Education - Corpus

Taonga for learning: the Otago Medical School Anatomy Museum

28 May 2018 Leave a Comment

Louisa Baillie

The W. D. Trotter Anatomy Museum at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand, contains a collection that is truly a confluence of science and the humanities. The museum houses over 3,000 catalogued anatomy specimens and models in an elegant space whose warm aesthetics include diffuse natural lighting, wooden framed glass cabinets and rimu stairs leading to a mezzanine floor.

The models themselves are works of art as well as teachers of science. They include wax models by the Ziegler and Tramond studios, 77 authentic painted plaster models by the Leipzig firm of Steger, clastique papier-mache´models by Louis Auzoux’s factory, as well as many in-house wet and plastinated specimens, and models made of fibreglass, wax and even hand-carved wood.

The Fortnightly Ignorance Club

21 May 2018 Leave a Comment

Barbara Brookes

Many of us now resort to Google whenever we want to know something; in fact the ease of looking things up also makes it less important to retain any information. We can, we believe, be instant experts. In 1881, a group of women in Rochester, New York, decided that they had pressing questions to which they did not know the answer. They decided that ‘the only bad question was the one that went unasked’. Unashamed of their ignorance, they advertised the fact, forming the Fortnightly Ignorance Club. One of the earliest American women to graduate in medicine (graduating in 1851), Sarah Adamson Dolley, became the first President of the Club, and remained in office until 1893.

It seems unlikely that any male doctor at the time would have owned to ignorance but Sarah Dolley had never been one to stick to convention.

Reading aloud

14 May 2018 2 Comments

Charlotte Molloy

Is there any greater expression of love than sitting and reading with a child?” Joy Cowley.

Dolly Parton, book champion and founder of the Imagination Library

Reading aloud to children is one of the best ways to cement a love of words and reading. In my opinion, this reading activity is phased out too quickly in our homes and classrooms. Once children start reading independently, there is a tendency to withdraw involvement and support and let them continue their reading journeys alone. However, reading aloud and independent reading are complementary activities. Continuing to read to an independent reader does not impair independent reading. On the contrary, it helps stretch readers in different ways and immerses them in a world with reading role models.

[Read more…] about Reading aloud

Developing the lifelong reader

7 May 2018 1 Comment

Charlotte Molloy

Children's Room UBS — The Children’s Room, University Book Shop, Dunedin.

How can we help emerging readers progress successfully, intermediate children connect with reading and secondary students maintain that love of reading? How can we help people see reading as meaningful in their lives?

We have not yet answered all the questions about the best approaches to literacy learning, as demonstrated by the current critique of the value of New Zealand’s Reading Recovery Programme and the ‘phonics versus whole language’ debate. But CHILDREN CAN’T WAIT for these debates to be settled, so while we continue learning about what is most effective in literacy development we need to apply what we know about achieving better outcomes for our children now.

We need to develop lifelong readers, thirsty for books, with a habit and love of reading.

Atlas – a literary medical journal

30 April 2018 2 Comments

Helen Ker

Atlas is a literary medical journal, published in print and sold in bookstores around New Zealand, that offers an alternative to the usual scientific discourse that surrounds our bodies. It hopes to shift medical conversations away from the rigid and prescriptive to a literary form that accommodates our human complexities.

I started Atlas in my third year of medical school because I was beginning to see that certain parts of the illness experience are missed through our predominantly scientific ways of theorising illness and treating people. I realised that this had the potential to undermine the quality of patient care because illness is far more than just a pathological process.

Kidney disease: are you at risk?

12 March 2018 Leave a Comment

Max Reid

A couple of Saturdays ago I attended a meeting of Kidney Health New Zealand’s Consumer Council. The Council comprises around 18-20 individuals from around the country, each with kidney disease of varying types and progression. We only meet once a year, and only for around five hours – for those attendees on dialysis, the logistics involved in planning their dialysis around such an event preclude meeting more often or for longer.

Each meeting begins with a round of introductions. How they do that has always been over to the group – but always the format has been the same: name, where they’re from, and the nature of their condition.

“Hi, I’m Ben from Tauranga – on home haemodialysis.”

“Morena. Haami. Northland. In-centre haemodialysis.”

“Hi. My name’s Bridget. I’m from Christchurch, a transplant recipient, but also the mother of a deceased organ donor.”