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What Not To Do Lab

Doug Ragan | Wed, 08/26/2015 - 09:26

With more than 30 safety violations shown, the cartoon serves as a great ice breaker as I have each student introduce themselves and then list a safety infraction being shown on the cartoon.

Lab Report Feedback, Part 1: Using Drawboard PDF on a Tablet to Provide Feedback on Student Labs

Lowell Thomson | Sun, 08/16/2015 - 07:28

Throughout my 21 previous years as a teacher, I have really struggled to provide meaningful (and timely!) feedback to my students on their lab reports. Teaching IB Chemistry has really forced me to get better - and I have. Yet I still feel like this is an area for more improvement.I've got a series of blog posts planned to share some ideas with you - and hopefully garner some discussion that will be helpful for me also! First I'd like to share the mechanics of how I provide feedback.

Defining Conceptual Understanding in General Chemistry

There have been numerous educational initiatives that have driven the push for helping students develop deep conceptual understanding. One of the difficulties for educators is assessing whether students have actually made gains in understanding. Ask any teacher to define “conceptual understanding” and their definition may be very different from the next teacher’s definition. The authors of this timely article have taken the definitions of well over a thousand instructors and identified a consensus articulation of what conceptual understanding is.  This article will be of interest to any teacher struggling to assess their student’s conceptual understanding of content. 

Rust

Scott Robowski | Fri, 07/31/2015 - 09:43

A great book for summer reading is "Rust: the longest war".

Cars rusting! Bridges collapsing! Rust, and corrosion in general, is probably the most important topic that is not on most people's radar. This is definitely something people should be paying more attention to.