Educational Technology

Co-Authored by Dean J. Campbell* and Matthew E. Hill *Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois

This year I’ve been working extra hard as my state, Indiana, has made a big switch: we adopted NGSS. I’m really excited about the change in how we are teaching chemistry, but adopting a whole new, very different style of standards has come with a lot of work to update and replace older activities.

The use of online simulations to augment classroom instruction is a common occurrence for many students. Veteran educators may remember students passively watching chemistry animations from a VHS tape, laserdisc or compact disc on a classroom TV.

Teaching virtually two years ago was challenging for Chemistry teachers at all levels. It has made teachers reevaluate the best ways to deliver lessons and find new methods for increasing student engagement.

Artificial Intelligence continues to make an impact on the world of education. For those of you who may not be familiar with ChatGPT, it is so much more than  looking items up on the internet. Searching for items in a search engine simply finds the sites and lists them. Artificial intelligence by the use of ChatGPT does much mor

Short, vertical format videos are all the rage right now. On average, young people spend five hours on apps like TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube, swiping through endless hours of content. 

Flipped and blended classrooms integrate online instructional videos with traditional classroom activities. Sometimes, students watch videos for homework before engaging more deeply with the content during class. YouTube, which launched in 2005, is the most common video sharing app because teachers can create and upload custom instructional videos.

I am always looking for little activities to fill those "dead spaces" during the school day like passing times, when some students finish early, or when there is not enough time before the bell to start the next activity.