Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Human body parts now available online

Ruth, Jon, and I looked at hearts, lungs, skulls, and other body parts while eating Halloween candy on the floor. Online body parts, of course. It was an educational end to a spooky night of trick-or-treating.

Wright State maintains a QTVR Anatomical Library with 360° views of human organs, bones, etc. Their list of QTVR Links is great. We started there and surfed a few other sites too.

The top three virtual anatomy sites we found are Human Anatomy Online, Get Body Smart, and MEDtropolis's Virtual Body.

Some sites have interactive flash videos that teach about the human anatomy and/or disease. I liked Health Tools Online. And there is a heart model done in Holomatix Blaze 3D.

BBC's Interactive Human Body and Mind site has fun and games for budding anatomy students. A parent who can quickly search the web would probably find many similarly engaging and educational activities.

And the teacher in me is already pondering whether virtual anatomy would be a good tool in the biology class. My students could write reports, make simulated medical diagnoses, create models, do anatomy scavenger hunts, or analyze human anatomy structure and function. Virtual anatomy projects could be individualized for different ability levels and completed asynchronously. Hmmm... Might give this some more thought...

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