This world wide web site is designed to take the place of a lab guide for dissecting a frog. There is a page on setting up and pinning out the frog, another page on cutting the skin, a page on cutting the abdominal muscles, and finally several pages on the various organs of the frog, arranged in the order in which you will see them in the dissection. Each page contains some text, a number of color pictures showing the various steps for that part of the dissection, and one or more animations of somebody carrying out the steps or of some piece of the frog moving (such as the heart beating). There are also places where you can practice carrying out the dissection, for instance by pointing to the places on the frog where the pins should go. The pictures show frogs in a standard dissecting pan (for the dissection part) or show both preserved and pithed frogs side by side with organ systems outlined.

I have a bias against study guides on the computer, and I certainly don't think that a computer demo such as this one can replace doing a real dissection (and this was not the intent of this packages authors). That said, this is one of the better on-line dissection tutorials I've seen. The pictures are fairly good (though not quite as good as you'd find in a textbook) and the animations are small, short, and somewhat jerky, but are occasionally useful. The whole thing is layed out quite attractively, and its short enough that the waiting time to download each page over the web is not too long (except for animations, which can take a while). If you think that an online tutorial would help your students in dissecting frogs, or as preparation before a dissection, then this site is worth looking at. As an aside, this is one of the few programs whose authors have actually tested whether it improves students learning. Citations for their articles are listed on the web site.

Computer: World Wide Web

Source: http://teach.virginia.edu/go/frog

Cost: Free

Last update 22nd of January 1996