Concept Maps Help Students Find Their Way| TAPP Radio 5

Use concept mapping for student learning and assessment.
Blood doping is a perennial news topic that helps apply central concepts of A&P.

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(0:48) Blood doping stories related to the 2018 Winter Olympics (or in any context) are effective in helping student students apply and integrate diverse concepts in anatomy and physiology

• Olympic athletes are cheating more often than you think (article concerning current issues in doping)
• Doping topics from The A&P Professor blog (various concepts that apply doping in A&P courses)
• World Doping Agency | WADA (website with various resources, including their official prohibited list)
• Blood Sport: Alex Rodriguez, Biogenesis, and the Quest to End Baseball’s Steroid Era (book)
• Tainted Blood: The Untold Story of the 1984 Olympic Blood Doping Scandal (book)
• Doping, Performance-Enhancing Drugs, and Hormones in Sport: Mechanisms of Action and Methods of Detection | Emerging Issues in Analytical Chemistry (A great acquisition suggestion for your institution’s library)

(6:32) The featured topic is concept mapping and its uses in helps students learn and helping instructors assess learning and diagnose misconceptions and other learning concerns.

• Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning
• Teaching Nursing Using Concept Maps
• Deep Active Learning: Toward Greater Depth in University Education
• Topics in concept mapping for students from The A&P Student blog
• Concept Maps | A How-To for A&P Students (link to this from your course website or syllabus)

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Forensic Anthropologist Clyde Snow Passes

I just learned that the renowned forensic anthropologist Clyde Snow passed away this past May at the age of 86.

Famous for identifying the remains of Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele and victims of mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, Snow was one of a generation of pioneers who sparked the current popular interest in forensic sciences.

What can we use from this in teaching undergraduate A&P?  Some of stories of his achievements (see links below) can help spark interest in studying the human skeleton and other systems.  And some of his familiar quotes are worth using in the lab or classroom:

• "There are 206 bones and 32 teeth in the human body, and each has a story to tell."
• "Bones can be puzzles, but they never lie, and they don't smell bad."
• "The ground is like a beautiful woman—if you treat her gently, she'll tell you all her secrets."
• "If you can make people feel they're not going to get away with it—that's all we're asking." (regarding using forensic science to solve crimes)

Want to know more?

Clyde Snow, forensic anthropologist who helped ID victims of John Wayne Gacy, dies at 86

• M. Weil Washington Post May 18, 2014
• Article summarizing Snow's work, including several stories that could be used in an A&P class discussion.
• my-ap.us/1qDQMVV

Science Detectives: The Masters Case

• Discovery Channel January 22, 1997
• Reenactment of forensic fieldwork in a killing that occurred decades before the victim's bones were discovered.
• my-ap.us/U7DKoO

Image credit: Toony