Dr Mutahira Lone visits St Joseph's NS in Anatomy Outreach and Creative Schools Month initiatives

20 Mar 2024

Dr Mutahira Lone, Director of MSc Human Anatomy UCC, visited local National School St Joseph's to deliver an anatomy class as part of Creative Schools Month 2024.

Creative schools month was celebrated nationally in February 2024 in a new initiative by the Arts Council with an aim to be a celebration of art and creativity in schools with a focus on fun, festivities, imagination and innovation The project ran from Thursday the 1st to Thursday the 29th of February, using the Leap Day as an extra day of creativity!

Local National School St Joseph’s NS enthusiastically participated and in addition to the many classroom activities and parent workshops, St Josephs were delighted to welcome UCC Director of MSc Human Anatomy, Lecturer in Anatomy, dentist and parent Dr Mutahira Lone to visit 5th and 6th Class and to introduce them to anatomy under the Creative school's umbrella of imagination and innovation. Dr Lone arrived with a full-size skeleton and selection of Virtual Reality 3-dimensional visualisation headsets all of which were kindly on loan from the UCC Department of Anatomy and Neuroscience.

The full-size skeleton made a dramatic entrance and was of great interest to the students. The colour coded skeleton illustrated attachment areas for muscles, tendons and ligaments, and the boys of St Josephs explored the skeleton with great interest.

The Virtual Reality 3-dimensional visualisation technology was also of great interest to students and staff alike. Dr Lone demonstrated the Anatomy app Organon. The boys of 5th and 6th class, and teacher Ms Kelleher used the headsets and hand controllers to explore the human skeleton and other bones of the human body. Using the headsets and hand controllers the students were amazed with the ability to visualize a 3D, 360 view of the skeleton, and using the hand controllers they rotated the skeleton and zoom in and out to view the structures up close in virtual reality.

Teacher Ms Kelleher using a timer ensured that each student had a full 10 minutes each to delve into the 3d 360 world of the skeleton, and Dr Lone's son Mohamad Lone was on hand to help with the set-up of the VR sets.

The underlying theme for Creative February is Spring. Creation from new growth, the seeds of inspiration, this theme hopes to encourage students and school communities to reflect on where creativity begins in our lives, in every class, in every school and how it can grow and flourish. The month is a time to focus on celebrating this creativity, perhaps adding to the experiences of students in the form of events or workshops and providing a platform to show how creative each school can be.    

Photo Left to right:  Ms Rút Kelleher; 5^th class teacher, Dr Mutahira Lone and Ms Miriam Meehan, Junior Infants teacher.

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News item and photographs Bereniece Riedewald