CLEVELAND — “At your own rate, walk around, stick your head into the different images,” instructs science teacher Fred Kieser to a group of student wearing HoloLens headsets.
These moves aren’t part of a game of charades or a new form of yoga. These students are navigating a 3-D hologram of the human circulatory system.
“It's a heart with the aorta coming off of it and the vena cava. No body, just the heart. And like the two major arteries,” said a student describing what she sees.
Saint Joseph Academy is the first high school in the nation to utilize the HoloAnatomy Software suite. These images give you an idea of what students are seeing through the HoloLens headset.
Anatomy lessons have taken on a new dimension.
“This is something that a piece of paper or a smart board can't show is literally how all the pieces fit together, including their depth,” said Kieser. “And so you can see how the lungs surround the heart.”
“It's definitely makes it a lot easier to understand the things and it's more fun as well,” said junior Elizabeth Krotine. “Like you actually get to interact and you get to talk with your classmates and discuss what you actually seeing.”
A partnership with Case Western Reserve University enabled the HoloAnatomy software to be used by the honors anatomy & physiology class.
“We want to give them the best tools that are available. And once I saw it, I knew we needed to have it,” said Saint Joseph Academy President Katheyn Purcell. “Because I just felt like when I was looking through it, I know I would have been smarter if I would have learned with a tool like this.”
“I think having any new technology that allows you to enter into a new realm of understanding will get more people interested because it's more easier to understand,” said Krotine.
Saint Joseph has always embraced cutting edge technology. In 2018, they added an Anatomage Table to the classroom. It allows students to use the touch of a finger to isolate body systems and parts of the body. These are high-tech items you’d expect to see at the college level or even in hospitals, helping students make decisions now.
“To discern if they want to go into a health care field, if they want to go into a nursing field or a medical field or some tech field. For the medical industry, there are so many opportunities,” said Purcell.
“It allows you to think more about if you're actually interested in that career and pathway. It allows you to see what you actually might see in everyday life. So before you even go to college, you're able to understand if this interests you or not,” said Krotine.
Both the HoloAnatomy and the Anatomage Table allow students to collaborate on lessons which they say help them understand the subject better. And it's more interesting than reading and looking at illustrations in a book.