I’ve been 3D printing some skulls to show a skull and brain injury to students in the lab. Some of it’s working, some of it isn’t.
Also, Phineas Gage.
Daily Anatomy (Android 1.3.2 update)
I’ve been working with a bug in the Android version of the Daily Anatomy app that meant the app didn’t update with a new question each day for some users that maybe didn’t use their Android devices much. I think I’ve fixed it – fingers crossed and I’ve sent the new version to Google’s Play Store.
I also introduced a big problem for users with older versions of Android by adding something new, but I think I’ve fixed that too. If the app crashed when you tried to start it and you’re using a version of Android older than 4.4.4 try the new version in the Play Store. Hopefully it will start up and run now.
The code is a mess. But it works.
I’ve been writing new questions over the summer, filling in some gaps and rounding out the collection a little. All the new questions I add will pop up in both versions of the app.
I hope it’s helping! Andy’s learning from it, so that’s a start.
Daily Anatomy (Google Play Store)
Daily Anatomy app – Android version
I learnt a bit of Java and Android programming a month or two ago and built the Android version of the Daily Anatomy app. It’s now up on the Google Play store for your favourite Android device.
The app will give you an anatomical question every day, will record your total score, and keep track of how you perform on questions from different regions and systems of the body. I’ll add leaderboards and achievements in the future.
Go get a copy:
Animations
The animations for Embryology at a Glance that Steve Atherton has been creating have started going up on YouTube. We’ll keep working on them and keep adding to the channel. The animations are intended to support the text and illustrations in the textbook. Go and have a look:
Embryology at a Glance, 2nd Edition
The second edition of Embryology at a Glance will be on sale as a paperback from 20th May, and I think digital copies are available in some areas now. We’ve added a few chapters on stem cells, cell signalling and antenatal screening with the usual full page of illustrations beside a full page of fairly brief text.
The big news with this book will be the new animations. We’ve been working with 3D animation genius Steve Atherton to produce animations of some of the key embryological processes in some of the chapters. These animations take time to produce and we’ll release a collection with the book and continue to add to that collection over time. We’ve been sharing these with some people for a little while and getting thumbs up, so we’re looking forward to sharing them more widely.
The other news is that these videos will be available through augmented reality. Instead of having to go to a website every time you want to look at an animation you’ll be able to access them in a number of ways, and one of which will be through the free Aurasma app on your smartphone or tablet. You’ll need to sign up and follow the Embryology at a Glance account, but after that you’ll just have to show an illustration in the book to your phone and it will grab the video and overlay it over the textbook automatically. More on that soon.
Daily Anatomy App updates
I thought I should update you guys on what I’ve been doing with the Daily Anatomy app since its release in January, and what I’m planning to do.
My main job has been to write batches of new questions and add them to the ever growing pool of questions that the app draws from each day. We have seem some questions repeated, and we’ve seen some interesting sequential questions on the same topic, and some similar questions asked, but these are all chosen at random. The bigger the pool, the lower the chance of seeing the same question again. Writing good quality, accurate questions with a helpful feedback description is a lot of work (and a big part of my other job!) and this is why this is a paid app – I need motivation to keep writing these things.
With some of my beta testers we’ve listed plans for adding achievements to the app, to reward users for answering a number of questions correctly for each system and region, for example, among others. I’ve also written some code to note your longest correct question answering streak and I’ll add a second leaderboard so you can compete on this front too.
Daily Anatomy – iPhone app
The Daily Anatomy app went live on the Apple App Store in January, and the leaderboard is slowly filling up with students. I’ll be adding batches of questions regularly so the bank will keep getting bigger, and the daily question is chosen at random.
Hopefully people will find it fun, challenging and helpful!
I’ve started work on an Android version but as I’m creating these in my spare time (and how much spare time does an academic ever really have?) it will take a while to get an early version on the Google Play Store.
I have plans for updates to the Daily Anatomy app that I hope to release during the year, and have also begun developing ideas for another app, also for medical students but not anatomy related…
See the Daily Anatomy iPhone app on the Apple App Store here.
Daily Anatomy Questions iPhone App
This year I’ve been working on a new iPhone app, and it’s getting close to being ready for release. This is the Daily Anatomy app, and it will present a randomly selected anatomy multiple choice question every day. Each answer includes a description about why the correct answer is correct, with some associated anatomy tidbits.
Every correct answer earns 10 points, and your score is collected over time, along with the number of days played, your run streak (how many questions you get correct in a row), and a bunch of data about the system and region of anatomy associated with the question. There’s a high score Game Centre Leaderboard, and your own question performance data can be viewed historically to give you an idea about your strengths and weaknesses in anatomical knowledge. That data is only visible to the user.
Podcast feeds and Windows Phone 8.1
Finally Windows Phone has a proper podcasts app with the latest (developer) version of Windows Phone 8.1. All you Windows Phone users (anyone?) will be able to search for podcasts from within the app, and Bing does a pretty good job of finding the stuff you like to listen to. When I tried it the big podcasts I like were all available but mine didn’t work, so I sat down and sorted out the RSS feeds so that they’re a lot friendlier to different devices and podcast subscription services. I should have done this in the first place.
From within the Windows Phone podcast app go to the search for podcasts page and try searching for my stuff. Maybe try “swansea embryology” or “swansea neuroscience”. It didn’t work for me when I started writing this but Bing may catch up and it might be ok for you.
If that doesn’t work you can put the link to the RSS feed for each podcast directly into that same search bar. The feeds are:
Anatomy & embryology: https://www.samwebster.net/embryology-rss.xml
Neuroscience: https://www.samwebster.net/neuroscience-rss.xml
If that works you should see the podcast, the icon, all the episodes and the description. Neat and tidy.
Gastrointestinal embryology lecture – quiz results
I’m giving the next lecture in the embryology series on Monday and I’m mindful that we had a couple of issues with previous quizzes and live results. Let’s add up the scores from the gastrointestinal embryology quiz now:
Q1 – girls 86pts, boys 89pts
Q2 – girls 50pts, boys 86pts
Q3 – girls 18pts, boys 32pts
Q4 – girls 95pts, boys 86pts
Q5 – girls 82pts, boys 89pts
Those are the average score for each team for each question, so the number of members of each group doesn’t matter so much.
So that gives us totals of:
Girls 331 points, Boys 382 points
Boys win!