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?"

Dont make it too important

[CastrTroy]

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.

Or...

[Mendy]

...if it's that you really want to be an IT teacher rather than a Chemistry teacher maybe you could get a new job? :)

Not a thing

[muridae]

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.

Bookkeeping is not accounting

[John Hasler]

> ...Accounting where learning to use software like Quick Books is an integral
> part of the course... ...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?

High school: Headstart for proprietary lockin.

High School Chem

[the eric conspiracy]

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.

Don't go overboard using computers

[RevWaldo]

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.

I don't tihink you are actually a teacher yet

[gorehog]

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.

Re:Why Excel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Having taught undergraduate chem labs at university from '96-'01, I would argue that you should be forcing them to manually plot data on graph paper. Many of my students had been allowed to do all their "graphing" on their calculators through high school and it meant they had no solid grasp of how to use a graph to visualise and analyse data. I found that I had to teach students basic graph skills just so they could complete their physical chem labs. These students just couldn't deal with graphing *unless* they had their calculator. They hadn't *really* learned about graphing they had learned how to use their calculator to get a "correct" mark for a problem.

By all means introduce computers/graphing calculators into your lessons, but ensure the students already have the fundamental knowledge and that the computer is simply there as a tool to allow larger amounts of data to manipulated. Teach the theory not the tool!

Don't lose focus

[JustNiz]

>>> 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.
 

Re:Not a thing

[fygment]

Disregard the negative commentary (like any teacher is trying to fail students ... grow up!)

In order of priority:

a) spreadsheets - Excel, OpenOffice, whatever. How could anyone do a lab without using one for tables, calcs, and graphing? Make them mandatory for experiment reports;

b) Latex - to show there is a paradigm other than WORD and its the software for writing journal articles.

Finally, check out this [dmoz.org] site. I've only ever seen free molecule visualization software (eg - PyMOL) but there might be some other stuff.

More lab time!

[multipartmixed]

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.

Just the basics

[amide_one]

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.

In academia, I combined Comp. Sci. w/ Sciences

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Experiments

[Stooshie]

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 [periodicvideos.com]. They have a video on each element and lots of experiments that are perhaps too dangerous for a school lab.