ChemEd X contributors offer their ideas and opinions on a broad spectrum of topics pertaining to chemical education.
Blogs at ChemEd X reflect the opinions of the contributors and are open to comments. Only selected contributors blog at ChemEd X. If you would like to blog regularly at ChemEd X, please use our Contribution form to request an invitation to do so from one of our editors.
It is really hard to get to know THAT kid especially when I have classes of other kids who are important and have needs also. Stack on top of this teenage hormones, spring, nice weather, prom, AP tests, state testing and trying to sell as hard as I can how fun "stoichiometry" is....I now run the risk of turning a bunch of other kids into THAT kid pretty quickly.
Lauren Stewart discusses why she is having her students build 3-D models BEFORE teaching them to draw Lewis structures.
I wonder how many of the ChemEdX readers are also members of AACT? The American Association of Chemistry Teachers has been a long time coming and is in its second year of operation now. It is currently being supported by the American Chemical Society and is a separate, and much more affordable, membership than ACS. One year of membership is only $50 and includes a subscription to Chem Matters Magazine.
While attending a professional development session last year I was introduced to the Talk Science Primer, developed by the Inquiry Project and TERC. Although the research and sample population targeted educators and students grades three through five, I decided to review the material to analyze if it had any value in a chemistry classroom.
It’s review season for AP courses! I have a love/hate relationship with the date of the AP Chemistry exam. On one hand, it’s SO early. On the other hand, because it’s the first exam, my students actually study for it (compared to later in the AP exam season when students are like, “I’m done. I don’t care anymore.”).
Each year we work on specific heat of materials and the heat of fusion of ice. These are two labs that are typical for most chemistry classrooms. Most of the experiments involve a simple calorimetry experiment that uses a styrofoam cup and provides generally good results. There tend to be a couple of key ideas with all of these experiments.
Learn a simple and very inexpensive way to build and use an "absorption spectrometer" using a smartphone. This is a great way to implement Beer's Law experiments in your classroom!
Computer coding has been getting a lot of attention with the Hour of Code movement and President Obama’s recent “Computer Science for All” initiative. Just like it is no longer solely the job of the English teacher to teach language and communication skills, it is no longer solely the job of the computer science teacher to teach programming skills.
Upon sharing my array of apps with some future chemistry teachers, they asked why so many Periodic Tables? My response was “Well not all periodic tables are the same”, upon which was followed by several blank stares...Let me explain: I currently have the following periodic table apps loaded on my iPad...
Just as our lives and various circumstances have a story, so do our laboratory experiences. Often the labs we do lack context but we expect students to buy in to the experiment without knowing the what, where, or why of the story. What makes this lab worth doing? What question(s) are we trying to answer? Why was someone exploring this in the first place?