Review – Frog Dissection

Note that Emantras provided me with a promotional code to download this app for free in order to write this review.

This is a review of the iTunes app Frog Dissection which was created by Emantras. The app is available for the iPad in the iTunes store and it cost $2.99 to purchase – please note that I had a laptop version to review.

Click on any of the images to see a larger version.

I began at the top and went to the START DISSECTION option.  If my memory from my junior high school science classes are correct, I had to do all of the steps electronically that Mr. Penny and Mr. Rowe had us doing with the real frogs back at G.C. Rowe Junior High School.

The functionality was quite good with each of the steps.  The tool had to be selected and you had to move the tool over the places indicated by the instructions.  One of the things I noticed was that you needed to grab the handles of the items.  For example, when you had to cut things with the scissors or knife, if you traced along the line exactly it didn’t go all the way to where it was supposed to cut, but if you adjusted your grip to where the handles of the scissors or knife was and then traced along this adjusted line it worked perfectly (and that may be a function of having to use the mouse with the laptop version, so the touch version for the iPad may be different).

Once you had the frog totally dissected, if you selected any of the organs inside you would get additional information about it (as shown below).

The next area in the menu structure was the HUMAN VS. FROG, where there were content-based items that discussed the various differences between human and frog anatomy, habitats, diets, etc..

While this was interesting, I wasn’t sure the purpose for this feature.  Possibly to allow the students to be able to draw conclusions about humans based upon their exploration of frogs.  This may be a useful pedagogical strategy with real dissections, but with a virtual dissection I was a little curious why we couldn’t just open up a human body and compare things for ourselves.

The next menu item was WET LAB PROCESSES, which essentially were step-by-step instructions for the dissection of a real frog.

The final menu item was INTERNAL ORGANS.

This area was similar to the features that you had upon completing the dissection of the frog, where you could click on organs and obtain more information about each (and I suspect both linked to the same information pages).

Overall, I have to be honest and say that I had been very much looking forward to playing with a frog dissection app and I wasn’t disappointed.  Using Emantras‘ own taxonomy of different types of mobile learning programs (see 7 Learning Models for Mobile Learning), I would have to say that this app fell into either the remedial or the supplemental categories.  With the exception of the minor glitch between where to cut and how to hold the tool, the functionality was quite good (and I suspect would have been better with the actual iPad version).