By Mrs Inkson (Head of Year 6)  

Year 6 have got their new PYP Unit of Inquiry off to a bang this week using Augmented Reality. Our Central Idea this half term is Scientific and technological advances in medicine  impact society and the environment. We decided that the first thing we needed to explore was what technological advances there have been in the field of medicine… 

We had fun investigating various bits of medical equipment that we borrowed from the Senior School including blood pressure monitors, microscopes, stethoscopes, pulse/oxygen monitors amongst other things.  We managed to look at both old and newer examples of these pieces of equipment so that we could compare them and look for similarities and differences. 

The main issue we had was that it is virtually impossible to get hold of medical equipment – modern technology because it is too expensive and often too big and old technology because it is behind cases in museums.  This is where the ability to use augmented reality helped us out a lot.  We had a great time bringing in 3D images of different medical equipment into the classroom from Roman surgical knives to a plague mask and  barber surgeons chair to an MRI machine. The ability to move around the object, zoom in to see fine detail and model using them was a fantastic learning experience.  We could really see the similarities and differences between the older and newer technologies and make some great generalisations. 

We can’t wait to get going on the rest of our unit…