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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? :)
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.
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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.
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.
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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.
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'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.
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.
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