The Digital Frog Blog

Due to circumstances beyond our control, the Digital Frog International web site was offline for just short of 24 hours from approximately 5 p.m. Friday, April 25 to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 26

We apologize for any inconvenience, but we’re happy to say that everything is back up and running as it should be.

If you received an email from us and tried to unsubscribe from our mailing list during the site outage, you may have to click the unsubscribe link in the email again or send us an email and we will manually unsubscribe you.

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We are often asked what grade level our software is designed for. When we answer Grades K-12, we suspect it sounds like a sales pitch. Although we originally intended the field trips to be used in middle schools, our designers became so engrossed that they kept adding more and more screens suitable for more and more age levels and now the field trips truly appeal to learners of all ages.

We visited Montreal this weekend and could not tear our three year old grandchildren away from my laptop. They were totally absorbed in the Rainforest Dependency Web Game and learned a surprising amount by “reading” silhouettes. And yet this same game is challenging even for adults.

As for the text, it is written clearly and succinctly and supported by context-sensitive definitions and integrated text-to-speech to help early readers, ESL learners and auditory learners.

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Today is Earth Day and a dear friend of mine sent me a fascinating eCard to mark the event, and, at the same time, saved one square foot of rainforest. She knows that this is a subject dear to my heart, especially since we developed The Digital Field Trip to The Rainforest to teach students about rainforest ecology, biology and uses.

You can find the eCard here and find out more about how to save your square foot of rainforest on the Care2 web site.

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I am glad the frogs don’t have to depend on me alone for their survival—I never managed to get my frog safely across the road.

Frogster is a new game for children on the Vancouver Aquarium website. The idea is to lead your frog safely across the road avoiding various natural and man made threats.

The plight of the frogs and amphibians is serious and this is another way to deliver that message to children. The game will remind all of us “slightly” older folks of the original video games for Commodore 64 and Atari. The perils to avoid in Frogster are air pollution, water pollution, loss of habitat, climate change, human interference and Chytrid fungus. Frogs in the natural world are having a hard time avoiding these threats and the poor frogs in my game were no better off. The hope of this game’s introduction on the website is to draw more attention to the overwhelming decline in the amphibian population due to habitat loss and the Chytrid fungus as well as to stimulate fund raising efforts for the Year of the Frog.

(To help these efforts, Digital Frog International will be donating 5% of The Digital Frog 2.5 sales to Amphibian Ark this year.)

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When we set out to re-launch our web site earlier this year, we wanted to make it easier than ever to find out about our range of educational software products, try them for yourself and do a better job of opening communication with educators and parents (not to mention, with each other… but more on that part soon.)

What we lacked, however, was an easy way for you to order the software directly from us. But no longer:

Introducing the online Digital Frog Shop.

As of today, all of our products can be purchased online, directly from Digital Frog International. Everything from single-license versions of our virtual frog dissection, anatomy and ecology program to building site licenses of any of our three Digital Field Trips (or even the new Digital Field Trip Series DVD). You can even order a DemoWare CD for just a $5 shipping and handling fee.

We are able to accept all major credit cards, using Paypal for safe and secure payment processing. (And no, you do not need a Paypal account to purchase from us.) We’ll ship to anywhere in the world and all our products are backed by a 30-day money back guarantee. (See our terms and conditions for more details.)

If you are an educator who needs to place your order with a PO, we’re set up for you too. You can submit your order through the Digital Frog Shop, along with a PO number. We just ask you to follow-up with a fax of the PO on your school’s letterhead and we’ll take care of the rest.

So, come on in! We’re open for business and glad we can make it even easier to provide our educational software to your students.

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Sitting anxiously awaiting the signs of spring, I was listening to a radio program asking listeners to call in with their favorite signs of spring. It got me thinking about mine. Thinking about it I realized I have favorites for different senses. I love to see the first buds of green poking their way out of my garden or the new leaf buds on the trees; of course the early flowers are great too.

Spring has a smell to me, rain and new earth, with last year’s vegetation composting on the ground it adds to that rich earthy smell. Sometimes the smell can be too much, like when the local farmers spread the manure on the new spring fields!

My favorite sound is definitely the Spring Peepers. On my evening walks with the dogs I pass by a couple of wet areas and the chorus of frog chirps is unbelievable. The Peepers are the first frogs out in the spring and can be found in most of eastern North America. These amazing little guys are only .75-1.25 inches long yet they sing a mighty song. We have had great fun learning different frog calls with The Digital Frog 2.5 program. In the ecology section many frog and toad species are investigated and you can listen to and learn their calls.

To hear the distinctive call of the spring peepers, click on the player below.

I also enjoy the earthy flavor of fiddle heads found on our walks (though we usually find them after they unfurl). Now that spring is here I can feel the sun and breeze on my face as I no longer need everything covered up!

What are your favorite Spring experiences?

Add your Spring comments for a chance to win a copy of ScienceMatrix: Cell Structure and Function.

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Being dubbed the “frog lady” by all and sundry results in friends and family alerting me to all things froggy.

So I regularly receive emails about froggy topics such as the 70-million-year-old fossil of a giant frog unearthed in Madagascar, the killer disease chytridiomycosis (a fungal disease that has been blamed for the extinction of one-third of the 120 frog species lost since 1980) and even an article about an Iranian woman giving birth to a frog (and the date was not April 1!).

Yesterday, I received several emails about the recent discovery of a lungless frog in Indonesia. One thing that bothered me about some of the articles was the implication that it is unusual for frogs to breathe through the skin as it’s know that frogs breathe in three different ways: though their mouths, lungs and skin. So I consulted the respiratory system module in the Anatomy and Physiology section of The Digital Frog 2.5. This is a small part of what it has to say:

Frogs have three different methods of respiration, or gas exchange:

• cutaneous respiration takes place across the skin,
• buccopharyngeal respiration occurs in the mouth,
• pulmonary respiration uses the nares, mouth, and lung

On land, most oxygen absorption occurs in the lungs. In water, most gas exchange takes place across the skin, but even the most aquatic frogs must come up to the surface to breathe. Most carbon dioxide is released across the skin. While hibernating, frogs do not use their lungs and depend on cutaneous respiration.

It seems frogs are much more versatile than us humans. But then, of course, we are not amphibians.

If you have any quirky frog stories to share, add a comment for your chance to win free software.

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We recently returned from the National Science Teachers’ Conference in Boston, exhausted but at the same time exhilarated. Our booth was busy the whole time and teachers were excited about our software. One lady rushed up to our booth insisting “I cannot live without Digital Frog”. We love quotes like this, even it is a little extreme, and probed further. This teacher has been using The Digital Frog 2 for many years to prepare her class for the wet lab. We have asked her to write about her experiences in our new forum which we will be launching soon for teachers and homeschoolers to share their experiences.

Another teacher purchased a Building Site License for ScienceMatrix: Cell Structure and Function last year and told us that her students scored higher marks on this subject than any other class she has ever taught.

A special ed teacher was extremely excited about our Digital Field Trip series to help his mixed grade class of 7 to 12 year olds.

Of course, our goal in attending these conferences is to showcase our products to teachers who have never seen them before, but we get energized by stories from teachers who are using the products. One experienced biology teacher approached our booth with some reluctance having been asked to check out dissection alternatives by his colleagues. We showed him The Digital Frog 2.5 and he then admitted that he had been completely biased against all dissection alternatives, but was now planning on recommending a district-wide purchase!

I was asked at the last minute to present The Digital Frog 2.5 at a presentation hosted by Animalearn (who loan out dissection alternatives free of charge, including The Digital Frog 2, their most popular loan item). Although The Digital Frog 2.5 has been rated the best dissection alternative many times, we do not consider it a dissection alternative program. It’s an anatomy and physiology learning tool, supported by an interactive frog dissection. After all, the ultimate goal of dissecting in schools is to help students understand their own bodies, not to teach them how to wield a scalpel.

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At 8 p.m. on March 29, the world will turn off its lights for just one hour – Earth Hour.

Some of you may already know about Earth Hour, I know I didn’t until my daughters told me about it. The idea started last year, with World Wildlife Fund in Australia pioneering the first Earth Hour. Almost 2.3 million Sydney residents participated – including more than 2,100 businesses. Just one short hour resulted in a 10% reduction on the electrical grid, saving 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of taking about 50,000 cars off the road for an hour. This year the effort is global, with six continents and as many as 20 cities participating. By all of us doing a little bit we can show that it IS possible to take action on climate change.

We are going to participate in my house because climate change is the biggest environmental threat to our planet and one of the main concerns for my family. We are already seeing its impact. Participating in Earth Hour is a simple way to show that we want to be a part of the solution and it sends a powerful message to others that, together, we can make a difference. We will do our part earlier than March 29th as I will be away at the National Science Teachers Association Conference in Boston on that date. Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised by organized Earth Hour activities going on in Boston on the 29th.

Turning the lights off for one hour seems like such a small thing, but the campaign is also about awareness. I am telling all my friends and family about Earth Hour with the hope that some of them will get involved and participate and learn more about the impact we have on the earth every day.

To register yourself and your family or for more information go to the WWF Earth Hour page.

It doesn’t have to end at 9pm on March 29th. To help support our continued efforts, WWF-Canada has created The Good Life – a fun and interactive online community for concerned Canadians who want to stop talking about climate change and start taking action. Registrants on the site can access tips, information, and even track their personal reduction in carbon dioxide over the long term. For more information on what you can do after Earth Hour, visit www.thegoodlife.wwf.ca.

Switching off your lights for one hour is just one simple action that you can take to help make a difference; the global darkness will send a powerful message that we care about our planet. Why not make it a monthly, or weekly, event in your house?

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If you teach science this conference is a must. We have been exhibiting at the National Science Teachers Association national conference for many, many years and we always learn something new—from the teachers who visit our booth to other exhibitors and, when we have time, from session presenters.

Our favorite presenter of all time is Nancy Harrison (and not just because she recommends The Digital Frog 2.5). Nancy is a practicing pathologist who loves animals and firmly believes that cutting up dead animals in high school is of little pedagogical value and countless animals die unnecessarily.

Nancy’s love of animals led her to research all the computer-based alternatives on the market. Recognizing that teachers are pressed for time, she felt this would help them make the switch from cutting up dead animals to a computer-based alternative. Initially, Nancy showed the teachers several programs, but eventually honed her presentation to just two programs, which she deemed to be the “best of the best”.

Whenever we can, we attend Nancy’s presentation and listen as Nancy explains to a hushed audience how her high school science teacher influenced her life and her career. And, of course, we love it as she tells the audience why The Digital Frog is “the best of the best”. We are very fortunate that Nancy endorses our program (as did eSchool News readers) but we do NOT give her any financial support. In fact, Nancy will not even allow us to buy her a cup of coffee.

Nancy’s presentation at CSTA in Long Beach last year was full to overflowing. This year NSTA is in Boston and Nancy will be presenting “Virtual Dissection: The Best of the Best” on Friday Mar. 28 from 12:30 to 1:30 in the Amphitheater of the Seaport World Trade Center (so you might actually get a seat).

By the way, our booth number is 1337 and we will be holding a draw for an unlimited Building Site License for The Digital Frog 2.5 (list price $899). Stop by our booth, mention the “secret” password - The Year of The Frog - and triple your chances of winning.

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