Chem Matters

Chem Matters Magazine Archive

Chem Matters Magazine from the American Chemical Society for High School students is available online along with teachers guides. Check it out.

Petroleum

I am designing a unit based around petroleum chemistry. It is new and exciting for me and tied into my work as a mudlogger in the oil fields of west Texas before becoming a teacher. I am brushing up on my organic chem and gathering resources. My goal is to start with the standards, design an appropriate assessment, then see what assignments fill in the gaps between.

I believe I have a lot of tools in my teaching tool belt that are not being utilized. I believe this next unit may be a good way to utilize these in a easy connect to the world of my students.

Behaviors That Support Learning Rubric

My good friend and colleague, Luc Roy, designed and field tested this online rubric on Google Docs for "behaviors that suport learning". This is a school wide rubric, now turned digital and a great quick check in for students to assess their own class performance.

SAT Prep Test

Curious Chimp — Congo's Chimps — Video — National Geographic Magazine

Curious Chimp — Congo's Chimps — Video — National Geographic Magazine

Edit Central

 Excellent Lit Link

http://www.editcentral.com/gwt1/EditCentral.html

Cool Little Miniature Stove! - Video

Cool Little Miniature Stove! - Video

Posted using ShareThis

Dynamic Periodic Table

Dynamic Periodic Table

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DonorsChoose.org: Chemistry Students Probe Ware the Real Data Is

DonorsChoose.org: Chemistry Students Probe Ware the Real Data Is

Posted using ShareThis

From Atoms to Patterns - Wellcome Collection

From Atoms to Patterns - Wellcome Collection

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BBC Bitesize

The entire first Quarter of Chemistry in 2 minutes, how is that for digesting information?
I am going to play this in class today before starting balancing equations.

Wolfram Alpha

http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples/Chemistry.html

If you have not yet tried Wolfram Alpha yet, then you don't really know the power of the internet. According to its own desctiption it is not a search engine, it is a computational knowledge engine. It sends back an answer rather than links. If I type in two stocks it will return a chart comparing market cap to shares outstanding. If I type in third cousin's great grandson it will return a family tree of that relationship... Earthquakes in Italy... a map with dots that I can deliniate a date or historical period.

It is just cool,  Mathematica cool.

Read more about it at Discover Magazine

The Science Room at Make Magazine

http://blog.makezine.com/science_room/  

This is a cool website and the science room may have a lot of potential for the layered curriculum lab setting. Teach yourself chemisty through lab experiences. However the mantra of the site " all Lab no Lecture" does not hold true, I had to read a lot of background info to get to the acid base lab. Useful to find labs organized by topic.

Teach them how sciecne works...

Discussion on Science education and the future of Science Literacy in America. Take a listen to this pod cast.

Nobel Laureate Dr. Carl Wieman directs the Carl Wieman Science Education Initiative at the University of British Columbia and the Colorado Science Education Initiative.

(Sep 22, 2008 at Cornell University)

Wieman emphasizes the importance of making science education effective and relevant for a large and diverse population. The approach, he says, is to transform how students understand and use science, and this calls for teaching them to actually think like scientists.

The Periodic Table of Videos

The Periodic Table of Videos - University of Nottingham
http://www.periodicvideos.com/

Cool reference for all the elements.

"We've done all 118 - but our job's not finished. Now we're updating all the videos with new stories, better samples and bigger experiments.?

Science Nation Online Magazine
Science Nation
is an online magazine that each week looks at discoveries and researchers that will change our lives: an artificial retina that can help the blind to see, new materials for building things stronger and lighter, what we're learning from organisms in hot volcanic vents, and ice core secrets that could reveal answers to global warming.  (National Science Foundation)

Video Download helper

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3006

Video Download Helper for Mozilla Firefox. Useful tool to have copy of YouTube videos when internet access is slow or unavailable.  As teachers we always need a contingency plan in case our lesson plans do not work out.

Periodic Table Lecture