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Chemistry Tasks For the Computer Lab?
soupman55 writes "I teach Chemistry to students completing their last two years of high school. Basically it's a 'teach and test' course with a few experiments thrown in. I want to jazz up the course using computer and internet resources. For instance, I could set some tasks that require Excel spreadsheet calculations. Or I could set some web quests where students search for information online. One of the decisions to be made is: Do I use computer/internet tasks to help the students grasp the material that is already in the course, or do I help them become aware of ideas that are extensions to their course? Also, when I compare Chemistry classes with Accounting classes, it strikes me that unlike Accounting where learning to use software like Quick Books is an integral part of the course, that there is no particular software that a chemistry student must learn to use. Or is there? What in terms of chemistry and computers worked for you? Or what is there computer-wise that wasn't in your high school chemistry course but should have been?"
Don't make the use of computers too important. While I think computers could help the course, we have to point out that this is highschool, and you really should be sticking to the basics. Unless you have some specialized software for showing specific chemical concepts, like how different atoms form different molecules, or something like that, I don't think computers have much place in the class. They should be doing real experiments. Maybe using excel or other spreadsheet to record and graph their results would be useful, with some curve fitting too. But beyond that, I think making too much use of computers will just stress students who aren't computer savvy with learning one extra thing, and distract from the information actually being taught. Short story here. When I was in university, I knew a girl taking chemical engineering, and in one course the needed to to VBA for Excel for one of their assignments. For students who hadn't done any programming apart from a single semester of C in the first semester, it was quite a task to expect them to program, and to understand the material of the assignment. Maybe kids are different now, and they are all geniuses on computers, and have no problems working with them. But I doubt it. Most kids probably won't have problems with MS Word or MSN Messenger, but probably will get quite tripped up by trying to use excel with formulas and charting.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
...if it's that you really want to be an IT teacher rather than a Chemistry teacher maybe you could get a new job? :)
You guys could whip up a nice cleaner that will get the patina of snot, chocolate bars, and despair off the keyboards. Public computer keyboards are always nasty.
Sheldon
The only use I can think of is for balancing equations to work out, say, how much hydrochloric acid reacts with so many grams of sodium hydroxide. You could use vlookup (or similar) to save looking up molar masses or atomic weights, for example.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
> I could set some tasks that require Excel spreadsheet calculations.
Why do you have to specify a particular Micrososft product? Couldn't you at least say "require spreadsheet calculations"?
Better, though, would be tasks that require calculations that could be done with software (preferably software that actually produces correct results).
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Granted, it was 10 years ago that I took college level organic chemistry. The only thing I have seen in that time that would have been useful was LaTeX, for putting together nicely typed lab notes. You might, rarely, spend a week explaining how to use a graphing calculator. Keep it vague and the kids can apply it to a TI-83 or a software calc.
You don't mention the funding of your school, or the tax bracket of your school district. For all we know, you want to teach a computer based course so you have more ways to fail the 75% of your students who do not have a computer at home. Really, if you want to teach IT, teach IT or programing or an Online 101 elective. I know, Teaching The Test sucks, but stick within the course. You find some experiments online to do in the classroom, you find time in the semester to add them in, and you make them relevant.
> ...Accounting where learning to use software like Quick Books is an integral ...then the course is really just a vocational course in the use of a popular (but not particularly good) software package. Does the school get free copies of QuickBooks?
> part of the course...
High school: Headstart for proprietary lockin.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
There's a lot that's useful and fun in biochemistry, like fold.it, an interactive and actually useful (for learning and as part of a research effort) protein folding game. Also in regard to proteins, pyMOL (GPL version available but hidden on their website) and the pdb library make for some nice visualization. A little more advanced are molecular dynamics simulations.
Fleur de Sel
Jmol is pretty good.
Don't forget about Youtube. There are tons of interesting experiments on there that the kids can watch.
saturated sodium acetate solutions used to form columns on the desktop
glowing pickle
solubility of styrofoam peanuts in acetone
gummy bear destruction with potassium chlorate
I'm a chem prof and frequently refer students to certain links to try and grab their interest/attention since there simply isn't enough class time to do everything I want to do.
I want the second the LaTeX. This is one of the main computer tools I find myself using in every single class, from English, to Physics, to Math, to CS, etc. This is the computer tool that should be taught early and used (if not required) in every course from then on.
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Chemical structure drawing tools are extremely important with ChemDraw being mandatory learning at many universities, including my own. Check this list out for a list of many similar programs including FOSS equivalents.
Beyond that, the biggest two uses of computers in higher levels of chemistry are for literature searching (with SciFinder being a clear winner here) and computational chemistry calculations (still unfortunately done mostly on with the anti-FOSS Gaussian software) though there's no shortage of excellent open source equivalents. Avogradro, for example.
However, literature searches aren't going to be too useful without the journal access that Universities enjoy, and frankly most computational chemistry programs are too sophisticated for students of a high school level - though 3D models of chemical structures are always much more interesting. Since chemistry is still taught by using ballpark descriptions and approximations, then successively refining those approximations, I'd be worried that almost any piece of chemistry software would be too intimidating and difficult to explain because it's designed for users with at least a year or two of university courses.
So, I'd think that teaching the students how to draw good structures (with stereochemical accuracy if possible!) on computers would be useful, and maybe 3D structures would be somewhat inspiring, but you're running the risk of over-complicating what should be a course in the fundamentals. If you have the means, you might want to focus on real demonstrations instead, which could be as simple as a marbles to demonstrate entropy, vinegar and sodium bicarbonate for acid/base chemistry, cornstarch and water to demonstrate non-newtonian fluids, alkali metals and water to demonstrate redox chemistry, salt and ice/water to demonstrate boiling point elevation and freezing point depression, etc. etc.
Hey mate, spare a sig?
"I want the second" -> "I want to second"
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
The only place I see a computer being really useful in a high school chemistry curriculum is in a lab setting. A few thermocouples and a digital voltmeter used to capture data over the course of an experiment could be used to pretty good effect.
Otherwise chemistry at this level is all about learning basic concepts of thermodynamics, gas laws and the rules that govern the combination of atoms into molecules.
It seems to me like a pointless thing to require. A student at this point should be able to figure out on their own "I can save time by using $spreadsheet/calculator". I think you should neither require nor forbid usage of tools like calculators of spreadsheets, so long the student demonstrates they actually understand what's going on.
Teach things with an actual specific application to chemistry. Programs that render chemical structures in 3D, programs that display the periodic table, etc. Show programs that actually could make things less tedious, clearer and more interesting in chemistry class, instead of turning your class into yet another boring lesson on the usage of office applications.
I'm betting there's many a school administrator that loves the idea of teaching chemistry without using chemicals - "You can just use computer simulations! We got budgets 'n liability insurance 'n terrorism ta think about, ya know." Make sure your students still get their hands dirty, so to speak.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
I think you are a junior in college taking education classes and are trying to get slashdot to do your homework for you. Seriously, if you are teaching 16-18 year olds about chemistry why would you want them to spend excessive time sitting in front of a computer. Hasn't someone already taught them how to do library and internet searches for information by this point? Generally speaking chemistry should not be too much about clicking on the internet and on the computer. It is about the interactions of chemicals and what effects that has. You can use computers to collect data and analyze data but you should not be spending too much time sending your students off on "webquests" and "busywork". The computer can help them prepare reports and maybe even simulate interactions at the molecular level. So, what you really need to look for are software tools that enable experiments. Look for tools that help students do equation balancing and maybe even simulate the structurte of molecules in 3D.
Do your students a real favor. If any of your students are thinking of becoming chemists, you could tell them to use the computer to look for other fields of study. Companies in the US and Europe are firing chemists at unprecedented rates. If they choose that path, they better be ready to compete with Ivy League PhD's for jobs titrating paint samples.
>>> I could set some tasks that require Excel spreadsheet calculations. Or I could set some web quests where students search for information online.
OK firstly what is it you teach again? Chemistry or Computing? If this is your plan it sounds like computing to me.
Secondly, Excel specifically? Really? You're teaching them computing skills specific to a single commercial software product and computing platform?
Try and avoid teaching skills (especially computing skills)that are too specific, and that are bound tightly to a commercial product. If you really have to teach that stuff in a Chemistry course at all, then at least use Open Source.
Some kids have problems with three dimensions, so the graphics capabilities can help to visualize molecular geometry and atomic or molecular orbitals. Electrostatic maps can help to show the polarity of molecules. Spreadsheets can be useful because of the ability to change parameters dynamically with the slider bars (note: it works for Excel as well as OpenOffice).
There are many apps at National Science Digital Library for K-12 classes. The main site is http://nsdl.org/ and the chemistry link is http://chemeddl.org/
The NIST Webbook (http://webbook.nist.gov/chemistry/) has a lot of reference data.
You could probably just do a web search on a particular topic and find several versions of java applets that people have come up with.
To-do List: Receive telemarketing call during a tornado warning. Check.
My friend is a university chemistry professor. She has complained endlessly that her incoming students lack fundamental math skills. They mindlessly write down whatever their calculator tells them even though it may be off by many orders of magnitude. They are unable to formulate or solve simple ratios and they have almost no concept of significant digits. I know these aren't chemistry skills but if you want students to succeed in college chemistry, I think it would help if you substantially reinforce the math while you are introducing basic chemistry topics.
Surely you did a degree in chem if you're teaching it.
My experience even at phd level is that people just don't do data entry. /copy paste the graphs into a doc. And describe what's going on.
If you're doing real chemistry. The computers are attached to sensors of some type and plot the data for you. You can change the scale from time to time. Zoom in on interesting areas. But basically anything you're going to teach in excel is out dated by the couple of years later they end up using it.
Really who enters data anymore? That's what the Apis and such are for. The only time you have any real interaction is preparing a report. You insert
The chem that you should be teaching is to enable them to know which part of the represention is important. IT people will teach the copy paste. Etc.
All the software will have changed in a couple of years anyway.
There WERE no microcomputers when _I_ took Chemistry!
Seriously though, Chemistry as you no doubt know, is all about being able to visualize. It's all about understanding these atoms and molecules flying around in comparative vacuums, being able to imagine their shapes and how this affects their interaction with each other and other substances, and being able to imagine the charges distributed across these shapes. I myself had no trouble "getting it" and being able to "see it". However any program that helps to demonstrate these concepts would probably be worthwhile. Certainly even power point slides in color and pseudo "3D" would be better than trying to figure out the tetrahedron the teacher was trying to make in chalk on a blackboard.
However you must remember that Chemistry inevitably involves a lot of math - albeit simple math. And teenagers are some of the laziest creatures in the world. Therefore no matter how you sugar coat it, you will always get students dragging their feet because they're not prepared to do the actual work. There's only one way to get good at math, and that's practice practice practice! No computer program can fix that.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I recommend more chemistry experiments. At high school I think the main emphasis should be on experiments and the wonderment of the subject. Most kids aren't going to use the calculations they learn so it is best to show them chemistry. For the bright ones this will also encourage them to dig deeper. My chem teacher was great, all I can remember is doing loads of experiments, and goods too, sprinkled with some calculations.
Is a pricey bit of software, but if you could use it to teach it would be great. Especially if you to incoporated organic chemistry into your lessons.
I'm going to rant for a second.
It is classes like this that have made my job even harder. I teach college level chemistry (general, organic, and analytical). We have so many students who have come with "chemistry" on their high school transcript, but when they get into the first general chemistry class, they don't remember anything. Chemistry, as with most sciences is an experiential course, you HAVE to DO in order to learn. otherwise it's just memorizing facts from a book for some test, then that information is promptly forgotten (or more precisely inaccessible, since they are not being asked the same stupid test question)
With the number of students who have a visual and experiential learning styles, I find it sad that we do not have better science students coming out of high school.
I know it's not your fault, it's no child left behind and administrations that believe the only assessment of learning is a standardized test. I know chem teachers in my area who have had their labs shut down because of adminstrators who don't seem to want to understand what it takes to have a safe lab, and thus the first problem and everything is removed and you are relegated to theory only.
Also I have to agree with others, too much emphasis has been placed on calculators and the like in high school I have students who can't divide by 10 without their calculator, not that they can't do it, but because they are trained to need to do it. Also include some basic algebra, solve for x. make sure that you go over word problems and show them out it is a simple ratio or a straight line equation that just needs to be manipulated. All of these are simple skills that they should get out of high school, but seemingly don't.
That said I do have some ideas for resources.
one good place to check out is the chemcollective at http://www.chemcollective.org/ they have a lot of online simulators, including a virtual gen chem lab (although I find it rather limited). it is funded by the National Science Foundation and is part of the National Science Digital Library.
Also check out the rest of the NSDL. they have online and software resources for most sciences for K-12 and higher ed (don't be afraid to look at materials higher than the grade you are teaching, give them an extra challenge to apply their materials.
Maybe include some kitchen chemistry.
Someone mentioned chemdraw, It is the defacto standard in the industry and I used it for 10+ years. However, I highly recommend ChemSketch from ACD/Labs. they have a full featured free version that does nearly everything chemdraw can do and sometimes more. it does full IUPAC nomenclature w/ stereochemistry. it even interfaces with several online databases, such as pubchem.
As for excel, it can be useful, but mainly for crunching lab data. I can teach a student excel in a 1/2 of lab period, but their low algebra skills makes it difficult for them (and painful for me) to convert what we are doing in the lab to mathematical equations in excel.
lastly, check out the journal of chemical education. If you have access to it great. If not, it's not an expensive journal and it has a lot of good resources, both lab and computer.
Spartan is a very good program for molecular visualization. It will calculate ground state energies, electrostatic surface areas, and orbital energies. It is a very useful supplement when you are talking about lowest energy conformations and bonding. It's a bit expensive, though, even for educational use. Most departments I have been to have one or two dedicated copies that the students have to share. There are some alternatives listed here,
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/organic/mod/software.html
Most of them involve getting something like Cambridgesoft's Chem3D and using it as a frontend for GAMESS or Guassian. Both are also very good programs....
If you're looking for something more low-key, any kind of kinetics experiment usually involves some sort of regression analysis. It's a good opportunity to teach them something like R or Matlab. And SciFinder scholar is also a good program for doing database searches for compounds and reactions reported in the literature. Despite some of the other replies you have had already, it is important to know what tools are available and be familiar with them if you are interested in any kind of future in research. It also helps ground you in the fundamental concepts you learn in a textbook, but probably don't get much chance to apply otherwise.
There's plenty of excellent software packages out there for chemists, but would a high school student really know what to do with them? If you really want students to familiarize with molecules on a computer screen, I'd suggest going for Molden, Moldraw, or some other molecular visualization tool. If I were you though, I'd forget about computers and teach them some basic thermodynamics.
- Fabio
I have to say that unless you are studying chemistry at university computers play a very limited role - even then I'd say you only really use software significantly when studying for a graduate degree. Having said that, there are some resources that may be useful 1. Labskills e-learning software http://www.labskills.co.uk/ This software was designed to allow students to gain some understanding of practical chemistry, the principle being that it allows them to explore using lab equipment and basic reactions and play around in a way that it is not easy to enable them to do in a lab. It's not supposed to replace labwork, more give them some preparation and complement practical chemistry. 2. There are some interesting videoclips on youtube, but you need to hunt and sift through lots of rubbish. You might find the channel called periodic table of videos (run by staff at the University of Nottingham) http://www.youtube.com/user/periodicvideos 3. You might find ChemSpider useful. (www.chemspider.com). It's a site which aims to bring together knowledge relating to chemicals. Depending on the compound you might be able to find spectra (UV, NMR IR etc) and other interesting information the record for cholesterol (http://www.chemspider.com/Chemical-Structure.5775.html) is a good example of the sort of information you might find. 4. If you really need to use a chemical drawing package there are several programs that are free (as in beer) software, symax (http://www.symyx.com/micro/getdraw/) or Acdlabs ChemSketch (http://www.freechemsketch.com/) - this would be my recommendation. 5. You might find http://usefulchem.wikispaces.com/All+Reactions an interesting read 6. It's probably above the level of your students but this can be fun/educational too. http://spectralgame.com/ I hope this is useful
I teach college chemistry. At the HS level you really don't need a lot of computer experience, but the students need to have basic math skills and be able to use their calculators - including scientific notation, exponents and logs. Being able to make graphs and use related spreadsheet skills would be helpful. For example, measure transmittance of a sample, have the spreadsheet calculate Absorbance and then plot Abs vs Concentration to make a Calibration Curve. Add a trendline, too. More for fun, you could also look at the 3D structure of smallish molecules. I recommend Avogadro, http://avogadro.openmolecules.net/ it can build 3D structures so you don't have to find the molecule files to look at.
Amidst the sea of negativity, I feel obligated to point out that this has been done. Much to my surprise, it worked. Course development was through The Shodor Foundation and a faculty member from the NC School of Science and Mathematics, Bob Gotwols. The course is aimed at advanced students but who haven't had diff eqns yet. They use WebMO as a front end to GAMES, GAUSIAN, and all the other usual suspects. Hardware was fairly modest - seemed like maybe two or four linux boxes.
I offer this advice: Teach them to graph experimental data, either with Excel or any other software. However, only do so AFTER they have learned to graph the old fashioned way (pencil & paper). I am often frustrated by my students' complete lack of understanding of (1) what constitutes a proper scientific graph and (2) what information that should be able to glean from the results. If you want to do them an even larger favor, teach them how to perform a manual linear regression of their hand-drawn graph (see http://easycalculation.com/statistics/learn-regression.php for an example). Linear regression isn't that difficult: once you get past all of the fancy symbols, it's really just arithmetic. Only then should they progress to Excel. A sample lesson plan would look something like this: 1. Perform an easy experiment to collect data (P-V data from a Boyle's law experiment would be a good example). You only need four or five data points. 2. Have the students graph the data by hand. Emphasize the components of a proper scientific graph (descriptive title, properly labeled axes that include units, etc.). 3. Have them draw an "eyeballed" best-fit line through the data and then teach them to calculate the equation of that line. 4. Now have them perform a manual linear regression and compare this new straight-line equation with their estimated equation. This is an excellent opportunity to teach them the usefulness of linear regression. 5. Now teach them to construct the same graph in Excel or other graphing software and have the software perform the linear regression. Again, they should compare their results to the computer's results. The idea is to teach them that tools like Excel or ONLY TOOLS. Software is not a magic black box that miraculously spits forth meaningful numbers. They are simply tools that save scientists time, and scientists must understand what the software is doing before he/she can "trust" the results. Best of luck to you.
Kids don't need to play with computers. Computers are no longer novel.
Kids need LAB TIME. Chemistry lab time is fun, for everybody. IIRC my high school chem classes were 2 lecture + 1 lab.
If you are getting enough lecture time in that you can think of "jazzing up" the course with computers, get them to throw some lithium into a beaker full of water or something instead.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
I am struggling to remember exactly what was taught in high school chemistry, but I am fairly certain pH and acid/base concepts are taught in the class? That could be an interesting experiment to do using computers and data acquisition software. You could tie it in with molarity/mole studies by say.. taking three bases or acids and splitting them in to three marked containers, X, Y and Z. Have groups of students take the pH of those "mystery" flasks (maybe 3 groups of kids per container to try to at least get 1 group to do it right). The groups could then get together and titrate X in to Y or whatever and use the pH sensor attached to the computer to record the changes. They'd end up getting a sigmoidal curve, have them compute the rates and things? Calculate proton levels using pKA calculations.
Something like that? Caveat: liquids near school PCs. Maybe have the sensor wired through a hole in a box that they set the flasks in just in case they spill?
I'm a chemistry prof, currently teaching the "general chemistry for science majors" track at a comprehensive university. (So, these aren't the most brilliant students ever, but they're not stupid; most did take at least one chem class in HS, and about half took Honors or AP level.)
We teach them spreadsheets in lab, and they pick it up fairly quickly. The best way for most of them is by peer example, which is why it works better teaching that in a lab setting. We expect to teach them spreadsheets, even the engineering students.
If you really want to help your students learn chemistry by using technology, then focus on what they're worst at. You *are* keeping records on how well they do on different concepts or types of questions, right? (There's an excellent use for "spreadsheets in the classroom", even if it's just behind the scenes.) Use that data to identify one or two concepts per year. Maybe computers could be used to animate gas molecules to help them picture kinetic theory. Maybe computers could be used to do nice "3D" displays of crystal structures. Or maybe the easiest and most effective way to get that across would be with a hands-on model, or a game.
Students in the first semester chem class - and again, these are STEM majors, many of them in calc/precalc for math - are weak on some very basic concepts: Units & unit conversions. The mole. Names of ions - it's astonishing that some of them don't seem able to understand that there's a difference between words like "chlorite" and "chlorate" or "sulfate" and "sulfide". (Then again, they're just as insensitive to errors in English spelling.)
Teach them how to take "the chemistry" in a problem and decide whether it's better to express that relationship in math, or to analyze it in a qualitative ("cartoon picture in my head") sense. Help them learn to pick the right formula, plug in the given values in the right spots, and manipulate it to get the right answer. Help them start to look for patterns in different kinds of problems - "isotopic abundance problems" and "density of a mixture of two liquids" are indistinguishable once you strip off the chemistry and start working them algebraically, but it takes some of them literally forever to see that they aren't radically different kinds of problems. Instead of expanding coverage, it might even help to reduce coverage - drop a couple of chapters if it gives them more time to really understand the basics. What's the point in getting them turned on by making nanotubes in lab or whatever other sexy demo/lab project you can come up with, if they go off to college and discover they're already behind from the first week of classes?
Would computers help with that? Sure. Some kind of Flash game, maybe; I'm trying to decide whether an idea I've had for one would be more effective as Flash or as hands-on game pieces. But computers aren't automatically the solution to "they can't convert miles to nanometers".
And no, I don't know of any "chemistry software" that I'd expect them to know coming in. Molecular modeling tools might be a help, but the good ones are expensive to license and require deeper knowledge to use than 99% of HS students probably have. Spreadsheets might be useful, but again, they'll learn those as freshmen anyway.
You could try to introduce basic computational chemistry through ChemOffice or PCmodel. Have them find the lowest energy conformation for a particular cyclic structure. Have them explain why adding a particular group at a particular location increases the conformational energy. Or just integrate this into their lab reports by having them create these 3d/kekuli structures in ChemOffice and paste them into their reports. Searching through the literature for chemical information is a very important skill to develop as 6 hours in the library can potentially save 6 months in the lab. But as a high school, I doubt you have access to Merck Index online or the other expensive chemical databases. I think an ability to search MSDS databases would be appropriate for high school students. These are can be found for free online and you build good safety habits by making your students comfortable searching for safety information (ignition temp, vapor pressure, hazards, etc...) for chemicals they will use. Most university programs teach these skills anyway but they will have a head up on the assignment. gl hf dd.
Mild-mannered college student by day, DinoPark Tycoon by night.
I would recommend Avogadro. It is a molecular editor and viewer released under the GPL. For high school students, it could be used as a substitute for the ball and stick model kits. It has a simple interface and most of its basic functions can be learned within an hour or two.
Not just for teaching the core ideas, but to demonstrate that chemistry can be fun, and you get to play with fast computers. In fact, my lecturer in molecular modelling admitted that he got into the field partly because of the pretty pictures. I have also focused on the modelling aspects in my chemistry studies, mostly due to my past experience in computational physics.
I would like to note that my primary career is in teaching, and I have discussed the use of computers in science teaching with lots of experts. It is true that the core concepts and laboratory work are essential, but it is still a good idea to use some extra motivation for students with different interests.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
The most important thing is to not give them any real experience with using chemicals and put the fear of God into them so they will never be tempted to do any real chemistry experiments. This will keep any of them from creating explosives and joining a Jihad, which would probably cause you to either go to jail or at least get on a no-fly list. Just teach them the laws of thermodynamics, gas laws and a lot of theory without ANY practical experience which will keep everyone safe. They will be so bored that most will lose any desire to pursue any further study of chemistry.
Actually, you should think of yourself as an anti-chemistry teacher. Why invite trouble when you can give students A's without any risk to yourself. Remember, big-brother is watching you!
THIS MESSAGE WAS BROUGHT TO YOU BY YOUR FRIENDLY HOMELAND SECURITY DEPARTMENT
"Meaningless!, Meaningless!" says the Teacher. "Utterly meaningless!"
When I used to assist undergrad. computer labs 20+ years ago I could spot the Chemistry students' work from the other side of the (large) terminal room.
They invariably used a "close packing arrangement" to cram as much code as possible on each line.
Accountancy, Maths and Engineering majors' code also had tell tale "fingerprints" - I suppose first instincts are to preserve style when transcribing algorithms to code.
Blackboard space must have been tight in the Chemistry lecture halls.
I'm not a chemistry teacher, but I am a scientist. I thought that a good exercise for school kids, where they could use the internet and gain an awareness of how chemistry affects them everyday, would be to take some consumer product (could be a food, shampoo, other cosmetic, basically anything that you put on, or in, yourself) and look up what all the things in the ingredients list are and write a small essay about them. Lots of the ingredients in things have complicated names, but they're quite common between things.
In the way of computing stuff, I would think something like PyMol would be cool. PyMol allows one to view the molecular structures of proteins. You can go to the Protein Data Bank (PDB) and download the atomic coordinates for any protein that has had its structure solved. This might not be considered "proper chemistry" but it's not too far away either :o) Proteins are really the workhorses of the cells in our bodies, so people should definitely take more interest in free resources like these. They also have a "molecule of the month", if you can't find a protein that you like :o)
Have fun
My high school chem teacher, in the late-80's, forbade us from using calculators. Instead, he made the entire class buy slide rules, and do /all/ of their calculations with those. At first, we thought he was nuts -- why waste time learning to use a slide rule when you could do it all that much faster with a calculator. Then, after a while, we realized that there was a method to his madness -- that getting "good enough" calculations that were within the right order of magnitude, was much more important than getting perfect calculations that were off by a factor of 100 or 1000. Knowing that there are exactly 5,515,631,995,531,583.83 atoms of carbon in 1 microgram of sugar is much less useful than knowing that there are about 5-7 x10^20 atoms of carbon in one gram.
More generally, this attitude gave us the mindset of thinking in terms of being able to do quick estimates that were generally "good enough" approximations, and, more importantly, being able to do those order-of-magnitude estimates to know when something /isn't/ right.
Thanks to how ingrained that thought process became, it's become extremely useful in the 20+ years since, whether I'm doing some estimate involving finance, economics, computer science, or most anything involving numbers.
And, having talked to some other students who'd taken the class with me, they have the same memories -- thanks to being forced to think in terms of appropriate orders of magnitude thanks to the slide rule, it's helped them thru the rest of their professional lives.
I know their website shows off the incredibly complex molecular structures that VMD is capable of simulating, but it also does a great job with simpler structures that you're likely to run across in a high school course. It's also open source and runs on Windows, Mac, Linux (along with just about any other unix variant http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Development/Download/download.cgi?PackageName=VMD).
We always knew Comcast was corrupt, here's the proof: http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1909890&cid=34545432
Per my subject-line above, AND IT SAVED MY A$$ IN A SCIENCE CLASS NO LESS - read on, in case you're interested:
"Most kids probably won't have problems with MS Word or MSN Messenger, but probably will get quite tripped up by trying to use excel with formulas and charting.
Reply to This" - by CastrTroy (595695) on Sunday January 31, @08:46AM (#30969964) Homepage
I don't know about today: I have personally found that today's young computer scientists in academia are QUITE IMPRESSIVE (because I have returned to academia for more advanced studies in this field to "upgrade/update" my skills, & mainly in JAVA):
I.E.-> They're more proficient, overall, than the crop I 1st attended collegiate academia with 16++ yrs. ago on a Comp. Sci. degree... & they're quite rational about it, as to why.
E.G.-> One truly brilliant young man I've had the luck to meet actually, in CSC oriented classes, explained it this way to me "We grew up on these machines - your peers @ that time did not. This is the 'why' of why you think we're better/stronger @ computers than your generation was. While you were learning, so were we and like you we did not stop"... it made absolute sense to me.
NOW, back on my subject-line: When I was there doing my required sciences courses, I built a database of terms (for the sciences in question) from the textbook's glossary to make up for my lab partner's leaving school (& his sticking me with a bum grade on a lab because of it, the labs were done in partnerships/teams is why)...
I built it, so that during labs, students could refer to it easily enough to get the points that were on said lab for defining pertinent terms.
IN THE END? Hey - It worked out for an A+ and, my not having to take the final even (this was the deal I made with a prof., because my lab partner "failed out/dropped out" (I never did get the REAL story on that, but it didn't matter either)).
My then former lab partners' leaving school "stuck me" with a D on a lab, which weighed in @ 40% of my grade or better - can't have that.
So, I told the prof.:
"Look, I cannot control what my lab partner does, but since you DEMAND we do labs as partners, his failing to do his end has hurt my GPA badly... so, I have an idea"
AND, that's when I wrote that database of scientific terms for he & his particular science class, and that prof. stayed 'true to his word': He liked the program, and kept it, plus he gave me a great grade for my efforts.
That program (built in VB3 for Windows 3.x) was used in the college's library for countless years in fact for that very purpose for his classes (labs definitions).
Now, since I have returned to academia recently as well as I noted above? Well, I am in another sciences class (GENETICS) & for said science class, I have already programmed up an atomic simulation via Delphi 7.x & OpenGL libs usage (based off a design I did YEARS earlier in 1999 while experimenting with OpenGL screensaver creation), to simulate the proton + neutron + electron in a Hydrogen atom (no neutron in Hydrogen though) via displaying the "in-motion" structure of a hydrogen atom for said class via programming it for the class (as a future "extra credit" project really, for this class). It's implemented as a screensaver.
Computers in the sciences - Especially in academia? DOABLE, & I have personally found that most science prof.'s tend to "relate to it" when YOU combine YOUR SCIENCE (in my case, Comp. Sci.) ,b>with THEIR SCIENCE.
APK
P.S.=> Just some ideas, & ones I have used in academic environs many decades ago (combining sciences no less) & that I intend to use yet again too... because it's applying techniques &/or terms from both really, which is, what it is really, all about imo! These machines in computers? Perfectly lend themselves as tools to most any scientific field after all... & in many a way! apk
The most valuable online resource in my opinion as far as chemistry goes are the various online databases of material safety data sheets. Students should be encouraged to look these up before handling a new chemical that they haven't used before.
Granted, this says nothing of the other possibilities of using a computer in the class. Statistical modeling of reactions, physical modeling of compounds and their interactions with other compounds, all could make use of the computer.
1. In HS I found that chemistry was a bunch of here is how it works with little reasoning behind any of it. Enable your students to go beyond that, teach them how chem lit works. Have them go to the library and look up old metallurgical patents. 2. Inorganic chemistry is really cool, except when you teach it from a stupid text book. Many people say they don't get science because it DOESN'T make sense from a text book. Some of these people would make great scientists and don't even know it because they do not take things on faith! Dump the book but cover the topics in your own way. I bet you find some of those so called non science people really getting it when you present things in a logical/historical rather than a factual dump sort of way. Both of these will naturally result in a lot of Internet and lit research that both you and your students will have to do. And it is probably totally impractical for "modern" education"
Every computational chemist learns to use Gaussian/GaussView at some point, why not use those?
Jazzing up beginners chemistry classes (biology and physics too) with computers strikes me as an attempt replace real teaching with simulations. Besides there is no reason to teach them bad science skills (Excell) in science class. As you noted science is not accounting. Guess in which field being creative is good and where it is bad.
My advice would be:
1. Make damn sure all of your students can balance chemistry equations and can move from moles to grams to liquid volumes with ease.
2. Get their hand wet. Do as many experiments as you can. You can do things like analytical inorganic chemistry reactions (color change, precipitate formation) to identify ions in solution, titrations to measure concentrations, reactions that illustrate properties of some organic molecules like using glucose to reduce silver ions and turn the glass tube into a shiny mirror.
Or some sort of modeling.
Quack, quack.
As a Caltech grad student in chemistry and a multiple-year TA in gen chem there, I have to agree with several of the above posts which stress the importance of lab work over simulated experimentation. I disagree that chemdraw or chemsketch would be useful, as these programs are designed mainly for creating pictures of organic molecules using skeletal notation; unless you are planning to teach a little orgo (which I am all for, by the way, since most people never see any until their second year of college, and it's a completely different way of thinking about chemistry than what most high-schoolers see...might make some students interested who otherwise are not, and it's incredibly relevant to drug design and nutrition), chemdraw is a waste of time. LaTeX is mainly useful for properly formatting mathematical documents, and would be unnecessary in high school chemistry. The most useful things I can think of for you would be the use of excel to create plots of experimental data to show how the formulas can be used to determine unknowns, or possibly introduce them to orbitals.com, which has nice accurate pictures of all the atomic orbitals, or maybe have them use the Internet to write a report about a significant chemical process.
The one thing that stuck out to me about this post was your suggestion of using Excel to do scientific computations. As a physicist and a software developer, this idea sends (bad) chills up my spine. I have seen so many real-world engineers struggle to make Excel do what they need (rather for computation, data analysis, or data plotting), rather than spend a weekend learning how to use a much better tool.
Somehow, learning to use Excel to solve your problems ropes them in so that they just continue to use it to solve their problems, no matter how difficult it is for them to wrangle Excel into doing it. Excel is a *financial* program that MS had added some scientific functionality to in order to sell more units to naive individuals who were never taught that there was anything better.
You talk about calculation packages, so I'll start there: If you want a calculation package, you could look at finding a freeware alternative to one of the big computing programs like MatLab, Maple, or (for more symbolic kinds of math) Mathematica. There are a number of ones out there. Alternatively, you could just as easily teach them how to do calculations in a programming language like Ruby or Python, so that the knowledge they learn will set them up for using a real programming language later in life.
That all being said, I'm not sure that Chemistry class is the best place to be teaching a computer course. There is plenty to teach in Chemistry that can be made interesting via hands-on experiments. Additionally, it is important to build the paper and pencil skills for each empirical law, before one can write or understand any (even simple) program that will aid in their calculation.
However, there is one place where I do think a computer is helpful: processing experimental data and plotting. Again, Excel is a horrible choice for this! There are a number of ones that are useful for students, such as DataGraph for MacOSX. These need to be able to take a columns of data, create new columns that apply formulas using previous columns, and *scientifically* plot the data, complete with real regression curve fitting and even error bars. This may sound similar to Excel, but it is not! Excel's plotting engine is written for financial applications, and produces awful quality scientific output. (Indeed, I've had college professors that would not accept any chart formatted in Excel!)
You mentioned webquests in your post, which are fine, but I would suggest you use them sparingly. When I taught HS Chem, I had a single page (front/back) webquest designed around the Physics 2000 Science Trek. http://www.colorado.edu/physics/2000/index.pl This was an excellent site I thought for learning about some of the physics underlying atomic structure, although I skipped over the Polarization part of the trek. There are other websites out there that are like this one, but designed around different topics which might be just as useful in a chem or physics classroom. If you choose to include some programming as another poster mentioned, you could always choose to have a class project where students design applets to help illustrate basic concepts - maybe ones NOT shown on any websites they've visited as a part of the class. Students at first completed my webquest during class, and then when the course schedule went to 8 per year/4 per day instead of 7 per year and we had less classtime, I began assigning the webquest as a homework/project.
I am also a high school chemistry teacher. I have 2 recommendations for computer resources:
www.wolframaplhpa.com This is a great resource for computing anything. It doesn't balance equations or do stoichiometry yet, but it can help the students set up these problems. I use it all of the time when making problems for the kids to double check facts.
http://intro.chem.okstate.edu/1314F00/Laboratory/GLP.htm This is an awesome applet that illustrates the ideal gas law very clearly. Doing labs on this topic would be a bunch of reading meters anyway, so this gets the students some visualization.
good luck!
What an awesome opportunity ...
As a parent of school age kids I am sad to see them rushed trough so much test-oriented useless material followed by senseless amounts of will-breaking assignments and tests.
My kids spent a significant amount of years through Montessori education. On that environment, they pursued areas of interested on their own with the guidance of classroom guides. The main difference is that the kids chose their area of work (they do have to complete a minimum required across all other areas). There were no exams, mostly projects, but my main point is that it is amazing to see someone work on something they are passionate about. They spent day and night, on their own, working on projects that were interesting to them; for something that was not even going to get a grade.
So ... ask your students to submit 5 reaserch proposals to you. Give them a week, write a page or so about each proposed topic. Once they pick of their own topics (just so everyone commits to the reaserch), let them trade some of the unused ideas with peers. Go outside the book, the real world does not come with a book !!! I believe this initial reaserch will help them explore their own ideas. I suggest you provide incentives to have this project play bigger and bigger % on their final grade based on the increased levels of commitments to the project. Maybe they present to peers for a basic grade, but maybe they can submit papers to some conference, or present at local university to a bigger % of final grade.
In terms of ideas ... how about some blender rendering (www.blender.org), its free ... It will teach them awesome modeling/rendering skills. Take it up a notch and have them create chemical models in it, animate them. Introduce them to, or challenge them to higher levels of programming by developing python scripts to simulate temperature on their models, animate chmical reactions, etc ...
Congrats to you for having a genuine interest in your students.
You should consider playing with GAMESS or some other package (GAMESS is free, QChem is fairly cheap as a student edition), and show students how molecular orbitals can vary. I remember many of my friends having trouble understanding the ideas of the various orbital theories, so letting people play with their own could be interesting.
Alternately, do you teach kinetics? You can use the Gillespie algorithm to perform numerical simulations and build a basic interface to let kids see how certain reactions work. This goes well with a demonstration of the iodine clock or an oscillating reaction, and you can use it to instill an appreciation for how we can explain complicated phenomena with a few simple equations.
PyMOL http://www.pymol.org/ is a great open source crystal structure viewer and there's all sorts of available enzymes with small molecule inhibitors in them at the protein data bank. http://www.pdb.org/pdb/home/home.do Let the students find an enzyme online, make a picture of the enzyme active site with or without an inhibitor. Set them to the task of finding a small molecule inhibitor via the internet or based on what's in the crystal structure. As them to tell you what functional groups are involved in the molecule, etc. There aren't any easy to use, free docking programs to screen student-designed potential inhibitors... sadly.
Forget the computers and add more real experiments. Nothing in high school chemistry requires more than pencil, paper, brain, and calculator. I took a year of organic chemistry at Caltech and never needed a computer. You can figure out molecular structure from NMR data with your brain.
. . .but nothing I would spend more than one class session on. It is a chemistry course, after all, and these are tools to use, not programs they are going to be reverse-engineering. And despite what most of the people here seem to think, not everyone is a computer wizard, and some intelligent students have an honest-to-God difficulty in learning how to do something as simple as performing a linear regression in Excel, and the sooner they learn what the software is capable of, the sooner they'll start exploring, instead of just panicking.
Some non-specific software that I've had to become proficient in during my nearing-a-decade-of-schooling:
Excel (I agree it's not the most powerful choice, but it is the software package that nearly every student has available to them, and that makes it very valuable to them when writing reports at home, at the library, etc.)
Powerpoint (both for verbal and poster presentations)
ChemDraw
Spartan
Graphical Analysis
SciFinder
Other software I have used on occasion, and fumbled my way through:
IsisDraw
ChemSketch
ProLogger
SPSS
As far as conceptual teaching tools, in addition to some of the things posted above, I have found the Analytical Sciences Digital Library to be of use. Partial disclosure - since I first started using it a few years ago, I have helped write two articles.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
I'm teaching first year chemistry at the moment, and for our purposes, computing is mainly a tool for generating reports and doing data analysis. Most data analysis in chemistry can and is done with Excel. I've read other posts here trashing the use of Excel in science, but really, for what we use it for it is just fine. Don't worry about teaching the students how to use it, as we can cover what we need them to know in an hour. We mainly do stuff like linear regressions for calibration curves, simple adding and subtracting of values, and other basic data manipulation that is much quicker in a spreadsheet. Many instruments are interfaced with computers for automation or data analysis, but again, this is something we can quickly teach them when they need the instrument. Being computer literate would be helpful, but I think most students will already be up to speed just based on their interactions with computing in their daily lives. Sure, you could show them how to do computer modeling with chem draw, or do modeling with jmol, but I would suspect that would bore them. Those programs are mostly useful for creating presentations or writing reports. Again, this is stuff that we can show them how to do in 1 lab period, and it does not have a large impact on their understanding of chemistry. If you would like to make a project that would really interest them, you could build a spectrometer in class that they could use to do something like an EDTA titration to determine the hardness of a water sample, or determining the molar absorptivity of some food dye. For the food dye experiement, you could them have them determine the concentration of the dye in a gatorade sample or something similar. Spectrometers can be simple to build and very cool to observe and use. The project would not cost very much either. I built my own as an undergraduate in an Instrumental Analysis course, but I think that with the aid of an instructor, the lab could be geared for younger students. You would most likely do the sodering, and only show them the circuit analysis. You could keep it very general. To keep this simple, you would want some sort of monochromatic light source. In my lab we had an argon laser available, but a smaller presentation laser pointer would also work. You could also canibalize the laser out of a cd-rom or dvd-rom. The principle is that you will shine light through a sample container (some container such as a plastic that does not absorb the wavelength of light that you are using for your analysis, IE the color of your laser pointer), and you will detect the light that passes through. The light detection could be done with a photoresistor (resistivity increases as the light hits the photoresistor). By measuring the voltages with a voltmeter, and creating a calibration curve with standards, the students will be able to determine the molar absorptivity of the dye, and then the concentration of dye in the gatorade sample. A cool thing about this experiment is that it would bring many different topics that you would hopefully teach anyway into a neat and relevent package. You would talk about Beer's law, and the wavelength dependent nature of the absorption of light. You would talk about the need for standards and how they increase the accuracy of the measurements (versus just measuring one data point to determine the molar absorptivity value), and this would spring board into a brief discussion of statistics and how they are relevant for actual lab work. You could hit a little into electronics, which is something that a chemistry student must learn to get the degree, and is something they will definitely apply if they decide to do analytical chemistry past undergrad. You could have them build the housing, and do stuff like paint the inside of the instrument with mat black paint in order to absorb stray photons that manage to enter the instrument. You could talk about signal to noise ratios, and how they are impacted by reducing stray light entering the instrument. I think doing an experiment like this would greatly enhance many
Teaching chemistry is about teaching chemistry; that's the mechanics, the math, and perhaps above all, the hands-on exerience and connecting the experiental dots with theory and through that gaining understanding of what happens. Of course with software that helps visualise and calculate and predict what happens, that's a great tool, but maybe one that's more useful for those who have the basics down already. And why would you want to have the kids away from the hands-on experience?
For me, by far the most useful application of technology in chem class has been an online forum where all the students can give and receive assistance on the homework. There's over 100 people in my course to participate in it, it may be less effective if you're not teaching a particularly large high school.
I teach high school chemistry at one of the highest scoring schools in the state, but I routinely see the same lack of fundamental math skills and investigative thinking that are the basis of science. My colleague has proposed this same question to me, and I was fairly against the use of computers as part of labs for the sake of integrating "technology." They can use a computer to type up the lab report and maybe plug in an Excel graph. I have used statistical packages as part of professional analytical lab work and I can safely say that the concepts behind the math and the significance of the numbers is years beyond a high school curriculum. Computers are great research tools and have great importance in data collection, but these same tasks can be done much more easily with traditional tools.
I have a full classroom set of the Vernier probeware that integrates with the TI calculators, but I won't even think of using this stuff until I have an Advanced Placement class that shows the maturity and attentiveness that it requires. Instead of flashy toys, I prefer to incorporate investigative labs where you are developing your own procedures with as little assistance from me as possible. I really like labs that recreate classic experiments and have the kids use the same basic tools that chemists used 200 years ago. They love the electrochemistry lab where they use Alessandro Volta's tools to figure out the best combination of metals and acid to use to make a battery powerful enough to charege a capacitor. The cap discharges into an old flashbulb to convert chemical energy to electrical energy to thermal energy and light.
Spend more time on the fundamentals of scientific math and scientific thinking - the rest will come much more easily since the groundwork has been laid. I did very well in school because I was shown how to think, not just how to use computers and punch a calculator.
"Remember,no matter where you go... there you are." - Buckaroo Banzai
...in specific areas such as this is still sorely lacking. There are some generalized things that are pretty good, such as NetLogo that you could use to have your kids set up models and simulations of things to help them understand.
Here's one example of a demo in NetLogo that shows how buffers work and is interactive in that it lets you adjust the levels of acid and base at the beginning and lets you add them while it's running. To use it, click "setup", then "go". You will probably want to slow it down a lot.
NetLogo Buffer Simulation
It might be useful to let the kids play with this, or for you to put it up on a projector for them and fiddle with the settings to let them see what's happening. But what would really serve them (and the community) is to have them make their own simulation and post it. This accomplishes several things: they'll know they are actually contributing something to society, their depth of understanding will increase by causing them to organize the information in their minds to the point where they feel like they can explain it, the fact that their peers will be looking at it provides the only motivation kids of that age actually care about, and you'll be taking education out of the stone ages.
I'm not saying this is the only thing out there or even that this is the best thing (NetLogo). But I consistently see people answering questions like this by saying things like "don't make computers too important to the class" and "when I was a boy, we did it this way, so that should be enough for kids now." Neither of these answers is supported by research in the cognitive sciences or education. Use the computers. Education is the only area of human endeavor where you could take someone who was doing it in the 1800's and put them in a job today and almost nothing has changed. This is no longer good enough for a world where technology is evolving at an accelerating pace. Please, use the computers.
While I believe that there are many different approaches required to round out a chemistry course my authors and I have spent some time exploring how computers might at least support such activities. We put together a site, http://www.virtlab.com/ that includes a "laboratory manual" of instructions that can be used to explore both visual simulations of a laboratory bench and spreadsheets that represent the same behavior as the simulations. We have tried to be thoughtful in the exercises written and I hope you enjoy them! Dave Barkley
Terrible Terrible Terrible, you should NOT be focusing on how to use "X" equipment to fit in with "Z" subject if you have to ask how it makes sense. Instead you should be focusing on how to better convey the material of "Z" subject in a more efficient or more effective manner. Sometimes that means that you decide you need "X" equipment to get there.
This almost seems like an administrator (read: Someone not a teacher) trying to say "Well we need to buy 15 computers to more effectively teach chemistry" with emphasis on the "Buy 15 Computers" part instead of the "More effectively teach chemistry" part.
However, I agree that technology can be a good tool in the teaching of science. If your students are inclined to solve things by using Excel Spreadsheets or programming their TI-8X calculators to do equations then by all means don't discourage them. I know I programmed Moles-->Mass into my TI-83 and it saved my life.
Also I recommend more hands-on, even dangerous stuff. I know I would never forget what a Hydro-Carbon was if I had burned my hand while discovering it.
Summary: FOCUS ON THE CHEMISTRY, EVERYTHING ELSE IS SECOND.
Excel. Go no farther. These kids all know Word inside out. They use it *every* day. Most of them don't know excel and it is useful in every science and engineering class. Don't spend much time on this but force them to create a few equations and a graph. Let them figure out how to do fancy stuff on their own as needed. There are tons of tutorials on youtube and google for very simple things. Graphing calculators are great but how do you get that graph from the calculator to the teacher or how do you present it in front of the class? Use your cell phone to photograph the calculator? No, have them use excel. Or google docs which has a nice spreadsheet tool which can create graphs just like excel.
I teach high school chemistry. Lab reports and other hwk are done on OOo writer, using the excellent (math) formula editor, then submitted to me through Moodle. I overlay my comments with text boxes and upload the response. Kids enjoy the paperless experience, and I never lose their work. Unlike LaTeX, you can teach OOo formula editor in about 10 minutes. We do real experiments. We do a bit of data logging and graphing, but not that much. There are some online java apps for things like gas laws and molelcular models that I use occasionally, but mostly real experiments. When teaching theory, I use my laptop and type notes directly into a wiki on Moodle. Kids are then assigned to clean it up a bit later, and to upload any sketches I do in Kolourpaint. (They also maintain a glossary there and contribue their own notes to the wiki.) I often jump into Google images to find something that will illustrate what we are talking about. We have some chem draw type software (linux stuff), but I don't use it much at all. Its faster for me to use kolourpaint (just a kids' paint program for the couple of you who don't know linux)
Nothing, of course, can replace actually carrying out experiments yourself when learning chemistry. As well as the excitement of some of the experiments it teaches you that an experiment never really goes "wrong" as such, just an unexpected / unplanned result (was it your setup or the assunotions that were wrong).
However, a great site for watching experiments and learning about the elements is periodic videos. They have a video on each element and lots of experiments that are perhaps too dangerous for a school lab.
America, Home of the Brave.
Check out SAS's Curriculum Pathways. http://www.sascurriculumpathways.com/
It is free to anyone in the US and has a large section on chemistry.
Try the following article:
http://www.ched-ccce.org/confchem/2008/b/P7.html
My primary use of computers in my Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate Chemistry courses is for collecting and processing data from Vernier probes. We got a bunch of units with thermocouples (temperature probes), pH electrodes, pressure sensors, and colorimeters back when we could get money for such things, but they only plugged in to TI calculators. You could do some things with that, but the more advanced spreadsheet operations were unavailable or awkward.
I now use donated, non-networked PC's running MidiFuxboxOS, which works well with some software available from Vernier (distributed as RPM's) and which includes Gnumeric. Students are able to easily view, graph, and process data quickly on the machines. I'm able to have them analyze cooling curves, calorimeter data, pH titrations, and track reactions colorimetrically (the kinetics of the fading of phenolphthalein in excess NaOH). I also like having them use basic formula calculations in Gnumeric, because it seems to force them to think about the calculation process more than just plugging in on paper.
Our school has Promethean boards, on which I can display "Virtual ChemLab" experiments, simulations from PhET, youtube videos of people doing stupid chemistry (with the internet as a very effective blast shield), and presentations (prezi.com is my current favorite). I recently experimented with having students collaborate on some work using Google docs, with mixed results.
http://www.vernier.com/ makes some outstanding equipment at assorted prices. The Loggerpro software (free 30-day demo, 190 bucks for an unlimited site license), combined with a data logger and a couple instruments (e.g. thermometer and ph meter), total cost maybe...400 dollars...would allow you to run a demonstration experiment, gather the data, distribute it to the students, and then have them analyze it on their own copies of the software (which includes a variety of analysis/graphing/statistical tools). They have a bunch of lesson plans on-line, too.
Floating in the black seas of infinity without a paddle.
I just took high school Chem last year,and my chemistry class was pretty innovative. Our school had just recieved a very large sum of money for upgrades, one such upgrade was a "smart board" in each class room, basically it connected to the teacher's laptop, and allowed them to display what was on their computer for the whole class to seee, I dont know how your class is set up, but what I can say is that, visual aids on the internet helped in the class room, whether it be just posting formulas for everyone to see, finding animations of reactions at the molecular level, or videos of experiments that others have done, it all really helps. P.S my chem class went so well that I decided to major in chemical engineering in college
Throughout my PhD work I used Labview to write programs to communicate with instrumentation and also for data analysis. I think this program is VERY important for scientific research at the graduate school level where not all instrumentation is straight from a box and plug n play. In addition the amount of data analysis that can be done with this program is phenomenal. It is expensive and requires a bit of a learning curve, but would be useful for chemistry classes. I consider this to be a program that every chemist should know about and how to use.