About the Project

Nothing is more simultaneously gross and fascinating as injuries to the human body. Students enjoy learning about the human body, especially when it comes to breaking it and putting it back together!

For this activity, you will use BioDigital Human, a free Chrome app that allows you to explore the human body in 3D. If you have ever used Google Earth, you will feel right at home with BioDigital Human.

Lesson Overview

Assign students to study an injury or medical condition (i.e. broken femur, collapsed lung). You might also allow students to research an injury they or a family member have experienced.

Ask students to use the controls to focus on areas of the body and discuss major elements of the injury. The can use the annotation tool to add text to point out important features.

Students will use the camera tool in BioDigital Human to grab an image of the completed body view. Insert the image into a Google Document (see template below) and have students include a narrative of the injury, treatment, and recovery prognosis.

Tips and Suggestions

BioDigital Human is pretty awesome, so make sure you build in some time for students to explore. The “conditions” tab in BioDigital Human will provide information on quite a few conditions and injuries. Make sure students know how to use the “edit” toolbar in BioDigital human to change the view, annotate, add notes, and take a picture.

This assignment could easily be turned into a screencast lesson, where students record a narrated tour of the body and their injury using Screencastify or another screen recording tool.

Lesson Resources

• Sample student worksheet
• “Conditions” in BioDigital Human
• The 5 Most Common Sports Injuries
• Sports Injuries A-Z