Have you seen the rainbow candy experiment? It's a very simple experiment that involves pouring water into a plate that has M&M's candies or Skittles arranged in a pattern. Very curious shapes of sharply divided regions form spontaneously. How does this happen?!
Some of the challenges associated with virtual instruction include connecting with students and checking for understanding in real time. On February 2nd, Michael Farabaugh presented a ChemEd X Talk about how he uses the interactive features of Nearpod to create formative assessment items that provide valuable feedback and facilitate student participation. You can watch the edited recording of Michael's Talk and access the lesson he shared during the presentation here.
Learn how to give pennies a beautiful, silvery-colored plating.
The authors revisit "flattening the curve" demonstrations published during 2020 to see how they could represent the impact of vaccinations on the COVID 19 battlefront. These demonstrations do not demonstrate the mechanisms of vaccines themselves, but are rather analogies to their potential effect on a population. In these analogies, gas production still represents illness, but this time people are represented by objects added to the solutions which either enable gas production (unvaccinated individuals) or do not enable gas production (vaccinated individuals). These simple experiments are best used as stand-alone demonstrations, and links to videos are included in this writeup.
Students were asked to watch a short video that describes the ways scientific information is communicated, how those pathways usually function and how they were altered by the pandemic. Students were then asked to discuss a series of questions about experts, peer review, and the issue of releasing research results prior to peer review because of the urgent need for useful information related to the pandemic.
ChemEd X Talks with Chad Husting about how he has transitioned to standards based grading during a pandemic! He will share a quick trick that has the potential to solve many of the problems that teachers struggle with including having a mix of face to face and virtual students and keeping up with late work, make-up work and missing assignments! Join the conversation! Register for this 30 minute Zoom meeting to be held Feb 9 at 7pm EST.
Session 2, a 3 hour session, extends the formative assessment experiences in session 1a and offers participants an opportunity to engage in an innovative lab formative assessment activity. Teachers will continue to build a collaborative professional learning community with a connecting activity, thinking like a student, and a chemical thinking discussion. The session requires a lab classroom for teachers to experience the Pringle design challenge. Time will be spent exploring the Formative Assessment Enactment model more deeply. Session 2 focuses on Chemical Control and touches on three of the six overarching ACCT objectives.
Political dilemmas will be associated with resistance from various stakeholders when school and organizational norms are questioned and routines of privilege and authority are disturbed.
Cultural dilemmas will emerge between teachers and students as classroom roles and expectations shift with an emphasis on chemical thinking.
Pedagogical dilemmas will arise as they address decisions about instructional materials and approaches and what to emphasize in learning experiences that a chemical thinking perspective demands.
