It is not too early to think about National Chemistry Week which is coming up October 20 - 26. This year's theme is "Energy: Now and Forever". Did you know there is a poetry contest and information about participating in community outreach activities on the ACS web site? Visit www.acs.org/ncw for more information.
Photoelectron Spectroscopy or PES is a topic included in the redesigned AP Chemistry curriculum. I have heard quite a bit of discussion surrounding this addition. It has caused panic in some teachers because they never learned it themselves, have never taught it before and/or they have no materials to teach the topic. I have been spending some time searching for a lesson plan for my own class
Greg Rushton and I attended and presented at CHEMED in Waterloo July 28th through August 1st. We enjoyed the ice cream and frozen snacks at the JCE sponsored Ice Cream Social Monday evening. We presented JCE resources for AP Chemistry on Tuesday and JCE resources for General Chemistry on Wednesday. The resources and links from those meetings are linked here.
I attended and presented at the National AP Conference in Las Vegas on July 18th and 19th! Adding Inquiry to the course is one of the major changes to how we will teach AP Chemistry. I shared some resources and gave tips during my presentation. I am sharing those resource in this post. I am also sharing items that I found especially helpful from presentations that I attended and conversations I had with other teachers.
I spent my whole prep period today playing with a site I hadn't seen before: PHYSICS 2000 @ http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl?Page=cover.html. I need to spend some more time there.
Celebrate Earth Day, which is on Monday, April 22, 2013. Earth Day was first officially recognized on April 22, 1970. This year the theme is "Our Earth: Handle with Care." The topics this year include water, air, plants/soil, and recycling.
If you haven't seen them yet, check out the final release of the Next Generation Science Standards. There is helpful information at the site. My home state of Michigan is currently asking for public input in order to plan support for implementing NGSS.
Whether it is a completely unique idea or just a twist on an old classic, engage in collaboration with other chemistry teachers around the world and publish your work. There are many venues and the pool of precollege chemistry instructors that are already contributing is relatively small.
