Patrick Roisen, a high school biology teacher at Menlo Atherton high was asked to critique the Virtual Creatures project. What follows is a rough compendium of his observations and comments. General observations Some teachers are very skeptical of using computers to teach Biology. Hence, we need to be sensitive to this fact when presenting our goals and results to the teaching community. Although general Biology classes have the flexibility to incorporate computer-based teaching tools, AP Biology classes have much less flexibility in their curriculum.
Teachers minimize dissection because of the time and expense involved.
Therefore, virtual creatures would help in teaching dissection. Many teachers avoid doing in vivo dissections because of ethical issues. Hence, a computer model would be a better vehicle for illustrating those principles. Patrick would teach computer-based dissection if given adequate resources, namely, if he would incur no additional expenses. Most teachers prefer open-ended problems over canned lesson plans.