ABC News reports that four schools have adopted a program developed by the Animal Welfare Institute (AWI) to allow students to perform a virtual frog dissection instead of dissecting a real frog. For a California group called “Save the Frogs”, which partnered with AWI, it’s about, well, saving frogs.
But ABC News reports that for Kevin Stipp, an Assistant Principal at Rancho Verde High School in California, where the AWI program has been adopted, it’s about both money and sparing frogs from cruel deaths.
A group called “Digital Frog International” says 85 schools in the Miami-Dade School District have signed up for its virtual frog dissection program.
So whaddya think of this? Will students learn less if they don’t dissect real frogs?
Should we do away with real physical physics experiments as well?
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I was in the classroom just a few months ago assisting students with pig dissections. I’ve also experienced a couple of different virtual dissections. Even the best of the virtual can’t come close to the real experience. You miss the feel, the weight, the texture and the opportunity to freely explore and discover and experience. In the virtual dissections you are directed along through steps you can’t really deviate from, and everything is essentially handed to you. But in the real thing, you oftentimes have to put real thought and effort into finding organs that are tucked away in difficult to reach spots. You can explore from all angles and really see how everything is connected, and also see how it isn’t all clean and simple.
The bottom line is effort. You can either be guided along through a thoughtless process of clicking the mouse, or you can actually turn on the brain and explore. We had students who wanted to see things that weren’t on our scheduled tour and we let them go for it. Wow, that pig skull is hard to crack open, which isn’t something you would know from a computer simulation.
Virtual stuff is fine as an alternative for students who don’t want to do the dissections. But the two students who elected to use the computer were clearly nowhere near as engaged!
Also, the pigs were paid for with student lab fees. So, I don’t know that eliminating real dissections would save the school any money.
My 2 cents.
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