Come explore the “Fire and Ice” pedagogic field laboratory. Follow suggested pathways and perspectives, or blaze your own trails. Visit for 10 minutes or for hours.
As many teachers are preparing to teach online, we are revisiting posts from the ChemEd X archives like this one that might be of help. The original Build a Boat challenge was used to help create a classroom culture of teamwork and growth mindset. The author has updated the Build a Boat activity by providing a modified slide show presentation specifically to help those teaching remotely this fall.
Metacognition is a learner-focused evaluation of knowledge growth and an essential process for complete and lasting knowledge. Although virtual learning environments pose challenges for facilitating metacognitive activities, student-made videos are effective for increasing metacognition in online chemistry instruction.
Germany issued a pair of stamps that honor two fundamentally huge accomplishments in science in 1994. The Quantum Theory and Ohm’s Law. They were really well designed stamps and very accurate in their science.
Michael Morgan is the president of the Chemistry and Physics on Stamps Study Unit. He has collected stamps and shared his interest with others for almost 30 years.
No one really knows how to immediately transform an in person class to a distance learning environment. We struggle to provide an equitable education, whatever that looks like, for all our students and make accommodations for differences in learning abilities, home lives, internet access, in addition to mental and physical health.
With the current global COVID-19 pandemic, there has been much discussion of “flattening the curve” by social distancing. These ideas can be demonstrated chemically, for example, by the iron-catalyzed decomposition of hydrogen peroxide to produce an oxygen gas foam. Decreased hydrogen peroxide concentrations, representing decreased human population concentrations from social distancing, produce oxygen gas foam, representing cases of illness, at a slower rate. A similar demonstration can be achieved using the popular Diet Coke and Mentos experiment. These simple experiments are best used as stand-alone demonstrations.
Students’ preconceived notions about concepts may clash with the material that they are expected to learn. This cognitive dissonance creates discomfort for students.
I recently participated in a conference known as the Digital Pedagogy Lab as a fellow, which required leading a workshop (or an equivalent). I chose to structure my workshop around the ideas of critical pedagogy and STEM, and particularly how we use these ideas in a practical way in the classroom (both F2F (face-to-face) and DL (distance learning)). This blog will be one of a two-part series on these topics.
Chemists tend to think of the Table as an old friend– reliable and static, but that is not the whole story. Piqued your interest? Click on the title to sate your curiosity.
