The Digital Frog Blog

Yesterday I was waiting for an appointment and idly watching the activity in the square below. I saw a young child of seven or eight crossing the street weighed down by an enormous backpack and started thinking about why schools are still so dependent on heavy textbooks.

Of course there are some good reasons, namely:

• Teachers are comfortable with these structured learning tools
• They are low-tech and therefore do not go wrong
• Typically they offer a complete course of work, so require less prep time for the teacher

But at the same time, there are significant downsides:

• They can be VERY boring
• They are VERY heavy
• They account for the felling of millions of trees
• They cost a LOT of money
• Outdated content requires replacement of the whole book

For a long time, I have felt that there has to be a better way. In fact, there is a better way to achieve the same benefits of the printed textbook without the list of downsides: interactive, computer-based learning tools.

While at one time access to technology in schools was an issue, computers have become pretty ubiquitous, both at home and in the classroom. Technology-enabled learning tools can engage students in new, interactive ways while still covering the material that historically students have lugged around in textbooks. Related topics can be easily linked in ways impossible in print. Concepts that are difficult to demonstrate in a flat illustration or picture can be made much easier to comprehend through animations, video, and activities to help make learning less passive. Multimedia, when it’s done well, can really expand learning by appealing to multiple learning styles. A textbook may be good for avid readers, but can be less effective for those who learn better from other methods. And all this can be delivered on CD, DVD, the computer’s hard drive or over the internet without the need to lug around heavy textbooks.

This is something Digital Frog International has been doing for a long time—even before computers were so common. And while our educational software is a strong supplemental source that was never intended to replace an entire textbook, we’ve strived to embody the advantages that any good computer-based learning tool should have over the “anachonistic” textbook:

• Holistic and comprehensive content designed to meet a wide range of curriculum requirements
• Engaging activities that capture student interest through interaction
• Animations for difficult concepts
• Integrated, context-sensitive dictionary
• Integrated text-to-speech for the visually-impaired and auditory learners
• Interactive concept map to ensure students never get lost
• Customizable workbook materials - print only what you need, when you need it
• Light weight
• Can be dynamically updated via the internet
• MUCH less expensive than text books
• Can be accessed directly from disc, via the school network, on the student’s own computer or via the school portal (depending on the licensing)

So, maybe it’s time that textbooks followed the dinosaurs into extinction?

T-rex image from Noah’s Animal Figurines, where you can buy him for just $12.

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The gift of The Digital Frog virtual dissection to a Wheeling, West Virginia school, will save them close to $4000 over five years, according to a story by junior reporters for WFTRF News in West Virginia.

The Ohio County SPCA, with help from PCRM (Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine) donated the software to Wheeling Park’s science department as a replacement for actual dissection.

Pat Durkin is the science department chair and is excited about the new technology.

Rebecca Goth is the head of Education Committee for the SPCA and says it’s time to recognize that killing and harming animals for educational purposes is not in the student’s best interest.

Approximately 450 students take regular or honors biology each year. Even if the school had had to purchase a site license for the virtual dissection program, over five years they would still save over $3000 compared to the cost of frogs and other materials required to perform dissections.

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One of the perks of producing the Digital Field Trip series was that we had to actually go to the environments we were covering in the each of the programs. For The Wetlands, that was relatively easy as our main location was only a few hours drive away (and one spot in the program is almost literally down the road). The Rainforest required several members of the team to make the sacrifice and spend several weeks in the Central American country of Belize to collect the photographs, audio and video used in the program.

The Digital Field Trip to The Desert, however, became our most ambitious of the series. Team members spent weeks in the deserts of the southwest US to collect media, talk to experts, and bring back as much of the experience into the program to make it as accurate and representative as possible. As the program’s project manager, I was lucky enough to go on a few of these, spending a few nights camping in the desert at Texas’ Big Bend National Park (and waking up to find one of our SUV’s tires was flat), exploring the expansive salt flats of northern Nevada and almost running out of gas in the middle of Death Valley while out photographing sand dunes. I was also able to take a few working holidays to more far-flung deserts—the edges of the Sahara from both Morocco and Egypt, and the desert regions of southern Israel and Jordan.

By far one of the most impressive deserts I have been able to visit is the Namib Desert in the southern African country of Namibia. It is the oldest desert in the world and possibly the driest. It has some of the world’s largest sand dunes and a surprising wealth of wildlife, from welwitchia plants that can be hundreds of years old to herds of elephants that cross the harsh desert annually. It’s a harsh, but little known and incredibly beautiful environment.

It’s also one that is not fully understood or protected. This is something that the Namibian government is looking to change, by protecting vast swaths of the Namib Desert to connect the country’s two other protected parks: Skeleton Coast, a vast expanse on the western coast of the country where the sand dunes reach the sea, and Etosha national park, known for its incredible range of wildlife from small deer like the Springbok to the larger mammals from wildebeest to elephants, lions the endangered black rhino. This new park would effectively create a 15-million acre corridor for wildlife between the two existing parks and be one of the largest protected areas in the entire world.

To assist in is creation, recently the lead scientist for The Nature Conservatory, Dr. M. A. Sanjayan, led an expedition to cross the Namib Desert—300 km of it—on foot. This daunting, 14-day journey was done to conduct a conservation assessment of everything from identifying the movement of animals to mapping little visited locations to locate waterholes, and even assess how tourism could be brought to this remote area with minimal impact on the fragile environment.

While they just recently completed the expedition, the entire journey has been documented on their web site and makes for a fascinating read. They get off to an inauspicious start, ranging from inevitable technical problems with equipment to losing three of their nine camels before even setting out. (One is too old, one became pregnant and one was eaten by lions, which, since the camels were imported from Australia, Sanjayan theorizes is probably the first time in history an Australian camel has faced and lost to a lion).

With accompanying videos and slideshows, it’s an interesting exploration of a fascinating ecosystem that few of us will get to experience first-hand. (Although I can recommend it if the opportunity ever arises.)

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Before we launched the very first version of The Digital Frog back in 1995, we carried out extensive beta testing with local high school students. The student reports gave us much cause for both hilarity and concern.

Each student was asked to dissect the digital frog and then answer an extensive questionnaire and write his or her own comments. Overall, students preferred the digital dissection but for surprising reasons. One student commented “digital disection is much better than real disection because then I don’t have to dodge the scalpels of the kid behind”. Another student thought that “The Digital Frog” is much better than digesting real frogs”!

Yet another commented that “real disection is much better because then I get to mash the brains into the desk”! One has to wonder what these kids were learning in the traditional wet lab environment.

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Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Digital Frog International web site was offline for just short of 24 hours from approximately 5 p.m. Friday, April 25 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 26

We apologize for any inconvenience, but we’re happy to say that everything is back up and running as it should be.

If you received an email from us and tried to unsubscribe from our mailing list during the site outage, you may have to click the unsubscribe link in the email again or send us an email and we will manually unsubscribe you.

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We are often asked what grade level our software is designed for. When we answer Grades K-12, we suspect it sounds like a sales pitch. Although we originally intended the field trips to be used in middle schools, our designers became so engrossed that they kept adding more and more screens suitable for more and more age levels and now the field trips truly appeal to learners of all ages.

We visited Montreal this weekend and could not tear our three year old grandchildren away from my laptop. They were totally absorbed in the Rainforest Dependency Web Game and learned a surprising amount by “reading” silhouettes. And yet this same game is challenging even for adults.

As for the text, it is written clearly and succinctly and supported by context-sensitive definitions and integrated text-to-speech to help early readers, ESL learners and auditory learners.

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Today is Earth Day and a dear friend of mine sent me a fascinating eCard to mark the event, and, at the same time, saved one square foot of rainforest. She knows that this is a subject dear to my heart, especially since we developed The Digital Field Trip to The Rainforest to teach students about rainforest ecology, biology and uses.

You can find the eCard here and find out more about how to save your square foot of rainforest on the Care2 web site.

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I am glad the frogs don’t have to depend on me alone for their survival—I never managed to get my frog safely across the road.

Frogster is a new game for children on the Vancouver Aquarium website. The idea is to lead your frog safely across the road avoiding various natural and man made threats.

The plight of the frogs and amphibians is serious and this is another way to deliver that message to children. The game will remind all of us “slightly” older folks of the original video games for Commodore 64 and Atari. The perils to avoid in Frogster are air pollution, water pollution, loss of habitat, climate change, human interference and Chytrid fungus. Frogs in the natural world are having a hard time avoiding these threats and the poor frogs in my game were no better off. The hope of this game’s introduction on the website is to draw more attention to the overwhelming decline in the amphibian population due to habitat loss and the Chytrid fungus as well as to stimulate fund raising efforts for the Year of the Frog.

(To help these efforts, Digital Frog International will be donating 5% of The Digital Frog 2.5 sales to Amphibian Ark this year.)

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When we set out to re-launch our web site earlier this year, we wanted to make it easier than ever to find out about our range of educational software products, try them for yourself and do a better job of opening communication with educators and parents (not to mention, with each other… but more on that part soon.)

What we lacked, however, was an easy way for you to order the software directly from us. But no longer:

Introducing the online Digital Frog Shop.

As of today, all of our products can be purchased online, directly from Digital Frog International. Everything from single-license versions of our virtual frog dissection, anatomy and ecology program to building site licenses of any of our three Digital Field Trips (or even the new Digital Field Trip Series DVD). You can even order a DemoWare CD for just a $5 shipping and handling fee.

We are able to accept all major credit cards, using Paypal for safe and secure payment processing. (And no, you do not need a Paypal account to purchase from us.) We’ll ship to anywhere in the world and all our products are backed by a 30-day money back guarantee. (See our terms and conditions for more details.)

If you are an educator who needs to place your order with a PO, we’re set up for you too. You can submit your order through the Digital Frog Shop, along with a PO number. We just ask you to follow-up with a fax of the PO on your school’s letterhead and we’ll take care of the rest.

So, come on in! We’re open for business and glad we can make it even easier to provide our educational software to your students.

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Sitting anxiously awaiting the signs of spring, I was listening to a radio program asking listeners to call in with their favorite signs of spring. It got me thinking about mine. Thinking about it I realized I have favorites for different senses. I love to see the first buds of green poking their way out of my garden or the new leaf buds on the trees; of course the early flowers are great too.

Spring has a smell to me, rain and new earth, with last year’s vegetation composting on the ground it adds to that rich earthy smell. Sometimes the smell can be too much, like when the local farmers spread the manure on the new spring fields!

My favorite sound is definitely the Spring Peepers. On my evening walks with the dogs I pass by a couple of wet areas and the chorus of frog chirps is unbelievable. The Peepers are the first frogs out in the spring and can be found in most of eastern North America. These amazing little guys are only .75-1.25 inches long yet they sing a mighty song. We have had great fun learning different frog calls with The Digital Frog 2.5 program. In the ecology section many frog and toad species are investigated and you can listen to and learn their calls.

To hear the distinctive call of the spring peepers, click on the player below.

I also enjoy the earthy flavor of fiddle heads found on our walks (though we usually find them after they unfurl). Now that spring is here I can feel the sun and breeze on my face as I no longer need everything covered up!

What are your favorite Spring experiences?

Add your Spring comments for a chance to win a copy of ScienceMatrix: Cell Structure and Function.

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