Digital Frog

Posted by LisaHill - 30/03/09 at 10:03 pm

Grades: K-12
Subject Matter: Biology  and Natural Sciences

Virtual Lab & More
When I walked around the national science teacher’s convention in New Orleans, I paused at the Digital Frog booth.  The virtual frog dissection was intriguing.

Digital Frog offers five products covering:

• The Digital Frog 2.5
• The Digital Field Trip to the Wetlands
• The Digital Field Trip to the Rainforest
• The Digital Field Trip to the Desert
• ScienceMatrix: Cell Structure and Functions

The first four programs offer a similar setup.  These programs open up with an easy-to-understand Main Menu page.  Main sections are outlined, along with the Map (map grid of each section), Quick Tour and Quit button.  In the upper left hand corner is an arrow icon that  provides direct access buttons to the whole program.  In Preference, viewers can choose three screen sizes and volume setting. Overall, navigating all the programs is easy, and the lessons are well designed.

Digital Frog and the Digital Field Trips are written for elementary grades and above.   However, on the Map, students and teachers can explore the program identifying grade appropriate material.  Kinder garten to third grade students could participate with the games, animal and niche identification, picture descriptions, short videos, and geography activities.

One nice feature, viewers can click on most words and a vocabulary window pops up.  Clicking on the photos also provides pop-up descriptions.  With the cellular biology focus, ScienceMatrix is designed for middle school and above grades.

The Digital Frog 2.5
Students can choose Dissection, Anatomy or Ecology.  In the Dissection portion, pictures and graphics of a frog and its body parts are provided in detail.  Students can choose which frog body part to dissect.  Click on each body section, and the words are defined. Double click again on a body section, and an expanded body section appears.  Each main body part window provides drop down discussions.

For dissection, the cursor converts to a scalpel knife.  Two dots display showing where the student should cut. You can’t make a mistake with the virtual dissection.  A video window then demonstrates this particular dissection on a real frog, which reinforces the student’s understanding.

With Digital Frog, teachers and students can dissect a frog without getting their hands dirty, practice on the digital frog before completing an actual frog dissection, and learn about their anatomy, ecology, niche, life cycle, and more.

Students are curious, even the squeamish ones.  Dissecting a frog online allows schools, teachers and home schooling programs to virtually concentrate on the anatomy, biology, ecology of the common frog, a creature most students are familiar with.  And when it’s time to dig in and pull out the scalpels, the students will have had experience identifying and extracting virtual body parts.  Elementary students to high school students will benefit from this program.

Digital Field Trips
Menus provide a drop down menu listing Main Menu, Field Trip, Study, Types, Mechanisms, and extra material unique to each ecosystem. Digital Frog offers field trips to deserts, rainforests and wetlands.  Each digital trip offers a geographical activity, requiring the user to find their destination for the field trip. Once there,  select a specific spot for a field tour (which contains identified field sign posts).   Each field post provides a 360 degree tour, and written field notes.  In the Desert Field Trips, a yellow yield sign allows the intrepid explorer to travel to other highlighted areas. The green “i”sign provides additional information for selected positions.

Students are learning the biology, ecology, geography, social impacts, climate factors, niches and animal diversity in desert, rainforest and wetland ecosystems.  Games are provided to help teach various scientific features, for example the Dependency Web Game in The Rainforest, and Make A Desert in The Desert.   Detailed pictures and short videos offer visual support to the material.

Science Matrix: Cell Structure and Function
Science Matrix offers one information module and three inter-activities to understand cell structure, function, specialization and type.  This activity is suited for middle school and up students, as it does require some understanding of cell biology.

In Cell Structure, students learn about the different cell components, their functions, location and relation to living tissue.  With Build-a-Cell, users create three different cell structure (animal, plant and prokaryote).  Linking Structure and Function allows users to click on parts of the cell (organelles), choose their function and see if they answered correctly.   Cell specialization allows viewers to identify cell types and their specialized organelles for specific functions.  The three inter-activities provide quizzes to further test an individual, or classroom knowledge.

Each module provides excellent graphics of organelles, cell structure, location and relation their specific functions.

Teacher Resources
Digital Frog lists curriculum standards for Ontario and Manitoba (Canada), California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Missouri, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.  Teachers can view online and identify how Digital Frog meets various curriculum requirements, and how to incorporate into lesson plans.

Various links are provided that enhance and support Digital Frog’s subjects.  In the Image Gallery, students and teachers can also download free pictures and videos for reports, lessons and presentation.

And Digital Frog has its own Frog Blog, which posts various offers and opportunities.For free reviews, Digital Frog offers a DemoWare CD ($5 shipping fee), or download a demo version.

Systems Requirements: Mac OS X 10.3.9, Windows 2000 with Pentium II
Contact: digitalfrog.com
Cost: Single use license: Sciencematrix ($49.00); Digital Frog 2.5 ($155.00);  Desert, Rainforest and Wetlands Digital Trips (each $84.00);  Digital Bundle (Home License @ $184.50).  See online for Building Site License pricing.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 30th, 2009 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Animation, Fun Stuff, Homework Help, Media, Science. The entry is tagged under biology, cell, cell function, cell structure, cells, cellular biology, desert, digital, Digital Frog, dissection, ecology, elementary, high, high school, learning, middle, natural science, natural sciences, rainforest, school, students, teachers, virtual lab, wetland, wetlands. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.