It’s good to have friends!
About a year ago we interviewed Leslie Samuel, of Interactive Biology, on the Anatomy in Clay® Learning System podcast.
We also posted a blog about the ever-enthusiastic and very upbeat Samuel, whose videos continue to promote anatomy education on YouTube. It’s popular! Samuel had 217,000 subscribers a year ago and 270,000 today. In a word, wow.
Who can’t say there isn’t a hunger for anatomy insights and knowledge?
Not us!
His latest videos?
And:
Well, thank you, Leslie Samuel.
Sure, go ahead and watch it. It’s six minutes long.
(We will wait here.)
Wasn’t that great? Isn’t he engaging?
And we don’t disagree—nothing compares with cadaveric dissection.
But we love the point of how building in clay can be combined with dissection to powerful effect.
“This is a great system for your class,” he said on the video. “Even if you have access to cadavers. This really is a great way to learn with a system that isn't going to damage crucial structures—and then apply that learning to cadavers in a more refined way. Hands on learning is one of the best ways to deepen your understanding.”
We also appreciate that Samuel highlighted the fact that our models uniquely designed. “These models are constructed in a way that you can use clay to build out all the structures … You can pretty much build out all of the internal structures and attach them to the models. But here's why I think this is so awesome. You get hands-on experience building up the things you're trying to learn, and what I found is that doing this gives you a deeper understanding.”
Samuel pointed out the flexibility of clay—that you can make mistakes and learn from them, too.
“When I was first building out the internal intercostals, those are the muscles that, when they contract, they pulled down the rib cage, causing you to exhale,” he said. “I built those muscles, but I had the fibers going in the wrong direction. Now, as I was going through and analyzing the actions of the muscles, it just didn't seem to make sense because the way I had them, if they contracted, they would actually elevate the rib cage and you would breathe in. That's when I realized, wait, wait a minute, I had the fibers running in the wrong direction. So I had to change that. And by doing that, I got a much deeper understanding of how they're actually structured.”
Yes, deeper understanding. That’s us. And, clearly, that’s Leslie Samuel, too.
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