News from the UK

relevance

I believe many teachers have started teaching. Best of luck. Our UK teachers start in September, when the weather inexplicably becomes hotter and drier!

CLEAPSS is a subscription service, but our YouTube Channnel is an open source. The videos are designed for teachers and technicians in schools. They may just give you ideas. I have just put one up about electrostatics and the effect of magnets on water and oxygen. In a couple of weeks I hope to have a sequel showing the effect of magnets on precipitates and complexes.

I do not know the status of work with radioactive materials in the States but there is one on Radon and we have many on microbiology.

There is no commentary because we like to keep the videos short (shorter than Tom & Jerry is my maxim). Commentaries make videos much longer than they need to be. So I insert diagrams or even Powerpoint videos. You can always stop the video and look at these for explanations.

I have just written a blog which discusses the idea of chemophobia and ends with the diagram above. The Royal Society of Chemistry undertook a massive public survey on chemistry and found that the general public were not really chemophobic as chemists think they are. The GP just did not understand what chemists did. This is why relevance is so important in our teaching. Those of you on Twitter accounts can look at #chemperceptions.

So you see, we Brits are up with the best of you!.

Regards

Bob

 

Concepts: 
Community: