Although he wrote about it last month, I didn’t see Dick Carlson’s highlighting of a virtual hip replacement operation until today.

It’s one of many resources at Edheads, which looks to be a real asset for teachers.  I dove right into the Flash simulation.  It starts a bit leisurely, but then, I’m not in the target audience of 7th through 12th graders.

At first I thought the interactions were a bit obvious, and when I tried making my incisions in the wrong place, nothing bad happened to the patient.  But putting the lesson in context — demonstrating for children how hips get replaced — I thought it did a solid job.  Make the incision, stop the bleeding, retract the muscles, all using believable animation which avoids the overrich detail you’d have with video of actual surgery.

And avoids the expense, too…