TEACHING CRUSTACEAN PATHOLOGY THROUGOUT AN E-LEARNING ENVIRONMENT USING VIRTUAL MICROSCOPY.

MARTORELLI, S.; ALDA, P.; MARCOTEGUI, P.; MARTORELLI, S.

Menphis

Conferencia; Aquaculture 2013; 2013

World Aquaculture Society WAS

An e-learning environment WebUNLP (http://webunlp.unlp.edu.ar) provided by La Plata National University has been used to teach a postgraduate course on crustacean pathology since five years ago (Fig.1). This course is offered annually coordinated by Dr. Sergio Martorelli (Faculty of Natural Sciences) and included an introduction to aquaculture, a description of crustacean morphology and histology, identifications of the principal parasites and pathogens of commercial crustaceans, and descriptions of the main study and diagnostic methods. During the course, the students also learn about histology in normal and pathological conditions. This has been possible by the visualization of slides under high definition microscopes. We use in the course free software of a virtual microscopy called ImageScope (Aperio Technologies). (Fig.2). Virtual slides, observed by the virtual microscope, were obtained both: commercially, through the scanning service of Aperio, and manually, using an Olympus BX51 microscope with an Olympus DP71 digital camera. For manually obtained virtual slides an automatic image stitching software (AutoStitchwas used. Beside the virtual microscope, other e-learning tools are used in the course to help in the learning of different issues: Wink (Debugmode), a freeware used to build audio slide for the presentations of each subjects, and eXe (University of Auckland), an open source software used for publishing web content of crustacean morphology and histology. Although WebUNLP environment offers an English version, the course is only available in Spanish. Nonetheless, an English version is being developed.