review materials. These are great materials to be used as supplements or for students to use as review. Another site for review is Anatomy Arcade. It has games that are fun, though many lack significant detail.

There are abundant free programs that make learning and reviewing much more interesting. I wish that all of these tools were available many moons ago when I was taking Anatomy and Physiology myself!

A Del.icio.us Idea!

Bookmarking sites have many potential uses in the classroom. They are free tools to catalogue and comment on links you have found. Some include stumbleupon, backflip, diigo and del.icio.us. For teachers, it is an easy way to present resources to students. You don’t have to type in the whole URL or multiple URL’s for a topic area. You can use one URL to direct students to your bookmarking site. You can create a list of excellent sources to direct students to those with the best information. Teachers can also publish links to sites for homework help, practice tests and quizzes, flashcard sites, and many others.

For students, it would be helpful to teach them to make their own to cite where their information came from for projects and to make comments along the way on which are the most useful sites for particular content. Several sites also offer aps for Smartphones which would make it more appealing to students, as they could research on the go.

The educational and technological components of my own Del.icio.us lists were created during an educational technology course. I first signed up for Diigo, but I found it a little difficult to navigate, so I tried out Del.icio.us and found that it was much simpler. I would definitely recommend Del.icio.us to my students, not only because it seemed easier to me, but also, I am more familiar with its functions, so I could be of more help to my students in its use. In reading Web 2.0: New Tools for New Schools, we were introduced to many other sources. Our professor and fellow students also offered many links to other materials associated with the topic of each week’s discussions. We were required to accumulate those in an annotated bibliography. I carried over those links as well as the annotations to De.licio.us. Creating tags for each link makes it very easy to access materials on whatever topic you choose. Making these links public makes it helpful to others with similar interests. In researching e-portfolios, the name that came up continually was Helen Barrett. I was able to gather many other resources on e-portfolios, as she linked her informational page to her Del.icio.us account.  It is easy to tell which links are some of the best by looking at the number of “saves” on Del.icio.us. Some of the links also import a description rather than having to type one in. It is also a great way to share links with others, even in a closed group, as you can send the link to a particular “stack” to any interested parties. However, in the true spirit of Web 2.0, why not share with others? Here is mine!

http://delicious.com/melisuesoxrox

A&P-Portfolios

E-portfolios are the authentic assessment tool of the 21^st century student. They allow students to digitally showcase their learning and have a long-lasting product that shows how their learning has grown throughout the process, whether that be the duration of a course, a school career, or a lifetime. There is a wide range of tool through which students may demonstrate their accomplishments. They can work across classes and content. It allows for continuous improvement.

There are many different Web 2.0 tools that may be used to create e-portfolios. These include Blogger, Elgg, Live Journal, Think Free, Wikispaces, Word Press (to improve your online site), Zoho. Students can create videos online using Jumpcut, or may use other movie maker programs and link their movies online. They can create audio podcasts at Podomatic.

To ensure that students are adhering to fair use, there are many sites that they may be directed to for drawing video, audio, and visual resources. Some sites for audio files are Archive, ccMixter, SoundSnap (educators accounts are necessary for unlimited access). A really fun site for making your own music is JamStudio. Video files may be used from Open Video, Sandbox . There are many resources to find images. These include Anatomy- Medical/Pathology Images, Edupic, FreeStockPhotos, 4FreePhotos, Flickr , MorgueFile, PicFindr  ( an excellent search engine of multiple sites), Public Health Images, StockXchange. Two sites with links to multiple Media Types are Cogdogroo, Wikimedia.

Content management systems include Drupal, EdMoto, Moodle, Plone. We use Moodle at my school. It is very easy to navigate and has a multitude of features. It allows the linking of files and other resources into topic areas. It also allows for online submission of student work and taking (and grading!) online quizzes. Students may communicate with one another through an IM feature, and in a blog type style for more formal interaction. EdMoto is very similar to Facebook, a tool with which nearly all older students are familiar. It offers many of the same features as Moodle, but in a format that is probably more familiar to students (and to many teachers as well).

E-portfolios are a great way to meet many of the new literacy and writing subject area common core standards for students in Alabama. (See appendices C and D for Science and Technical Subjects). Publishing e-portfolios will make students write and read more critically, especially if other students, parents or communities will be reading the material they present in their portfolios.

This video clip showcases Somerville High School’s pilot program for the use of e-portfolios.