On 02/28/2011,
in biology, chemistry, mathematics, online learning, online media, open courseware and systems, physics, science,
by Daniel Christian
On 02/16/2011,
in chemistry, faith, flipping -- inverted learning, Michigan, pedagogy, strategy, teaching & learning,
by Daniel Christian
The Fisch Flip in Michigan: Dale Eizenga on flipping traditional lecture and homework routines — from singaporeeducationdirectory.com
Excerpt:
Today I had the opportunity to spend time visiting with teachers and students at Holland Christian Schools in Holland, Michigan. One highlight of my day was the following five minutes of sharing by Holland Christian Schools’ chemistry teacher Dale Eizenga. Dale explained how access to a variety of technology resources has enabled him to flip the traditional in-class lecture and at-home assignment model of learning. Using software and websites, Dale records many lessons for students and makes those screencast videos available online and via the school’s podcast channel.
Several things are notable here. First, Dale didn’t read about Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams, or Karl Fisch, online or in print. He stumbled upon this instructional model when his school provided all teachers and students with a robust digital learning environment. That not only includes access to laptops (for everyone in grades 6-12) but also an online learning management system (Moodle,) robust digital curriculum resources, school-supported options for sharing videos online, AND certified educators supporting technology integration. There are a lot of ingredients to this situation, and that’s critical to understand.
Secondly, Dale addresses in the video how some students struggle with this SHIFT to a “lecture at home on video” model. Dale still shares some lectures in class with students. He mixes it up. Dale explains this model forces students to “own their learning” in ways they may not have needed to in a traditional lecture-in-class setting. Dale relates this as “more of a college model,” where students are responsible for THEIR OWN learning. Dale explains his instructional role as one where he surrounds students with learning resources, and then assists students as they access / utilize those resources. When students aren’t “getting it,” he’s able to talk with them to find out if they’ve watched the podcast video which applies to the current topic or skill, and find out what students need specifically to master new content.
From DSC:
The folks at Holland Christian are doing an awesome job! Keep up the great work over there!
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On 02/11/2011,
in chemistry,
by Daniel Christian
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Google Tech Talk
April 6, 2010
ABSTRACT
Presented by Dr Matthew Todd, School of Chemistry, University of Sydney.
Science shaped itself in the founding days of learned societies: individuals or teams competed, in secret, with paper-based communication in subscription journals. Why are we all still doing science like this? The internet has had a major impact in our sharing of data by traditional means, but it has not yet radically changed the way we actually perform science.
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Here’s a list of the projects mentioned in the video:
Praziquantel is being used in the treatment of schistosomiasis, a parasitic infection spread by freshwater snails in sub-Saharan Africa.
The Gates Foundation is funding an operational research program – SCORE to control and eliminate Neglected Tropical Diseases.
This operates out of Imperial College, London and is led by Professor Alan Fenwick OBE.
The Cathedral model is where a professor and students conduct funded research to develop a solution whereas the Bazaar model invites other people to collaborate in an Open source way to develop a solution. Firefox, Chrome, Wikipedia are all Bazaar models.
Open Science involves publishing in real time and letting people respond as they see fit and then collaborate in real time.
The UsefulChem Project led by the Jean Claude Bradley at Drexel University – aimed at producing molecules that will be used to treat malaria. Bradley is a proponent of and practises Open Notebook Science.
Open Source Drug Discovery: http://www.osdd.net/ – OSDD is a CSIR Team India Consortium with Global Partnership with a vision to provide affordable healthcare to the developing world.
Open WetWare: http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:About – OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering.
The Open Dinosaur Project: http://opendino.wordpress.com/ (founded to involve scientists and the public alike in developing a comprehensive database of dinosaur limb bone).
Chemspider: http://www.chemspider.com/ – ChemSpider links together compound information across the web, providing free text and structure search access of millions of chemical structures.
Foldit is a revolutionary new computer game enabling you to contribute to important scientific research.
NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ – advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information.
GenBank: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/ – is the NIH genetic sequence database, an annotated collection of all publicly available DNA sequences.
The Tropical Disease Initiative aims to apply an open-source collaborative approach to biological and medical research for tropical diseases.
The Synaptic Leap: – Open Source Biomedical Research.
Stack Overflow allows you to post code and ask for help on a problem.
Chempedia is a free service for uniquely identifying and naming chemical substances.
CML (Chemical Markup Language) is an open standard for representing molecular and other chemical data. It includes XML Schema, source code for working with CML data, and was devised by Peter Murray-Rust who worked with Microsoft to develop a Chem Word Add-in enabling a Word document to be searched and the chemical information in it to be automatically annotated and extracted. When you hover over a word, you get a structure and you can change the structure.
Chemicalize.org – a public web resource developed by ChemAxon.
Learning TRENDS by Elliott Masie – Sept 22, 2010.
#637 – Updates on Learning, Business & Technology.
55,132 Readers – http://www.masie.com – The MASIE Center.
Host: Learning 2010 – Oct 24 to 27, Orlando, FL, USA.
1. Flip Happens – Reversing Process for Teaching? My colleague, Dan Pink has written about the concept of “Flip Thinking” In a recent article, Dan talks about experiments in reversing the “natural” sequence of things. For example, what if a teacher were to give the lectures as homework and the activities shift to the classroom. The author of the now viral “Shift Happens” slideshow has been doing that for high school algebra – he provides videos of the lectures for the students to view before class and uses in class time for questions, discussions and practice. There is great promise for flipping processes in learning and education. Check out Dan’s article:
Think Tank: Flip-thinking – the new buzz word sweeping the US
Teacher Karl Fisch has flipped teaching on its head – he uploads his lectures to YouTube for his students to watch at home at night, then gets them to apply the concepts in class by day.
From DSC:
I saw this same innovative thinking/approach a while back with some high school chemistry teachers implementing this “flip” in their classrooms…check out:
The Vod Couple — from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser — back from 08/01/09
High school chemistry teachers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann have overturned conventional classroom instruction by using video podcasts to form the root of a new learning model.
Sams (left) and Bergmann
together practice a student-centered pedagogy.
On 08/30/2010,
in chemistry, digital video, online learning, online media, pedagogy, podcasting,
by Daniel Christian
The Periodic Table of Videos — University of Nottingham
Interactive Periodic Table — from touchspin.com
Periodic Table of Elements — from ptable.com
From DSC — Here’s an oldie but goodie:
Vodcasting: The Vod Couple — from The Journal by Dian Schaffhauser — back from 08/01/09
High school chemistry teachers Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann have overturned conventional classroom instruction by using video podcasts to form the root of a new learning model.
Last May, the talk of the search world was Wolfram Alpha, the online engine that provides graphically presented answers to computationally oriented questions tapping myriad math, science, and other data sets. But by April 2010, Wolfram Alpha’s traffic hovered below the numbers achieved in the launch month of May 2009. Though this does not capture use by third-party applications–including Microsoft’s Bing search engine–Wolfram Alpha hasn’t emerged as a notable search destination.
But the emergence of e-books provides Alpha with a new outlet–as a ready-made supplier of interactive graphics, plots, charts, and real-time data. These features can be incorporated within publications developed for Apple’s iPad and other devices. “Deeper information becomes available by way of tapping,” (emphasis DSC) says Theodore Gray, cofounder of Wolfram Research.
The first example is now out: a Wolfram/Alpha app for The Elements, a book Gray wrote on the periodic table. The paper version of the book is dominated by glossy photos of elements and products made from them (Pepto-Bismol, for example, uses bismuth). The version developed for the iPad, however, is chock-full of on-screen buttons that lead to Wolfram’s online computational engine and data sets.
Clearly, the concept will make sense for some kinds of books more than others, says Jared Spool, CEO of User Interface Engineering, a North Andover, MA-based consulting firm. “It makes a lot of sense for a lot of college textbooks to go in this direction, (emphasis DSC) but I’m not sure that a detective novel has a lot to offer there,” he says. Delivering such interactivity is a likely new direction for Wikipedia and search engines and many other sources beyond Wolfram Alpha, he points out.
On 05/13/2010,
in chemistry,
by Daniel Christian
On 05/10/2010,
in blogs / blogging / vlogging, chemistry, content development, aggregation, repositories, physics, tablets,
by Daniel Christian
Retired professor writes free online textbook — from eCampusNews.com
Some people play golf when they retire. William Reusch learned programming and created 2,000 online problem sets for organic chemistry. (p. 12)