Blogging + Cool Training Videos = Student Success!!

I'm surfing along today after reading an email from a colleague of mine who recommended the TeleTech Tuesdays component of the SOITA site, which is in Southern Ohio. No, the site is not in Southern Ohio. However, the site has excellent resources for Podcasting and so I check out the website and I link to, what has to be, one of the best examples I've seen using technology in the classroom. This site has podcasting, movies, and blogging... It's interactive AND...

wait for it...

It's about...

CHEMISTRY!!!!

Do I seem a little excited here?!! You should be too, because this site, created by Timothy Fletcher from Eagan, MN, is one of the best examples of a working and thinking website that I have seen. Working you get, but "thinking"?? Well, check out Mr. Fletcher's Message Board and you will see some thinking. Students talking about projects and asking quality questions!! This is great!!! When, NOT IF, you get to this site check out everything, especially the ChemFiles. There is a fantastic activity, using Microsoft Excel, describing a way to show students how to understand the mole-mass relationship between reactants and products in a balanced equation. Make sure you watch the tutorials to see the "magic" happen. What an awesome activity! I am really pumped about this because I have such a hard time finding good resources in this cyber-world about science and science teaching using Internet 2.0 technologies. I would like to congratulate Mr. Fletcher on designing such a fantastic site. I hope that he will come visit me and leave a comment. Also, gotta love the Feynmann Photo. Let's all go to TUVA :)

I hope you enjoy his site as much as I did! Check out the links below to get to SOITA , Mr. Fletcher, and to learn more about Richard Feynmann.

Soita Teletech Tuesdays

Mr. Fletcher's Chemistry/Honors Chemistry Website

Eagan High School Website

Wikipedia link to Richard Feynamann
(for those who don't understand the Tuva comment)

Have fun! I did!!

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Comment by TJ Fletcher on May 17, 2008 at 11:16am: Sorry, I'm a bit late in saying thanks. I fell behind in checking comments to the chemfiles.com web site. Glad you liked the Excel spreadsheet activity on mass relationships...and to answer your questions:

1) I don't spend a lot of time training the students on Excel...however, I do find that they have limited skills when it comes to using the software. Most have used it simply for organizing their data into columns and rows. You tend to get a lot of ooohhhs and ahhhhs when you show them how it can do calculations.

2) The video tutorials generally take a couple hours to produce. I used Snapz Pro on the Mac to create the ones for the Excel activity and also for the Calorimetry Project in Flash. However, Vara Software recently released a new program called ScreenFlow for Mac OS 10.5 which is pretty sweet. On a Windows machine, I would use Adobe Captivate. The videos definitely aren't polished, and I probably should take more time on them than I do.

3) If you or anyone else would like to use the video tutorials for the activity, feel free. Just don't let the students rip on me too much for my crude oratory skills. ;)

Thanks again for checking out the site! Glad you liked it...I'll try to get some more activities up soon.

Regards,
T. J.