Review by Michelle Kitt, Common Sense Education | Updated July 2012
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InnerBody

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Macro and micro anatomy lessons need updated multimedia

Subjects & skills
Subjects
  • Science
  • Health & Wellness
Skills
  • Critical Thinking
  • College & Career Prep
Grades This grade range is a recommendation by Common Sense Education and not the developer/publisher.
6–12
Common Sense says (See details)
Teachers say (3 Reviews)
Price:  Free
Platforms:  Website

Take a look inside

6 images
InnerBody is free, supported by plentiful ads.
Use the Change Anatomical System tool to switch views to other systems in the same body region.
Lots of text at the top and right explains the pancreas and kidney. Two tools are not available at this organ level.
A change in viewing angle of muscles of the eye leads to less sophisticated graphics.
A video tour shows how to use interactive tools.

Pros: This free anatomical reference is more engaging than a biology textbook.

Cons: It's a dated resource in terms of navigation, graphics, and reliance on text.

Bottom Line: Content is comprehensive, but the app lags behind competitors that use multimedia or interactive activities.

How Can I Teach with This Tool?

High school students will understand the detailed descriptions, but they're dry. With anatomy, as with other fields, it's the emotional stories that make information stick. Here, there are no gross anecdotes, no scary images of tumors or diseased lungs, no inspirational stories of survival that show the human body for the incredible thing it is. There are no quizzes, no "What would you do?" scenarios, no options for kids to create, contribute, or connect. It's simply an interactive and free online encyclopedia -- which might be a great supplement for an anatomy lesson, but the reliance on text, outdated graphics, and lack of learning activities won't let you do much more.

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Standards:

With InnerBody, kids manipulate 3D images of the body. They start with a full-body view, which can be explored by highlighting and dimming, with the goal that kids locate objects and understand their orientation in the body.

Once in a body system, kids click a part to zoom in, or roll the mouse over a part to see it labeled and described. For harder-to-see parts, they can click the name of a body part from a drop-down menu. They can change the gender and rotate viewing angles, and the Change Anatomical System tool lets kids seamlessly investigate different systems within the same region of the body.

A search box searches the Web, not the site.

It's easy to explore body systems with InnerBody's tools. At the macro level, 3D graphics are somewhat realistic. However, start digging deeper and tools become unusable and design becomes less realistic. For example, the Change View Angle on the lateral rectus, a muscle of the eye, doesn't change its angle at all but instead leads to simple drawings of eye muscle control with no animation where the lateral rectus looks like a smeared red line.

The problem is that a YouTube search for "eye muscles" returns dozens of animations, narrations, and videos of real eyes. This is where InnerBody needs to be.

Overall Rating
Engagement Is the product stimulating, entertaining, and engrossing? Will kids want to return?

Graphics are plentiful, but the app needs a design update. More consistent use of graphics as well as photos and videos would better help kids visualize what they can't see. Simple tools allow users to explore tiny details.

Pedagogy Is learning content seamlessly baked-in, and do kids build conceptual understanding? Is the product adaptable and empowering? Will skills transfer?

Tools help locate bodily objects, show their orientation in the body, and reveal different systems within the same region. The tools are unavailable for some objects at the organ and tissue level.

Support Does the product take into account learners of varying abilities, skill levels, and learning styles? Does it address both struggling and advanced students?

A video tutorial shows how to best use the interactive tools. A section about anatomy-related careers covers the required education, training, skills, certification, and salary information for healthcare jobs.

Common Sense Reviewer
Michelle Kitt
About our ratings and privacy evaluation.

Key Standards Supported

Reading Informational Text

  • RI.6.4

    Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings.

  • RI.6.7

    Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue.

  • RI.7.4

    Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of a specific word choice on meaning and tone.

  • RI.7.7

    Compare and contrast a text to an audio, video, or multimedia version of the text, analyzing each medium’s portrayal of the subject (e.g., how the delivery of a speech affects the impact of the words).

  • RI.8.4

    Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone, including analogies or allusions to other texts.

  • RI.8.7

    Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of using different mediums (e.g., print or digital text, video, multimedia) to present a particular topic or idea.

  • RI.9-10.4

    Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze the cumulative impact of specific word choices on meaning and tone (e.g., how the language of a court opinion differs from that of a newspaper).

  • RI.9-10.7

    Analyze various accounts of a subject told in different mediums (e.g., a person’s life story in both print and multimedia), determining which details are emphasized in each account.

  • RI.11-12.4

    Determine the meaning of words and phrases as they are used in a text, including figurative, connotative, and technical meanings; analyze how an author uses and refines the meaning of a key term or terms over the course of a text (e.g., how Madison defines faction in Federalist No. 10).

  • RI.11-12.7

    Integrate and evaluate multiple sources of information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words in order to address a question or solve a problem.

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Key Standards Supported

From Molecules to Organisms: Structures and Processes

  • HS-LS1-2

    Develop and use a model to illustrate the hierarchical organization of interacting systems that provide specific functions within multicellular organisms.

  • HS-LS1-3

    Plan and conduct an investigation to provide evidence that feedback mechanisms maintain homeostasis.

  • HS-LS1-6

    Construct and revise an explanation based on evidence for how carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen from sugar molecules may combine with other elements to form amino acids and/or other large carbon-based molecules.

  • HS-LS1-7

    Use a model to illustrate that cellular respiration is a chemical process whereby the bonds of food molecules and oxygen molecules are broken and the bonds in new compounds are formed resulting in a net transfer of energy.

  • MS-LS1-1

    Conduct an investigation to provide evidence that living things are made of cells, either one cell or many different numbers and types of cells.

  • MS-LS1-3

    Use argument supported by evidence for how the body is a system of interacting subsystems composed of groups of cells.

  • MS-LS1-5

    Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for how environmental and genetic factors influence the growth of organisms.

  • MS-LS1-7

    Develop a model to describe how food is rearranged through chemical reactions forming new molecules that support growth and/or release energy as this matter moves through an organism.

  • MS-LS1-8

    Gather and synthesize information that sensory receptors respond to stimuli by sending messages to the brain for immediate behavior or storage as memories.

Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits

  • HS-LS3-1

    Ask questions to clarify relationships about the role of DNA and chromosomes in coding the instructions for characteristic traits passed from parents to offspring.

  • MS-LS3-1

    Develop and use a model to describe why structural changes to genes (mutations) located on chromosomes may affect proteins and may result in harmful, beneficial, or neutral effects to the structure and function of the organism.

Waves and Their Applications in Technologies for Information Transfer

  • HS-PS4-3

    Evaluate the claims, evidence, and reasoning behind the idea that electromagnetic radiation can be described either by a wave model or a particle model, and that for some situations one model is more useful than the other.

  • HS-PS4-5

    Communicate technical information about how some technological devices use the principles of wave behavior and wave interactions with matter to transmit and capture information and energy.

  • MS-PS4-1

    Use mathematical representations to describe a simple model for waves that includes how the amplitude of a wave is related to the energy in a wave.

  • MS-PS4-2

    Develop and use a model to describe that waves are reflected, absorbed, or transmitted through various materials.

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Teacher Reviews

(See all 3 reviews) (3 reviews) Write a review
Featured review by
Susan R. , Classroom teacher
Classroom teacher
Lebanon High School
Lebanon, United States
Great for seeing layers of the body and how parts interrelate

Good Teaching tool for intro & learning of anatomical structure.

Will aid in learning and vocabulary.

Great tool for seeing layers and how parts of the body and anatomy are interrelated.

Engaging tool. Excellent tool for study.

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