Understanding the human body: an introduction to human biology, Anatomy CD-Rom for Acorn (A5000 recommended) Pounds 40. Anglia Television, PO Box 18, Benfleet, Essex SS7 1AZ. The Living body: an atlas Anatomy CD-Rom for Research Machines and IBM and compatible multimedia computers, Pounds 199, Philip Harris, Lynne Lane, Lichfield, Staffs WS14 0EE.
Jerry Wellington takes a journey through two new educational guides to anatomy.
The human body seems to be a favourite area for CD-Rom producers and these two discs add to the slowly-growing number available for studying ourselves.
Both discs cover a large chunk of the science curriculum, including the revised version, and will also be valuable for cross-curricular themes and pastoral work, not least sex education.
The Anglia TV disc is a useful addition to the computer-based material on the body already available for schools. The disc contains several major themes: cells and tissues, organs and organ systems, reproduction and genetics. There are sub-sets within these too, which are easily accessible from the main menu with, for example, the topics of how babies are made, contraception, and genetics, under the general theme of reproduction.
In addition, and this is probably one of the most attractive features of the disc, there is a resources database available to the student and the teacher. This contains Draw files, scanned images and worksheets. These “curriculum extras” can be cut out and pasted into pupils’ own work or teachers’ lesson material. There are, for example, more than 100 drawings relating to the human body, which can be used in pupils’ work.
Pupils can choose a topic from the main menu and then gradually work their way through a “lesson”. Each lesson proceeds page by page, but as it is being read, pupils can stop at certain words which are highlighted in yellow and click on them to get more information about, for example, chromosome, ova, testes, and so on. These are often called “hot text” in hypertext jargon, and are extremely valuable to the learner. Another useful feature is the ability to do a key-word search on a word like, say, stomach. Information on the term is then provided on the screen. Pupils will welcome the ability to click on parts of a diagram, eg sections of the human skeleton, and find out more.
The disc uses animation and short video clips in small windows which teachers have now become used to on CD-Rom and these are again a valuable asset. There is no sound on the disc, however, which some may consider an advantage in a quiet library or a science lab.
The Living Body: An Atlas, marketed by Philip Harris, is yet another CD-Rom from the prolific Bradford Technology stable and teachers will immediately recognise some of the icons and the interface Bradford Technology uses.
The learner is again offered a variety of topics from an attractive main menu - blood and circulation, breathing, reproduction, muscles, skeleton and bones, digestion, hormones, excretion, nerves and senses. The Year 8 pupils with whom I tried it, immediately turned to the excretion topic, which perhaps shows that the primary drive at this age is not sex but the WC. They were soon exploring the other topics and a teacher can quite easily “leave the pupils to it” with this disc, if that is the way they wish to use CD-Rom.
Others of course may wish to impose more structure and guidance on the learning, especially with the current fears over “exposure” to sex education. Both discs contain guidance on contraception and use photos to illustrate various methods.
The Philip Harris disc also contains a range of colour microscope slides from their own collection full-colour photographs of the organs of the body (which provoke the “Ugh!” response) and a photo of a baby being born. Like the Anglia disc, it uses animation to teach processes such as digestion, breathing, and heart beat. The text boxes on every aspect of the body can be printed by students, which removes the need to take notes from a screen.
Finally, an A-Z index allows students to search for keywords on the disc, and permission has been given for schools to make full use of the picture files in the CD-Rom.
Both these CDs will be valuable in teaching about the human body, and for revision. Both could be used in demonstration mode, but my inclination would be to let pupils loose on them, with perhaps some guidance and structure as long as Gillian Shephard doesn’t find out.
Both cover many of the requirements of the national curriculum in an attractive way. The big difference between them is the price - in an ideal world I would suggest buying both.
Anglia TV - stand 357 Bradford Technology - stand 714
