archive

NSTA Activities

At NSTA (in beautiful San Antonio, Texas), this past week, I shared activities designed to explore three levels of representation AND provide formative assessment techniques to reveal student misconceptions. All of the activities shared have been featured in the Journal of Chemical Education or have been linked to research articles in JCE as supporting information.

 

iGasLaw

iGasLaw is a free iOS app that provides useful tools for studying properties of gases and gas laws.

Stoichiometry Resources

Moles, mole ratios and stoichiometry have been frustrating topics for many of my chemistry students. The MOLE and Avogadro’s number get tangled up in other Chemistry jargon and students have stared at me like I am speaking another language. I have been around long enough to know this is a problem that many of us have faced. I have tried many ideas that have helped and I want to share a few. 

ChemEd 2013 Conference

Sunday, July 28 to Thursday, August 1, 2013, the largest conference in North America focused on teaching high school and introductory chemistry will be hosted by the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON Canada.

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know has an Expiration Date

Samuel Arbesman, a mathematician and network scientist, uses the idea a half-life as an analogy for the changes in human knowledge that science brings. He discusses both the changing rate at which new science is done and the speed at which old results are replaced by newer ones. The analogy is far from perfect, but it emphasizes some critically important aspects of the processes of science.

ChemEd X Call for Contributions

Chemical Education Xchange is requesting chemistry educators as well as others working in the discipline to submit ideas, articles, activities and laboratories for publication.