Anatomist
A Human Anatomy

"... Anatomist

About eight years ago when I was working in a high school resource room, I had the challenging task of helping two students with fairly severe learning disabilities get through an anatomy course. I not only had to review and relearn anatomy myself, I also had to find ways which would help them learn and remember the pertinent material. If only I had Anatomist! This packed, graphics based CD is a complete course on human anatomy. Produced as a large HyperCard stack, the CD is full of hundreds of anatomical drawings in black and white (color is not available in HyperCard). These are the same drawings available in the very popular soft covered book, The Anatomy Coloring Book. The drawings are organized by system, and each system has various numbers of levels depending on the complexity of that particular area.

The book and the CD differ, though in some very important ways. The book is entirely a visual experience with drawings and words, but the CD adds auditory information to every drawing and demands that the student interact kinesthetically with the drawings by choosing either systems from the menu or actual spots on the drawings for identification.

Take for example the cross section of the skin shown on this page. This detailed drawing comes onto the screen. The student can then click on any of the tiny circles on the drawing. When s/he does, a pleasant, articulate female voice gives the name of that part and the word appears on the screen. Definitions of function are available and may be copied into the student's "notebook, or the student can simply type notes on the structure into his notebook to be printed later. The graphic can be printed out as a full-sized page and /or the student notes can be printed out later.

For students who need to hear or interact physically with something they want to learn, this CD is exactly "what the doctor ordered". We all know how difficult it is to remember a word when you have no idea how it is pronounced! This program pronounces each part's name as we click on the appropriate location. We also need to remember that to achieve this degree of detail and complexity, no single regular data disk could begin to hold even one of the body systems. CD technology offers us the ability to study complex systems in detail without loosing the interconnections between larger systems, and that is the greatest strength of this educational CD in my estimation. I would make it an absolutely vital reference source (especially if each student had the "coloring book" as a text) for any anatomy or biology course at the high school level. ..."

By Judith P. Sweeney, Coordinator From The ConnSENSE Bulletin
Connecticut's Special Education Network for Software Evaluation
A publication of the University of Connecticut's Special Education Technology
Lab. Vol. 8 No. 3 pages 8-9
Used with permission.