Our first concern were the illustrations in our lab manuals O ur first concern were the illustrations in our lab manuals and we used one of the first hand held black and white hand scanners, along with the permission of our publisher, and CorelDraw 2.0 to label outline drawings based on those in the text. The next year we combined these images with scanned photographs from our textbook, again with the permission of the textbook publisher, in our first digital presentations in the classroom. We were surprised by what the students told us. They preferred the digital lectures and said that they learned more from them and understood the material better. An illustrator was hired to redraw many of the classic illustrations used in zoology, and labels in both French and English were added using the layers feature of CorelDraw, so that each user could customise the illustrations they way that they needed for creation of their course materials.
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All of this is combined with individual modules that illustrate the lab materials that our students work with. The result, which is bilingual, is a type of electronic, multimedia atlas that our students can't get enough of. Since we first bought that hand scanner only a few years ago the way that we are teaching zoology has changed dramatically and we think, for the better. Teaching Technologies workshops are restricted to University of Ottawa teaching staff and graduate students who are involved in teaching. You are visitor number to our Applications Pages since October 6, 1997.