March came and went, and our whole world was turned upside down. From the glories of early March, when life was last normal, to the realities of early April, when adjustments were still being made to the new normal. None of us will be the same again. Most of us now live under “Stay at Home” or “Shelter in Place” orders and teach remotely.
Many of you who know my work are aware that I have many different, let’s call them" eccentric", approaches to my teaching. One of them that I want to start talking about here on ChemEd X is Chemistry (and occasionally physics) on Postage Stamps.
*Thomas Manning and **Aurora Pérez Gramatges recently asked the publisher of their book, Computer Based Projects For a Chemistry Curriculum, to provide educators open access to the resource. Bentham Science has agreed and the eBook will be open access through June 30, 2020.
A few months ago I funded a Kickstarter campaign to help publish a book titled, “Let’s Learn About Chemistry” written by a fellow chemistry educator, Stephanie Ryan.
As COVID-19 spreads rapidly across the globe, life is drastically different. Schools, in particular, have been forced to adapt to the new norm of social distancing, closed facilities, and virtual learning.
Along my teaching journey, I started to incorporate more inquiry and modeling activities into my classroom at the expense of practice problems “drilling” concepts. Based on student survey feedback, I learned my students missed these drilling activities. They were craving practice they needed to master and get comfortable with the content.
Math Blaster! is an educational video game designed to test students’ ability to solve simple math problems. In the 1983 game, players fly an arcade-style spaceship as math problems appear at the bottom of the screen. Their task is to shoot an asteroid that displays the correct answer to the math problems. Math Blasters!