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<Article-Title>Stimulus Response in Animals</Article-Title>

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<Article-Title>Stimulus Response in Animals</Article-Title> Classroom Technology Reviews Rachel Hays Richard Duhrkopf Department Editor Department Editor choice questions.Students respond un- private tutor for that student who EARTHWORMANATOMY I til a correct answer is given and an needs a helping hand. on-screen count of correct/incorrect GregoryW. McCurdy The Earthworm.1997. Nebraska Scien- answers along with a percent score is Salem tific (3832Leavenworth St., Omaha,NE displayed. The narrated dictionary is High School IN 47167 68105). CD-ROM (Mac or IBM). Pur- accessible from any part of the pro- Salem, chase $69.95. gram and assures that students hear | ANIMALBEHAVIOR l This tutorial is designed for the correct pronunciation of terms. A in the program that (c~~A supplementing the teaching of surprising bonus Stimulus Response in Animals. 1997. interestis the earthworm anatomy in the will pique your students' Films for the Humanities and Sciences on trivia. middle/junior high or high school bi- section earthworm (P.O. Box 2053, Princeton, NJ 08543- The program is extremely easy to Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/60/5/384/48591/4450502.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 ology or zoology class and encom- 2053). Video. 34 minutes. Purchase use. When I ran the program on a passes the material presented in most $89.95. traditionallystructured curricula. Used computer with the minimum require- as an introductionor a review, it can be ments, it locked up several times. At Xl This program emphasizes the completed by most students within a 100 MHz, the program ran without a five steps of a stimulus-re- traditional50-minute class. hitch. sponse reaction: stimulus, re- ceptors, coordinating processes, effec- The program contains eight linear Recommended Systems sections with the first being instruc- tor, and response. This model of tions for the novice user. Most sections IBM Pentium stimulus-response is first illustrated are illustrated with video and dia- * 100 MHz with simple reflexes and then with grams of exceptional quality accompa- * 16 MB RAM more complex learned responses, in- nied by narrated text. Students have * 6X CD-ROM cluding habituation, classical condi- the option of replaying narratedpage * Windows 3.1 or Windows 95 tioning, trial and error learning, and selections as needed. Other sections * VGA 640 x 480 observationallearning. include a short introduction to the * Sound card This video looks at each of the steps worms, definitions and examples of * Power external speakers of the model in turn and illustrates anatomical directional terms, external * Mouse each step with several examples. Most of the examples are of British farm anatomy, earthworm dissection, self Macintosh test, earthwormtrivia, and a program- animals, including chickens, cattle, * 601 chip/100 MHz or better sheep, goats and pigs. One example specific dictionary.The dissection part * 16 MB RAM includes how to cut and pin the worm shows how a sheep can locate her * 6X CD-ROM hidden lamb from others by its vocal- and does a nice job of relatingstructure * System 7.X QuicktimeTm2.0 to function of parts of the digestive, izations. Another example shows how * VGA 640 x 480 sheep habituate to most vehicle noises reproductive, excretory, circulatory * Sound card and nervous systems. Video segments but respond by classical conditioning * Power external speakers to the sound of the farmer's vehicle provide superb illustrationsof coordi- * Mouse nation of circular and longitudinal bringing food. An interestingexample muscles during movement and of the Documentation contains only instruc- of observational learning is when expulsion and reception of sex cells tions to launch the programand a few chickens, who had seen a video of during hermaphroditic reproduction. suggestions for troubleshooting. anotherchicken eating from a red dish, The self-test consists of 15 multiple As tutorials go, this was one of the choose the red dish when given several better ones that I have encountered. I colored dishes containinghidden food. do not feel that it is a replacementfor Chickens are also shown to be able to dissection, nor is that the intent of the learn a fairly complicated maze to get Rachel Hays is the editor of the Audio producer. The program does a very to a nesting site. Visual Reviews section of ABT She good job of relating structureto func- One item that bothered me while holds a Ph.D. in botany from the Uni- the video is the condition in versity of California, Davis, and has tion and would be an excellent aid watching taught courses at the college level. while a student dissected a specimen in which some animals are routinely kept With a B.S.from San Diego Stote Uni- the lab. The narratorprovides interest- for high intensity farming. For exam- versity, Hays went on to the University ing and pleasant audio. Student activ- ple, chickenswere kept their entire life of California, Davis, for her M.S. de- ity sheets to accompany the program in small cages in a room with only gree. For several years, Hays has would have been nice, as would the incandescentbulbs for light. Adult pigs done research for the Natural Re- ability to store student scores in the self were shown kept in stalls without sources Ecology Laboratory at Fort test. enough room to turn around. Young Collins, CO, studying nutrient cycling I assess this CD-ROMto be worthy pigs were kept in groups in small cor- and soil organisms. She has published as a rals in which their only stimulus was articles in several popular and scien- of its price tag. It could serve tific periodicals. Her address is: 6921 stimulatingmultimedia laboratory dis- each other and the response was to Buckhorn Ct., Loveland, CO 80537. section manual for students, a mind- constantly bite each other. Teachers capturing station for classwork, or a will need to evaluate the maturitylevel 384 THEAMERICAN BIOLOGY TEACHER, VOLUME 60, NO. 5, MAY 1998 of the student to handle this informa- hinders its use as a pedagogical tool. Procedure tion. Though this isn't the main focus Concepts like pixel, shades of gray, of the video, it is eye-opening material. aspect ratio, and the like are at the After a short explanation of analog- The video also illustrates some more forefrontof any introductionto image digital concepts,let the students see the humane alternatives. processing by computers, and it takes color photograph under the stereomi- Overall,I think the video would be a some time to become familiar with croscopeor the magnifier.If your class- worthwhile introduction to a unit on them in an operationalway. room is fortunate enough to have a animal behavior or learning.The mate- There are two main goals in the stereo zoom microscope, then suggest rial is presented at a very basic and present work: to point out the analo- that the students try the whole range of understandable level that should be gies and similarities between visual magnifications. Tell them to keep in appropriatefor a high school or intro- perception and image processing and, mind the "texture"of the photograph ductory college biology course. The at the same time, to give a brief, inter- for the highest magnification. teacher can then provide more in- active, visual introduction for the lat- Now move to the front cover of this depth materialif needed. ter. journal and ask them to look at it No teacher or user guide was pro- through the magnifier. The students vided. should try to express clearly the "tex- ture" differencesthey find between the Linda Sigismondi Materials journal and the photograph. Universityof Rio Grande A session on the similaritiesbetween Switch on the computer. The stu- Rio Grande,Ohio 45674 the cameraand the eye is a good intro- dents should look at the screen with Downloaded from http://online.ucpress.edu/abt/article-pdf/60/5/384/48591/4450502.pdf by guest on 24 September 2021 duction. the lOx pocket magnifier. Now, once The sessions are organized on the again they should choose which of the DIGITALIMAGING basis of the program IMAFILE(I'm a two previous examples the screenmost file) that runs on any PC-IBMcompat- resembles. ible with MS-DOSversion 5.0 and up. Review and evaluate the above ex- periment and T1~1~IMAFILE: An Interactive Pro- IMAFILEcombines graphic and text stress: * -- Xgram for Experimenting with screens to process and understand vi- . The photographdoes not show dis- Visual & Digital Imaging sual information, allowing an unlim- crete units of color at the magnifi- ited user interaction.Additional infor- cations used. The traditionalcomparison between mation comes with the program itself, * The journal front cover shows dis- the eye and the camera is a useful as a "readme"instruction file located at crete color circles, but they can teaching analogy in human physiol- the end of the tutorial.It provides more overlap. ogy. Unfortunately, this analogy cov- information about the structure and * The computer screen shows dis- ers only a part of the human vision function of IMAFILE.The program is crete color circles (red, green and process, mainly the way images are freely available through the INTER- blue) without overlapping. projectedonto the retina. How the eye NET at: http://albia.museo.csic.es/tools. The last two digital representations and the brain process the image is html or via anonymous FTP at: ftp:// anothervery importantstep in order to give a continuous perception due to albia.museo.csic.es/pub/imafile.Other ma- the distance from the observer. understand vision, but we lack useful terials needed are mentioned in the analogies that could help to introduce A complementary activity using individual experiments. IMAFILEis as follows: these issues to students. Although this tutorial is self-con- Digital imaging, the processing of tained, those teachers interested in 1.
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