Thomas Scott has found a professional learning community of chemistry teachers on TikTok. He shares his experience and how using the app has engaged his students.
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.
Sometimes, your Professional Learning Community is not at your school, but rather with educators from around the world.
After attending ChemEd at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, this past summer and meeting such wonderful chemistry teachers from across the country, I began to think about motivation and how important it is in our field to find those intrinsic motivators. With the Next Generation of Science Standards (NGSS) taking hold in most states across the country, I call upon chemistry teachers to collaborate and I challenge you to find what intrinsically motivates you as a chemistry teacher.
We teach it, some celebrate it, and we try to make it engaging for our students. What is it? The mole concept and Mole Day! So how do we make it engaging for our students? Let me introduce #molympics.
If you are like me and unable to attend BCCE 2014, there is still a way to be part of the action. Twitter! Even if you don't have a Twitter account, you can follow tweets from participants that are there "live tweeting" the action.
By way of introducing myself, I'd like to respond to Deanna Cullen's blog post about social media here on ChemEd X with some ideas of my own. The reason I'm here is that Deanna found me through following one of the chemistry-related Twitter chats and invited me to join ChemEd X as a contributor. I currently teach IBDP Chemistry at the American International School of Bucharest. Since my early days as a teacher, I have utilized technology throughout my instruction. I also incorporate some ideas from the modeling chemistry movement to help my students understand chemistry at the particle level. I'm hoping to share some ideas that will inspire you to try new things, and I'm also expecting to learn a lot from all of you that interact with us here at ChemEd X.
Chemistry teachers are always looking for new ideas to reach students. Social media is a new frontier to reach students AND collaborate with other chemistry teachers around the world 24/7. I hesitated to join Twitter because it seemed like "just one more thing to add to my plate". I did finally log on and created an account.
