"MOUSE PARTY" - tech for a Health classroom

http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/addiction/drugs/mouse.html

I wanted to share a cool website that has an activity that you can use on a smart board.  For the other 2 Health Educators out there, this is a great High School activity - I've used it during my student teaching and the students seemed to really like it.  For everyone else, it's still kinda cool to look @!  

This activity shows the effects of different drugs on the brain.  They use mice for the idea - and you can use the smart board to drag a mouse into a chair - which then shows an animation of each particular drugs effects.  The animation shows what happens in the synapse and which neurotransmitters - such as dopamine and serotonin- are affected and HOW they are affected.  This in itself is difficult to understand - this does a great job of explaining why a user feels a "high" with the 7 different drugs they use.

They use COCAINE, LSD, ALCOHOL, METH, ECSTASY, MARIJUANA, and HEROIN.

It's kind of cool to have the students guess which drug they think the mouse is using before you drag them into the chair - each mouse shows a behavior that is usually seen when someone takes that particular drug (the mouse on METH is scratching itself, the mouse on ECSTASY is kind of dancing b/c it's considered a "club drug," etc.)