In a recent editorial at JCE, my colleague Brett Criswell and I wrote about connecting the nanotechnology theme of this year's National Chemistry Week (NCW) to the high school chemistry classroom, and we invited you to join the conversation on this topic. We'd like to think that NCW offers us an opportunity each fall to help students connect modern topics in the field to the fundamental principles that we present in the classroom, and we have suggested a few resources and ways to encourage these conversations at your schools. But we wonder about the extent to which others agree with this claim, or if we're thinking about it differently than others out there... What are your thoughts, your experiences, and your successes with bringing this topic into your classroom?
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Comments 4
peoples thoughts about the article
hello, am a recently graduate student in chemistry from the Birzeit university of Ramallah in Palestine, I just started my Masters degree in applied chemistry , one of the courses that is to be taken is the methodology for scientific research in which the teacher asked us to make a presentation about an article and explain it in front of the students, since I am currently doing my teaching diploma I wanted an article that has to do with education and I choose your article and did the presentation about it on last Saturday, what my teacher asked me was "have these people started doing this at their own schools or are they just hopping they can achieve it ?", another student asked me of how can the schools afford such kits for the students to use, I mean some of the university graduates themselves do not know how to use any tools related to nano science, but what I myself was wondering about is how can we make the bridge between the macro level and the micro level using the nano science.
A small (nano) step forward in precollege classrooms
Hi Ahmad,
thanks for your post, I am glad you found the article useful...so your first question about nanoscience activities being done in the US chemistry classroom, I'd probably say not that much but there's a stronger and stronger push towards these kinds of lessons, especially with the new Next Generation Science Standards (http://www.nextgenscience.org/) coming on soon where themes in nanotechnology can be used to bridge ideas not only between the macroscopic and the symbolic, but also across disciplines like biology and chemistry...so although I still think in its formative stage, nanoscience could become more mainstream sooner than later...as you noted, the Journal has bee publishing articles on nanoscience for awhile now, and there are organizations like NNIN that specialize in this work...
So what about in your country? Any nanoscale activities going on over there in science classrooms?
greg
nano sciencce in classrooms
as i noted in my first post am a new graduate i still havent started teaching in schools yet,but the nano science that i only saw so far, is B.A college students doing researches on it but when i start teaching (hopefully this week) i'll try to include it,because as you guys said we do need to show the students the new science that is being dealt with these days which would give them more intrest in the subject in general .this would mean i will be looking forward to see more of your articles about the subject .
let's keep this conversation going
Hi Ahmad, I look forward to further conversations on this topic, thanks for your interest in our work. best, greg