Announcing a Unique Virtual Conference: Tools for Integrating Green Chemistry in Your Classroom

This ChemEd X Virtual Conference is now closed: Tools for Integrating Green Chemistry in Your Classroom.

Tools for Integrating Green Chemistry in Your Classroom features a hybrid of published Journal of Chemical Education articles, Beyond Benign lesson plans and additional supporting resources. Join us to gain a deeper understanding of how to integrate green chemistry principles and practices into your classrooms, by investigating novel technologies, exploring green chemistry alternatives to traditional experiments, and evaluating a fresh perspective on chemical modeling. Our goal is to spark interactive dialogue related to increasing the adoption of green chemistry principles and practices throughout the K-20 chemistry education spectrum.

ChemEd X, the Journal of Chemical Education, and Beyond Benign are sponsoring the virtual conference to support the chemistry education community.

This is not your typical virtual conference. This is not a series of webinars. Using the ChemEd X Conference platform allows the authors to augment their published articles and activities with additional information and resources beyond those offered in their original publications. The original JCE article or Beyond Benign laboratories will be augmented with other materials that the author chooses to share like video, power point or text. The attendees have reading/viewing time before the session is open for conversation. This gives attendees a chance to write thoughtful comments/questions that they can post during the conversation time. The attendees will be updated by notifications (through email or Twitter) as the conversation proceeds. As conversation about the first session concludes, the next session will be open for reading. At this point, the first session will be closed. This is done to encourage attendees to direct their full attention to the next session. Note that during the last session, the Panel Discussion, the first three sessions will be re-opened. Note that once the conference ends, attendees will still be able to log into the conference and view the entire conference, but note that the conference will not be open for comments after the conclusion of the final session. Note that you do need to mark ATTEND for each session you wish to participate in.

The organizers hope to engage high school chemistry teachers, pre-service chemistry education students, professors working with pre-service students, chemical education researchers, college professors, science majors and anyone else with a stake in improving green chemistry practices in education in this conference.

The homepage of the Tools for Integrating Green Chemistry in Your Classroom conference offers a list of sessions and provides specific details about the conference. Each consecutive session will last several days. Participants wishing to attend a specific session will have access to all of the materials the author(s) has provided and have ample time to construct thoughtful commentary. Invited authors and those posting comments should respond to questions in a timely fashion.

The conference is hosted by Kate Anderson, Director of K-12 Education, Beyond Benign and Mollie Enright, K-12 Program Manager, Beyond Benign. Beyond Benign is a non-profit organization dedicated to developing and disseminating green chemistry and sustainable science educational resources that empower educators, students and the community at large to practice sustainability through chemistry.

The conference website offers detailed pages with information about how to register for the conference and also provides a “How To” guide for how to attend this new platform. Only those who create an account at ChemEd X Conferences can participate in the conversation. All that are interested are invited to register free of charge. As a sponsor, the Journal of Chemical Education will make the JCE articles highlighted in the first two sessions open access.

The conference is scheduled to run January 29- February 14, 2018.