Drop Counters are AWESOME.
When given the choice between spending 20+ minutes manually entering volume data every 1 mL, or sitting back and watching it the data graph itself in 3 minutes or less, I’m going with the latter. Not only does the data come out great but it frees up the students to actually look at and analyze the data they’re collecting in real-time, rather than fiddling with stopcocks and reading burets.
They look impressed. Though they may be staring at the ring stand.
They’re not cheap, but having one setup would be a great way to visualize and talk about the various regions of the graph as a class, and to ask and answer student-driven questions (Students can make predictions of how a SA/SB titrations would differ from SA/WB, WA/WB, and see if they were right). The Pasco version of the dropcounter also allows you to collect conductivity data simultaneously, which opens up more possibilities for whole-class inquiry and exploration.
Um…
That’s pretty much it. We worked in pairs completing lab kits for the 16 guided labs as produced by Flinn, Carolina, and Wards. The instructors wanted us to see if the labs met our expectations, if they could be completed in a reasonable time, and if they were AP-level. We’ll debrief thattomorrow. My initial impressions:
- The “sample data” provided in some teacher’s guides clearly cannot be obtained with the provided materials. One of the labs simply couldn’t be completed as written, or with reasonable modifications.
- I think some kits were thrown together in order to be released in time for the beginning of the ’13-14 school year.
- The convenience factor fades quickly. It is generally best to build your own kit from scratch. The AP manual itself, though it has flaws, has been a better resource than many of the kits.
On to day three…
There’s a lot of AP-level chemistry in a simple 4-ingredient baggie lab.
Calcium chloride. Sodium hydrogen carbonate. Phenol Red. Water. A common first year chemistry lab, but incredibly useful in third quarter of an AP chemistry lab. Dissociation, hydrolysis, precipitation, neutralization reactions, thermodynamics, net ionic equations. Inquiry. Its all there. And its cheap. And its straight-forward enough to also work separately in a first year course.
I’m really bad at writing multiple choice questions.
I am not particularly bothered by this. I rarely if ever include them on my tests.
Nothing magical has happened yet to make me want to convert my course to AP. But I’m looking forward to the rest of the week, and getting a closer look at the new curriculum/labs.
Is this thing still on?
Much has changed in my life since I last posted. Rather than being overwhelmed by trying to including everything, I’ll just tell you what I’m doing for the rest of the summer.
I’m currently attending an AP Chemistry workshop at Taft School. Its the third workshop I’ve attended here (I did a 2-week AP Biology workshop in 2007, and a 1-week advanced AP Chemistry workshop in 2009). I’ll post a bit more about this year’s workshop as the week goes on.
In two weeks I’ll be attending and presenting at the Biennial Conference on Chemical Education at Grand Valley State University.
I’m creating a workbook/”textbook” for my advanced chemistry course. I’d been fiddling with iBooks Author for a few years. I doubt current school will ever be able to move towards 1:1 iPads, so I’m doing it old school (pdf/print).
I’m preparing to begin my fourth year with Modeling Chemistry. I would like to adapt some version of Science Writing Heuristic (Claim-Evidence-Reasoning) for lab reports. I may attempt the alternate sequence re: atomic structure. Has anyone done this? (atomic structure after unit 4)?
We’re excited to have Ramsey Musallam present this week at Global Chemistry Department. He’s blogged extensively about his use of the Explore-Flip-Apply learning cycle in his AP Chemistry course. At Thursday’s meeting, he will describe what this looks like in a typical unit, and how he assesses student understanding.
You can learn more about Ramsey by visiting his blog or course site.
We’ll begin at 9:00pm EST/6:00pm PST. I hope to see you there!
If you miss a meeting, you can find the recordings at the Global Chemistry Department site.
The Global Chemistry Department will meet biweekly on Thursday nights at 9-10:00pm EST. Its an opportunity for chemistry teachers to meet for free, real-time professional development.
Our first meeting will be this Thursday, Sept 20, and our first speaker is Corey Kilbane. *Note, this week’s meeting will start at 10:00pm* His topic is Video as Pedagogy:
The Flip Class concept has been a education buzz word for the last several years. If you’ve been to any educational conference, someone has been talking about it. There are now tons of resources to learn easy ways to make video lectures. But I believe that something is tragically missing from these discussions . . . pedagogy.
In my talk, I will show how you can expand the use of video in your classroom, as well as options to make those videos more effective.
If you haven’t signed up yet with BigMarker, click here. You can easily sign up with your Google, Facebook or Twitter account, or an email address. Then, you can join the Global Chemistry Department, and receive email reminders of our meetings.
I hope to see you at our first meeting!
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